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.