Most likely, your personal definition or description of feeling free is quite different to mine. A person in China restricted from offering his personal opinions freely would have a sense of liberty if the situation altered and he was able to express himself freely without fear of punishment.
The child who feels constrained to become someone that their parents wish him or her to be would feel a sense of freedom if the parents were to assure the child that it was their wish simply for the child to be happy.
A man or woman who holds their opinions tight to their chest for fear of an upsetting argument would feel freed if the partner were to assure that they would remain calm and discuss the situation openly and rationally regardless of opposing views.
There is a beautiful sense of freedom away from home with no possessions but a few changes of clothes in a suitcase.
There is the freedom of the meditation cushion when the stillness of the still mind (they mean the natural/free mind which has nothing to do with thought) is reached.
It's subject to interpretation as to whether freedom is achieved with no thoughts but plenty of feelings. There is a tendency for us to want to be free of what is sometimes referred to as the negative feelings - anger, sadness, hatred, jealousy. Yet, it's so interesting what happens when we quietly sit and allow those feelings full rein. It's hard to hold onto negative feelings for more than a couple of minutes. The physiological responses are so intense that after a few minutes of quietly sitting with them, they quite naturally begin to subside, to reduce and to dissolve. There's a freedom right there.
There are people who seem emotion less and people who are too emotional and in both cases to sit quietly with oneself and check in - how I am doing? how am I feeling? - is liberating for the busy self. It's having an awareness of your state that can free you from being in an automated state, as if unattached from your self, or unhinged. We sit with 'our whole body' on the meditation cushion. We have arrived. There is no where we need to be and no-one else whose needs come before our own. It's a liberating thought.
For several years it was possible with very little effort to take me to a bimbo state of mind. A translation of that state would be sexually liberated, or the object state of mind/no mind. This happens less now than it used to and the question for myself is if I am in some way to blame for the situation. Am I less inclined to 'let go', something that was so natural, so easy for me not so long ago?
Philosophies and spiritual teachings tell us that there are no mistakes (which I find hard to accept but let's go with it for now). That is, we are not dust in the wind. We are the wind. We are not part of life. Life lives through us. If that's the case, I haven't made a 'mistake', it's just that 'letting go' into the bimbo part of me is not often available to me at this juncture in my life.
On my meditation cushion the experience is with myself. I am in relationship with my self. The experience of being free is available to me at any time when I choose to let go and enter the stillness of the still mind.
In my dreams or daydreams, my fantasy life, bimbo is readily accessible to me. She simply never goes away for the very reason that she is respite from the worried, harried mind. I can, if I wish or must, enter a state where liberties are few and expectations are sordid, and this frees my mind; relaxes me and subdues anxiety. I would never banish her for the very reason that she is so necessary to me.
Needless to say I thrive, not just survive, when bimbo in all her vivid colour splashes onto the canvass. This state is not available to me without the aid of the artist who wishes to paint a particular image; who with instinctive and particular knowledge can apply the brush strokes with just the right flow and smoothness to create the texture most satisfying.
It happens effortlessly when the artist is in sync with the canvass, knows what he wants and feels into his heart how the brush will work with him and for him to create something of beauty and liberating force. Each painting created in this way will have its own essential life force. Like love, it happens when both elements in play reach into something innate; something derived from nature. Only then can they both be liberated.
No comments:
Post a Comment