Unfortunately, after every independence
which is obtained after such a high price, slavery continues to exist within
each person.
Who is free? Who has achieved that famous
fiberty? How many have become emancipated? Oh, oh, oh...
The adolescent yearns for liberty; it
seems incredible that many times having food, shelter and clothing, he
wants to run away from the paternal home in search of liberty.
It is incongruent that the young person
that has everything at home, wants to escape, run away, get away from his
home, fascinated by the term liberty. It is strange that while he enjoys
every type of comfort in a happy home, he would want to lose everything
he has, to wander around the world and submerge himself in pain.
That the unfortunate person, the pariah
in life, the beggar, truly yearns to leave his hovel, his hut for the purpose
of achieving a change for the better, is correct; but that the rich kid,
Mommy's boy, looks to escape, to run away is incongurent, and even absurd.
However, this is the way things are. The word liberty fascinates, bewitches,
even though no one knows how to define it in a precise manner.
That the maiden desire liberty, that she
yearn to change homes, that she desire marriage to escape from the paternal
home and live a better life, is partly logical, because she has the right
to be a mother. However, once in the role of wife, she finds out that she
is not free and with resignation she has to continue to carry the chains of slavery.
The employee, tired of so many regulations,
wants to see himself free and if is able to become independent, he finds
himself with the problem that he continues being a slave of his own interests
and worries.
Certainly, every time that we struggle
for liberty, we find ourselves cheated in spite of the victories.
So much blood uselessly spilled in the
name of liberty and yet we still continue being slaves of ourselves and
of others.
People fight over words that they do not
understand even though dictionaries explain them grammatically.
Looking within...
Liberty
is something that one has to obtain within oneself. No one can achieve
it outside of himself or herself.
"To gallop through the air" is a very Oriental phrase that allegorizes
the sense of genuine liberty.
No one can truly experience liberty as
long as their consciousness continues trapped in one's self, in the myself.
To comprehend this I, this person, what
one is, is urgent when one wants to very sincerely achieve liberty.
In no way can we destroy the shackles of slavery without having previously comprehended this matter of mine completely,
everyting that concerns the I, the myself.
What does slavery consist of? What
is this that keeps us as slaves? What are these hurdles? All of this is what
we have to discover.
Rich and poor, believers and nonbelievers,
everyone is formally imprisoned, even though they consider themselves free.
As long as the consciousness, the essence,
the most worthy and decent part that we have in our interior, continues
trapped in one's self, in the myself, in the I itself, in my appetites
and fears, in my desires and passions, in my worries and violences, in
my psychological defects, one will be in a formal prison.
The meaning of liberty can only be integrally
comprehended when the shackles of our own psychological prison have been
annihilated.
While the "I myself" exists,
the consciousness will be imprisoned; to escape this prison is only possible
through the Buddhist annihilation, dissolving the I, reducing it to ashes,
to cosmic dust.
The free consciousness, stripped of the
I, in the absolute absence of the myself, without desires, without passions,
without appetites or fears, experiences true liberty in a direct manner.
Any concept about liberty, is not liberty.
The opinions we form about liberty are very far from being reality. The
ideas we formulate on the theme of liberty have nothing to do with authentic
liberty.
Liberty is
something that we have to experience in a direct manner and this is only
possible dying psychologically, dissolving the I, doing away permanently
with the myself.
It is useles to continue dreaming with
liberty, if we continue as slaves in any case.
It is better to see ourselves as we are,
to carefully observe all these shackles
of the slavery that keep us in a formal
prison.
By knowing ourselves, seeing everything
that we are internally, we will discover the door to authentic Liberty.
From "The Great Rebellion"
by Samael Aun Weor