Everyone longs to be free, but so few people ever experience real freedom.
For most people freedom means no longer feeling the constraints of a life they don’t like. For instance, five days a week you drive to a job you don’t enjoy and take orders from a boss you don’t respect. And no matter how hard you work, you can’t seem to get ahead financially.
Or perhaps you are in an unfulfilling relationship. But you are afraid of being alone, so you stay in the relationship hoping that things will somehow get better.
You might be dealing with a serious health issue. And you don’t know if you’ll ever recover from it.
Or maybe you feel that your best years are behind you. And it is too late to do what you want with your life.
Life does try to impose limitations upon us. Having the courage and the willpower to make a better life for ourselves is essential. Without trying to make your circumstances better you become a passive victim of fate. You feel powerless. And that is no way to go through life.
Yet even if everything in your life were to work out just right—with your job, finances, relationships, and health—you would still not be free. True freedom is not something you find in your external circumstances. Instead, it is found within.
How can you be free when you are under the ego’s influence? The ego is a black hole of endless desires. It is always grasping for more. There always seems to be something missing from your life. You become so concerned with what you don’t have that you are unable to enjoy what you do have.
The ego is sustained by an incessant stream of thoughts. It is either reminiscing about the past or worrying about the future. Because the mind is always active, there is never a moment of peace when you can just be.
When it’s all said and done, when you get down to the core of it all, you will find true freedom by escaping the limitations of the ego-controlled mind. Then you can align with the deeper reality—the infinite formless unity that sustains creation.
