Freedom by Julee Bergstrom

What is freedom? How does it look? One of the biggest misconceptions is that it should look like bliss all the time. The inner drive of seeking is an attempt to fill the feeling of emptiness created by living in an abstract world of thought. And we may believe that if and when we find the missing piece, we’ll abide in a place of endless happiness.

But you are inherently whole. Nothing is missing. And no thought or feeling can define you, despite our common use of language. “I am angry,” we say, or “I am happy.” How could this be? The body and mind can experience anger or joy. But the self cannot be defined by a feeling.

Freedom is the ability to experience anything and to remain undefined by it, seeing that it is part of the whole. It all is. Experience is—certainly while we’re here in this dream place. No experience can change the truth of who you are. Wholeness is whole. What could alter that?

This casts a new light on the nature of the guru or sage. Saints they are not. They are very human humans who have realized that there is no person in existence. There never was and never will be. They still wash the dishes and buy groceries, and do a day’s work. Or perhaps they don’t. But the personality remains. Events and circumstances continue to arise, and responses and feelings ensue. But the sense of attachment to such is gone, or at least seen through. This is their freedom, not the presence of endless bliss. Endless bliss would in fact be a restriction. The sage is free to experience the full spectrum of life, but is released from the suffering caused by resistance to its natural course.

You are striving to return to wholeness when that’s all there ever was and is. You never left. So what’s to gain by returning to it? Only the realization that you never left.

The ego’s disappointment at the previous statement is amusing. It doesn’t understand the magnitude of this “only.” The recognition that searching for wholeness in the mind’s simulated reality is a trap of our own creation is profound. This is the window to freedom.

Although it is a journey of no time or distance, it may take some effort. But it is well worth making. We may imagine bliss as the ultimate prize. But freedom from the need to feel any certain way or have any set experience or circumstances is far more powerful and precious. And if freedom is better than bliss, then we are certainly not missing out on anything. We can have it all. We do have it all.

Julee Bergstrom is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. She lives in the UK.