The ecoTrain Speaks “What is Freedom, Am I Free?” By @gardenbsquared
Freedom is foremost a construct of the mind. But it is our own mind that enslaves us the most.
This is Sky. She is one of our two dogs. We got her from the animal shelter a couple of years ago. She’s being loved and cared for but she is not free. She cannot leave the garden on her own.
Does she care?
Probably not. As long as she gets her meals and her walks and a lot of love and attention, she’s perfectly happy.
In her mind there’s no such thing as freedom. Dogs kinda take life as it comes.
But she definitely has a mind on her own, a mind that can trouble her. When it rains for example. While my other dog doesn’t care that much, she just lies there on her blanket sulking. One can argue it’s the rain that causes her to sulk. But as a street dog she must have been traumatised when she was a puppy. Dealing with the weather, always hungry, looking for food, being chased away by humans with sticks. So when it rains, it triggers unpleasant memories in her mind. But it is her own response to the rain, her own mind that makes her unhappy.
When I was young I didn’t like school that much. I was always day dreaming, staring outside, staring at the trees and the wind rustling through the leaves wishing I was on the water windsurfing. Only on the water I felt truly free.
Again one can argue that it was school that made me unhappy. Of course school restricts children in their freedom, it restricts them in exploring the world and in expressing themselves. I was only fourteen at that time so I didn’t know any better but it was my fantasies, my mind that made me unhappy. I was not living in the now.
When I got older, I really wanted to get out of it all. University was a big disappointment, a failed relationship and not knowing what to do with my life. The only two things that kept me going was my guitar and some herbal refreshment. I felt trapped in my little room in Amsterdam and wanted to travel the world.
My parents didn’t like that idea very much. And I can remember my mother telling me that wherever you go, you always take yourself with you.
How true! But it was years later when I finally understood her.
So I dropped out of university and moved back in with my parents. I started studying classical guitar full-time and was much happier. But I still didn’t feel free. I still felt trapped. To get a job, making a career, get married, get a mortgage and all those other things you have to do before you die. No, it didn’t really appeal to me.
Still I did most of those things because I was brainwashed in thinking that that’s how things are. My mind told me so.
Later in life, reading Osho, I started to understand how the mind works but more importantly I realised that my mind is not me. I became the observer that I always was and always have been. I was able to observe my own mind and my mind became silent.
Of course, it didn’t stay silent and I made many mistakes on my path through life. But isn’t that what’s freedom is all about? The freedom to make mistakes.
Nowadays a lot of people are more (financially) enslaved then ever but they actually believe they are free. Again the mind at work deceiving people’s perception.
It’s your own perception that can set you free or rather the absence of perception, the absence of the mind.
So to me freedom is about perception. We are always limited by the physical world, by our physical body. So far there have always been laws and governments. I ignore them as much as possible. I’m a free man walking the Earth and I live by one law. Do no harm.
There’s a scene in the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, I think many people will have seen it, where the inmates are tarring the roof of the prison. Tim Robbins, the main character, managed to arrange some icy cold bohemian style beer for his ‘co-workers’. It’s then that his fellow inmate Red, played by Morgan Freeman, says:
Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses.
We were the lords of all creation.”
Even in prison one can be free.
Thanks and much love,
Gardenbsquared
https://steemit.com/blog/@eco-alex/ecotrain-highlights-of-the-week-12th-18th-august-more-amazing-posts-brought-together-for-you
Nice one!
Thank you.
Well explained.
REALLY super great answer.. NICE to see you write as well as you photgraph
That's kind. Thank you, but I find it difficult to write. It takes me a long time.
I am Cornholio! You will name your baby Bungholio! Is he an albino? Holio Bungholio... will be albino... and a gringo....
Beautiful, Thanks
Thank you.
Great post. I like how you used your dog Sky to make the point about perception. As a teenager I was super aware that I did not want any part of the system, job, mortgage, house, not in any traditional sense. But my mind was in no place to to realize the key was my own mind, let alone put it into action. I too read and quickly realized the key was within, but realizing and changing are two different things. You can have all the knowledge in the world but if you let your mind rule you become your own prisoner.
For me it took hitting a sort of bottom when I had some unfortunate health calamities, one, encheplitus that affected my mind and memory and later a very painful condition led me to learn to be the keeper of my mind. It was that or allow my mind to put me into more pain, anxiety and depression.
This is so important. Being able to control what your mind focuses on or to be able to silent the endless mind babble and racing thoughts that plague so many. For me there was also a mellowing with age that may have had an influence on me being able to change my perceptions and quiet my mind. I am more happy now than ever.
Thanks for the great post and reminder too.
Peace
Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. I as well became more happy over time. I was indeed my own prisoner.
Nice read, as soothing as your pictures or video's Isn't it funny how many of us in the ecotrain come to te same conclusion about freedom? That it is the absence of the mind?