Freedom despite it all

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We are often searching for so-called ‘Freedom’. But more often than not, it is freedom from something that we believe is keeping us imprisoned. The Freedom I am interested in is not any kind of ‘freedom from…’ – it is ‘Freedom despite…’ It is the Freedom that doesn’t depend on the any particular experience. It is the Freedom that doesn’t wait for a change in circumstances, that doesn’t depend on a certain mood, or state of mind. This is the radical Freedom in knowing that there is no escape from the experience just as it is.

The Attachment Paradox

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Sometimes people talk about how we should not be attached to possessions, experiences, the body, places, people… But there is a natural attachment, or a being touched, by these things. It is natural to feel touched being with someone you love, or enjoying a new outfit, or new house. It is natural to feel hurt when someone leaves you, or annoyed when your favourite object breaks. It is not this natural ‘being touched’ that is the problem, it is the layer of drama around it. It is the story of ‘me’ around it that builds up this drama and makes it all seem, and feel, very serious and meaningful to ‘me’. When the thinking turns an experience or feeling into a ‘story of me’, or identity, it starts to feel dramatic and exciting. It starts to feel all about ‘me’ and how special I am. Then the natural ‘being touched’ is so overlaid by the story that the original feeling is no longer really felt.
Being without attachment, means being totally utterly touched by life again and again to the point that it cracks your heart open, and at the same time knowing that it is all totally and utterly meaningless.
The thinking can not do this. You can not try to make this happen. It is simply in acknowledging the awful truth of this paradox that you see that this is how life is already, whether you like it or not.

The truth is in absolute simplicity

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simplicity Someone asked me in a meeting yesterday, to suggest a method or technique to help have the ‘shift’ to awakening. I told him that there is no need of any technique or shift, in order to be what we already are. He didn’t like that answer.
When we have spent years making so much effort trying to become more, trying to fix and improve who we think we are, we can not believe that the truth can be in absolute simplicity. It sounds too easy. No effort required? Surely not. We are so used to complication that simplicity seems too difficult. We can not hear that the answer is not in adding or taking away anything. It is not in doing or even in not doing.
And in not knowing what to do or not do, this can feel incredibly frustrating. All you know is to try hard, and do a lot. But what you already are, is not known, or understood, and doesn’t require any effort at all, because it is you.
So then the next question is naturally, ‘well, how can I know this myself, rather than just believing your words?’ You can’t because the one who is trying to know this, is the thinking. The thinking will never be able to know that that is aware of it. So you are left with simply feeling the frustration. There is no escape from feeling it while it is here. There is no point in trying hard to fix it with an imagined perfectly clever answer. It doesn’t work anyway. There are endless questions and endless answers. At some point you see how pointlessly simple it really is.
And in acknowledging this simplicity, you may have to face your feelings of disappointment at how easy it really is.