(Inner) Freedom
She tied you to the kitchen chair/she broke your ribs and she cut your hair/and from your lips/ she drew the Hallelujah” L. COHEN
What’s the opposite of freedom? Being caged in (by yourself).
I am writing to you while Leonard Cohen sings “the beast won’t go to sleep”. The Beast. My mind. Your mind. I have written about this before and have emphasized how important it is to direct thoughts to a good feeling place if we want our life circumstances to change accordingly. This is an effective, beautiful, difficult endeavor. And so very much worth it. Again: Get on the train if you haven’t yet and if life circumstances are very important to you. That shit really works.
That will take care of your “outer” freedom. And now, for the inner freedom: You see, getting what you want is not the ultimate answer. It sure is nice, don’t get me wrong, but there is a darker twin sister/ brother deep inside you, that, ultimately, is never ever going to be satisfied regardless of how your situation improves (lover, $$$, success, etc).
That twin is about 4 years old. And it needs you. And you haven’t been there for him/her. You were too busy trying to make yourself feel better by shaping your “out-side”.
What is your suffering then, really? It’s a need that you are not tending to, not meeting, not nourishing, that you do not acknowledge.
I come from a fairly fucked up background, so I have my moments of shutting down and not being fully present with my child or myself. In fact, I believe that almost none of us had truly soul-nourishing parents. Why do I believe that?
If a need is met, it very quickly dissipates. You either learn this experientially (through truly good mothering/fathering) or – most likely – not . In which case, you have a 4 year old bawling inside you. Sure, she can be shut out or ignored, but she’s there. You know she is. That part that you want to avoid. The part that you want to go away. It’s the part that, in the end, will never allow you full freedom, because you are not there with it or for it. You are not meeting it. You must sit with it. Hold it. Let it cry. Let it be angry. Let it be whatever it is. Without judgment, but instead with pure motherly/fatherly presence. Our civilization does not support presence. Our society’s set up makes it very, very hard to truly meet a challenging feeling so that whatever doesn’t feel good can dissipate ——if you want it to. Your parents didn’t get this, and so you had no model for it. I’m no longer talking about actual mothering, but mothering of yourself and whatever arises within you.
As fucked up as planet Earth is in 2017, our capability for radical change is absolutely limitless. We are powerful. We are so much more capable and powerful than all of us have been taught. We can start meeting those parts that haven’t been met/held before. From that place of complete and utter acceptance of (all of) ourselves , we can begin to shift towards freedom from pathological suffering (dysfunction, addictions, abuse, illness). Suffering in itself is part of this life experience. Lifelong (!) perpetuation of it and passing it down to the next generation does not have to be.
Freedom tastes better.