Free to be free

For most of my life I've tended to be a contemplative individual, always thinking and processing and trying to understand myself and the world around me, to varying degrees of success. But in all of my attempts to make sense of my own seemingly divided thoughts, feelings, and actions I never had enough space to take a step back and look at myself. Well, I guess the space is always there but I never knew it. I just had this sense that if I took a step back that I would fall into nothingness, that death was the only other place I could possibly be.

In a sense, I was right. But I'll get to that.

If your only two options seem to be: a) feeling cornered and trapped by life, or b) death; that doesn't lead to a hopeful existence. And much of my life has been marked by a significant lack of hope. In the past I've had some kind of hope in an afterlife, which only made the 'death' option that much more appealing, but not a lot of hope for my actual life, here and now. If heaven is a place of perfection, why not just jump straight to it? Why bother to endure the excruciating pain that we sometimes experience in this existence? The short answer could be that we get rewarded if we do and/or punished if we don't. That kind of answer was never enough for me.

In fact, I distinctly remember, at one point, feeling an unwavering confidence that God would never punish me for choosing to take the easy way out, to skip straight to the 'good ending'. In many ways, I had already rejected the idea of eternal joy or suffering being based on my actions. I didn't know who God was but I believed deeply in my heart that this God I didn't know was a loving and compassionate God who understood the excruciating existential agony and hopelessness that I was embedded in for so long.

In fact, that despair is still with me on most days. Sometimes barely noticeable and sometimes like a torrential downpour of misery. I would like to be happy and content. I would like to not feel these feelings, to be able to escape or destroy them. But as much as I would like to be 'enlightened' and be filled with an immovable confidence and joy, I began to realize more fully today that, in the end, it doesn't really matter.

I definitely want it to be easy, to experience spontaneous and permanent liberation from egoic fear, doubt, and desire, but that's not the reason I'm here. The reason I'm here is to take a step forward in this process, to grow in this experience of humanity and help to create a greater shift in our collective consciousness as brothers and sisters of a global humanity. In short, to create the kingdom of God on earth. And it may be that it is always going to be a struggle for me, that I will never be rid of these limiting thoughts and feelings. But that doesn't mean that they must limit me.

I recently heard a Muslim professor speak beautifully of the Islamic perspective of life as struggle, that anything that is truly worthwhile must be pursued with determination and effort and is seldom easy. Of course, not everything we do that is worthwhile is always difficult but on the journey to freedom each step upwards is a push against the pull of the status quo and our own limiting cultural and personal beliefs. This often requires an enormous amount of effort. On the path of spiritual liberation, nothing short of offering everything will be enough. Though while we might always experience internal resistance from our ego to offering more and more of ourselves to the spiritual impulse, the amazing thing is that the more we offer the easier it becomes, regardless of how we might feel about it.

I no longer see the goal as being free from my despair but as simply being free, fully and unconditionally. I do experience a strong desire to be free from uncomfortable and difficult feelings and experiences but that's not what's most important. So my path becomes not about ridding myself of discomfort and pain but about learning how to deepen and strengthen my own highest intention to pursue freedom above all else, not simply for some kind of selfish, individualistic benefit but for the sake of my own highest Self, which is the same Self as every other human being.

The next night from the Flock came Kirk Maynard Gull, wobbling across the sand, dragging his left wing, to collapse at Jonathan's feet. "Help me," he said very quietly, speaking the the way that the dying speak. "I want to fly more than anything else in the world..."
"Come along then," said Jonathan. "Climb with me away from the ground, and we'll begin."
"You don't understand. My wing. I can't move my wing."
"Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is."
"Are you saying I can fly?"
"I say you are free."
As simply and quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings, effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was roused from sleep by his cry, as loud as he could scream it, from five hundred feet up; "I can fly! Listen! I CAN FLY!"
By sunrise there were nearly a thousand birds standing outside the circle of students, looking curiously at Maynard. They didn't care whether they were seen or not, and they listened, trying to understand Jonathan Seagull.
He spoke of very simple things - that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"
"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other."

~ Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach