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I believe true freedom is when an individual is not subject to compulsive behavior surrounding their own likes and dislikes. Often times we are under the impression that we are choosing something but in reality we are enslaved by our desires and our fears. Often times we may avoid acting in alignment with our hearts truest intention out of fear of negative consequences or because we are consumed by something that is seemingly more pleasurable. If we were truly free, we would always act in alignment with our deepest intentions and not be persuaded to do anything else to include outside forces such as the approval and criticisms of others. The greatest freedom would be to realize our oneness with the creator and attain the state of pure altruism resulting in such a deep state of fulfillment that the surplus joy we experience would naturally result in an outpour of love in all directions, with no concern of receiving anything in return because there is no perceived sense of lack. When Unconditional love perceives a sense of lack, its natural impulse is to go and fill that void. There is no consideration as to whether the perceived sense of lack belongs to itself or another. The concept of self and other do not arise in such a state. A being that withholds any type of assistance from someone in need is often acting from a place of selfishness. They perceive a sense of separation and their circle of concern ends at the boundary of their own skin or perhaps at the edge of their social circle. Most of us have a very small number of people that we are consistently concerned about and these are the people that we consider important to us. All others either fall into categories of people that we feel neutral towards or have active hostility towards. The people that are important to us collectively belong to our extended sense of self. This selective group of others allows us to form an acceptable sense of “me” and we are willing to engage in many things to help preserve and reinforce that sense of “me”. Those that fall into either the neutral or hostile categories don’t appear to contribute to our constructed sense of self, therefore we express little to no concern for them. The Great work then is to maximize our circle of concern to include all beings through the realization that all is one in the light of the creator and that nothing is lacking it. Through becoming one with this unlimited force of generosity, we are free to express boundless love with no fear of ill consequences.
I agree.
I see that freedom or free will is found in our intention – to see others fulfilled or to see our own egoistic desires fulfilled.
I’d like to take what you said a step further and say that we should think of others, whomever they may be, imagine them in their highest state and feel love for one another in that highest state. We can educate ourselves, in whatever science might be applicable, and imagine the others passing through the stages to reach their goals.
We can monitor how we feel towards others and take opportunities where we might initially think highly or lowly of others and use it as an opportunity to scrutinize our intentions. If we think highly of someone, we can fall into the habit of becoming overly reliant and fail to participate in the work, and if we think lowly of someone we can fail to recognize a person’s value. Either way we would be missing an opportunity to learn and grow. Maybe neutrality is the way to correction.
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