Freedom's Struggle

A lot, if not all, that keeps us awake at night has to do with our wanting freedom from something, wanting to be liberated, be free. Many a times we simply choose to run, run away and hide. By doing so we think we are liberating ourselves. But ask any escaped convict if running away really helps. He may have escaped his cell but he is not free. He is still very much a prisoner. To be really free of his prison he needs to be free not of the cell that imprisons him but of the act that put him in the prison. His freedom therefore lies in that prison cell and he has to return there to find it.

Liberation, in that sense, is about running 'in' and not running 'out', running 'towards' and not running 'away'. This is contrary to what our instincts normally tell us to do, its contrary to what our fears, our doubts, our hopes and our desires ask us to do. They are in fact like doorkeepers who do their best to shoo us away and keep us from our freedom and therefore they need to be knocked away before we can hope to open the door to our liberation. We need to look our fears, our doubts, our hopes and our desires in the eye and then brush them aside. This is what makes being free so difficult.

Is it any wonder that so few of us are really free and liberated?