How to get true freedom

 

Life moves by dual factors – inner tendencies and outer influences. 

Inner tendencies form your attitudes and behavior, while external influences make strong impressions in your mind. Your tendencies often generate external situations, and situations around you can form tendencies within you. This is called karma. 

Both these factors – the tendencies from within and influences from outside can be either beneficial or harmful. It is awareness that filters the outer negative influences and it is awareness that corrects and annihilates the unhealthy inner tendencies. This awareness is called gyana. 

The purpose of education is to develop this awareness so that you can be selective about your tendencies and influences. It is practically impossible to resist the external influences and the inner tendencies without raising one’s consciousness. This can be gradual or sudden.

This is how a human being has both free will and destiny. Freedom is when you have a say about your tendencies and your influences, but only awareness and impeccable devotion can bring this freedom.

How to, or not, lose your freedom

 

Honour reduces freedom. Your fame, honour and virtue can limit your freedom. 

Nobody expects a good person to make a mistake, so the better you are, the higher the expectations people have of you. It is then that you lose your freedom. Your virtues and good actions are like a golden cage. You are trapped by your own good actions for everyone expects more from a good person. Nobody expects anything from a bad person.

Most people are stuck in this cage of prestige and honor. They cannot smile. They are constantly worried about keeping their prestige and their honor; it becomes more important than their own life. Just being good or doing good to retain prestige and honor is worthless. 

Prestige and honor can bring more misery in life than poverty. Many desire fame, but little do they know that they are looking for a cage. It is an art to be dignified and yet not be suffocated by it. 

Only the wise know this. For the wise one it is natural to be honorable, but s/he has no concerns even if it is lost. Despite having fame or prestige, s/he will live as though s/he has none. A wise person can handle any fame without feeling suffocated. By doing good in society you can gain prestige, then when you enjoy the prestige and honor your freedom is lost. 

Then how do you keep your freedom? By being like a child, by considering the world a dream, a burden or a joke.

Rising above attraction and delusion

 

Those you associate with can either elevate you or pull you down. 

At first there is an attraction but then delusion. This keeps your mind swinging between the two extremes causing love and hatred. 

With the power of knowledge and satsang you can rise above this dilemma.

Don't fight for your rights

 

Those who fight for their rights are weak for they do not know their inner strength, their magnanimity. The weaker you are, the more you demand your rights. Asserting your rights makes you isolated and poor. 

People who fight for their rights take pride in it. This is an ignorant pride. You need to recognize no one can take away your rights. They are yours.

The courageous will give away their rights. The degree to which you give away your rights indicates your freedom, your strength. The stronger you are the more you give away your rights. Only those who have their rights can give them away! Demanding rights does not really bring them to you, and in giving them away you do not really lose them.

Poor are those who demand their rights. 

Richer are those who know their rights cannot be taken away. 

Richest are those who give away their rights. 

Demand for rights is ignorance, agony. 

Knowing no one can take away your rights is freedom. 

Giving away your rights is love, wisdom.

Company matters

 

Normally in the world people with similar tendencies group together– intelligent people get together, fools get together, happy people get together, ambitious people get together and disgruntled people also get together to celebrate their problems. 

When disgruntled people get together, they complain and pull each other down. Frustrated people cannot be with someone happy because the other is not dancing to their tune. 

You only feel comfortable when the other person is in tune with you. Intelligent people do not feel at home with foolish people. Foolish people feel that intelligent ones are not humane. 

People with wisdom feel at home with the disgruntled as well as the happy, foolish and intelligent. Similarly, people with all these tendencies feel at home with the wise. 

Just turn around and look at what goes on in your group – are you grateful or grumbling? Take responsibility to uplift the people around you. That is satsang, not just singing and leaving. The wise person is like the sky where all birds fly.

Are you a tourist or a pilgrim?

What is the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim? Both are on a journey. 

Where a tourist satisfies the senses, a pilgrim is in quest for the truth. 

A tourist gets tired and tanned, while a pilgrim sparkles with spirit. 

Every move a pilgrim makes is done with sacredness and gratitude, while a tourist is often preoccupied and unaware. 

A tourist compares his journey with other experiences and places and thus is not in the present moment. But a pilgrim has a sense of sacredness, so he tends to be in the present moment.

Most people in life are just tourists without even being aware of it. Only a few make their life a pilgrimage. Tourists come, look around, take pictures in their minds, only to come back again. But pilgrims are at home everywhere – they are hollow and empty. When you consider life to be sacred, nature waits on you. Are you a tourist or a pilgrim?

Considering our past, present and future

 

When people consider past events to be the result of free will they are filled with remorse and regret. When they consider future events as destiny, lethargy and inertia set in. 

A wise person will consider the past as destiny and the future as free will. When you consider the past as destiny, no more questions are raised and the mind is at ease. 

And when you consider the future as free will, you are filled with enthusiasm and dynamism. Of course there will be some uncertainty and some anxiety when you consider the future as free will, but it can also bring alertness and creativity.

Now, how do we remove the anxiety? By having faith in the Divine and doing sadhana. Consider the past as destiny, the future as free will and the present moment as Divinity.