An article from "CentreCOMM", May 1996 ...

FREEDOM
Is It Possible?
by Rev Colin S. Read

FREEDOM, were I to give it a definition, is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it. Do you think that is wrong? I don't, and it can be achieved.

I believe we all need to understand what it means to live a free life. It is as important today as at any other time in history, perhaps even more so with the increasing social, economic, political and religious restrictions, and the restrictions that we lay upon ourselves.

I believe that a free life is exciting and adventurous. People say to me, "I don't want an adventurous, exciting life! I would rather have peace." Get accustomed to the idea that on earth there is no such thing as peace. It simply does not exist. The wish for peace indicates to me that you have exhausted yourself being anything and everything other than what you really are.

The urge for freedom is an integral part of the human soul. It is a gift of God and it can never under any circumstances be willingly suppressed by any law, slogan, commandment or morality. The soul must express itself. Buried within our being it makes its desire known, sometimes downright blatantly, sometimes in dreams. The desire emanates from our inner knowing, but it is inhibited by a great number of written and unwritten laws that confine us. We are not free. Our soul is trapped within our body because of the bars and restrictions we have placed around it. Most of our ills, pains, problems, confusions and wars can be related directly back to the inability of an individual soul to express itself. So there is a great difference between the urge for freedom that we inwardly feel and the reality in which we live.

Everything we do has a consequence. We may think that we are not entirely responsible for the restrictions on our freedom, but we are. We must learn to cause freedom, the freedom for our soul to express itself effectively, firstly within our mind and body, then in our environment, society, country and beyond.

You often come across people who talk vaguely about what they want in life, what they think they are missing, why they don't have it, who it is that prevents them from getting it in the first place - continuously thinking "if only" this, that or the other. That "this, that or the other" is generally something external to the soul yet somehow it keeps the soul confined. Therefore for most people freedom remains a pleasant fantasy, something to dream about while we carry out all of our daily obligations - to each other, families, work, relationships and you name it.

From time to time we make half-hearted attempts to break free from all the restrictions we find ourselves in. We say, "Let's go out and let our hair down and do something dramatic or daring!" Usually these attempts end up as something irresponsible, such as getting madly drunk as an excuse not to confine yourself to certain social mores. Then next morning you sober up only to face all those obligations again.

Sometimes we try to break free from these restrictions by trying to influence other people. If you can get somebody to think like you do then you feel safe with them. The trouble is, the more you try to change the minds of others the more your optimism will ultimately turn to frustration and utter despair, for the simple reason that they are other people and they have minds of their own.

Some people are forever joining movements of one kind or another, or they urge political action or write morally righteous letters expressing their opinions. When we tried to get a permit to have our Centre at Palm Court Manor the whole Ivanhoe district, including fourteen churches, came flying up against us to tell us that we were all out of the devil. No matter what you want to do it will be opposed. It is the activist's only form of release, for they think that in this way they are preserving freedom.

In the hope of being free most of us are at war in some way. We criticise any other group in the world except the one in which we are living. We criticise the rich, the poor, the middle class, the working class, other professions or races - the list is endless. We blame our husband or wife or children, using all kinds of emotional blackmail and psychological pressure to change them. We generally find fault in anything and everything outside of ourselves.

In all of these cases we think that sometime in the future all of our efforts and anxieties and fighting will be worthwhile, that we will achieve a glorious, free utopia. Forget it, because that hope is never justified. You cannot have freedom if you rely in any way upon influencing the attitudes or opinions of other people. They will always act within their own self-interest. Give up even trying to control their opinion of you. All you are going to do is diminish your own freedom and give away your own essence, your own I AM.

You can be free without changing the world, you can live your life as you want to live it in accordance with your own inner knowingness and you don't have to drag half of the world along with you, or your family and friends for that matter.

I can hear all the questions already. How can you live as you want to live when there are so many people who won't let you? How can you spend your money as you please when the government takes out so much in taxes? How can you live your own life when you have responsibilities to your family, your friends and your job? How could you possibly ignore all the demands that circumstances and other people make upon you? How can you do what you want when so many things you would like to do are prohibited?

Do you want to know what is prohibited? Practically everything. It is almost impossible to walk down the street without breaking the law. Yet even in the face of all this freedom is possible and we can have it if that is what we really want. But first we need to acknowledge how we limit ourselves.

Unfortunately we have all blandly accepted various assumptions which restrict our freedom, such as: you must always think of others first; you must accept the will of the majority; loyalty means to stick it out regardless; there is an ideal model of behaviour, society or government; people can be labelled and categorised. I call these assumptions "traps": the "morality trap", the "previous investment trap", the "box trap" and so many others. They are repeated often, softly and insidiously, until we accept them. We do not challenge them or find out whether they apply to us or not.

I think you will find that most of these assumptions have absolutely no substance, certainly no more than the ancient cliché that the world is flat. But the reality is that we impose these assumptions upon ourselves. They lead us into accepting restrictions on our lives that have nothing to do with us, so we abide by standards that are unsuitable for us and put up with problems which are not ours. Thereby we remain enslaved and frustrated. We haven't noticed the freedom that is readily available to us.

Most of us are unaware that we have any alternatives, yet these are unlimited. You don't have to be a social leper if you refuse to knuckle down to social pressures. You don't have to give up love or friendship in order to avoid complicated, limiting family or relationship problems. You don't have to go without friends to avoid having your life at the disposal of other people. You are not confined to a specific philosophical bias nor by a restrictive morality or a group consciousness. How much of your life is lived by you? Have you ever thought about it? And how much of it is lived by other people, be it your boss, children, spouse, friends, church or local government?

We haven't realised our tremendous potential for control over our own situation. Your time, which is possibly the only thing that distinguishes life in the present world from life in the hereafter, is your most valuable asset. Don't commit it to the government, to society or to fruitless relationships with people with whom you have nothing in common. Don't allow your life to become a treadmill.

Achieving your freedom depends solely upon your own choice and action. It depends on you making your own decisions and sticking to them. Every day of your life is yours to use as you see fit. We do not have to live lives of quiet desperation. The greatest power on earth that any individual has is the unique ability to choose, regardless of the society or culture they are in.

With this expression of our individuality and the freedom to act accordingly comes health, possibly wealth and certainly a far more profound expression of Christ, the I AM, than we would ever have thought possible. There is a singing in the soul for it is free to pursue its own individual course, knowing no superior.

It begins with you. You are the person who can make you free. Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as your soul needs to live it, or as I said before, it is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it. And if that is not important, what is?