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Freedom

Holidays HolyDays

Holidays HolyDays

Many people believe that holidays are a time to do whatever they want. This is certainly true, however holidays also provide a reminder of a deeper and often forgotten personal and spiritual freedom, a reminder that even though life can pose significant challenges, you can be free at all times, and with the realisation of freedom every day becomes a Holy Day.
 
As relating to everyday life, freedom means doing whatever you want for yourself and for others, while observing a loving and lawful attitude. A lawful attitude is very simple because it is based in love. It means respecting the life, liberty and property of other human beings. And this mutual respect forms the foundation of freedom in material life.

In spiritual life freedom means abiding in awareness unconditioned by thoughts. Awareness is essentially free of thought. It doesn't depend on any thought for its existence, whereas thoughts and emotions depend on awareness for their existence. This is the freedom of being able to put aside thinking in the same way that a craftsman lays aside a tool. Yet the capacity to pick up or put down a tool doesn't make one a skilled craftsman. Nor does the capacity to stop thinking make one a skilled thinker. On Holy Days you also have the opportunity to examine the mind and it's capacity for generating fear, anxiety and conflict when it is not used skilfully. 

Love and freedom are inversely proportional to fear and anxiety. Fear indicates that you are losing sight of love. Anxiety indicates that you are losing sight of freedom. Many people falsely believe that fear is a necessary protective reaction. This is not so. Real protective and defensive reactions happen so quickly that you don't have time to think or fear.

Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.

Anxiety is a symptom of learned powerlessness, of conditioned helplessness in the face of fear. It is a feedback loop consisting of a stimulus that evokes fear followed by a sense of helplessness to resolve or avoid the situation. After many such feedback cycles the undercurrent of anxiety will remain with you in many if not all situations. In other words, if you can't fix or flee a situation and you are forced to remain in the situation then you will develop anxiety. Yet you might unknowingly have the power to be free by gaining insights, learning new skills, changing how you think, making different choices, and taking responsibility.

What good is a holiday if anxiety goes with you? Unfortunately many people return from holidays more tired and stressed than when they left.

So what is the key difference between a holiday and a Holy Day? A holiday is a Holy Day whose meaning has been lost. A Holy Day is any day lived without fear, without coersion, a day lived in loving freedom, unconditioned by dysfunctional thoughts. Imagine a day where every thought, word and action is a meditation, and a gift of grace. Holy Days remind us that peace, love and freedom are ever present. I wish you now and at all times, Happy Holy Days!

Freedom

Freedom implies being free of something, and it can also mean being free of everything. You are free of a thing when it has no hold on you, and when you have no hold on it. Then you are in harmony with life.

The freedom that most people seek is really a temporary relief from problems. No permanent relief is possible as long as one is attached to impermanent things.

The common understanding of freedom is that you get and keep everything you want, and avoid or dispose of everything you don’t want. However the things you want will eventually change or disappear, and things you don’t want will continue to appear at unexpected times. Once this is seen and deeply understood then you become open to real freedom.

Are you free to do what you love? Are you free to love what you are doing? Are you free to meet whatever arises with love?  If not then you will experience uncertainty, anxiety, confusion and fear, which announce to you that you are moving away from freedom.

Anything that enters your awareness is a part of you. You know this to be true to the extent that you can see yourself as being greater than the boundary of your own body. This is similar to how a baby begins to discover that its hand or its foot is a part of its physical body. The next stage of spiritual maturity, beyond thinking of yourself as a spiritual individual, is to see everything as being part of your self.

Your experience of freedom increases as you outgrow your limited self, your individual self. That is not to imply that you should abandon your personal identity but rather to simply recognise that your personal identity is a part of your greater being.

As you become increasingly free of the limiting aspects of your personal identity, you give up the strong desire for control and domination in favour of spontaneous engagement and collaboration. Where you once said, “This is how it must be”, you might now say, “This is how I’d like it to be, however I’m open to discover other possibilities”. The latter approach in itself frees you from the frustrations of events not unfolding as you had expected.

A free person understands that psychological stress is caused not by circumstances but by beliefs. Circumstances might cause pain but only dysfunctional thoughts and beliefs can cause suffering. Pain is the physical sensation caused by injury while suffering is the negative emotional sensation caused by thoughts and imaginings of injury. Knowing this, reflect on the stories you have told yourself about past problems. Are your stories freeing you or keeping you trapped in suffering? Can you let them go?

Nothing can upset a person who is free. In practical terms that means they cannot be upset for long because they understand the impermanence of things. Not clinging to things they allow them to come and go as easily as possible.

Your inner freedom makes you a more integrated and functional part of the whole. If you are truly free then you will naturally act in the best interest of others, and your being established in freedom creates an opening for others to be free.

Peace.