Freedom

Freedom is defined as the liberty of personal choice, action or thought, although many of us define it in political terms. That is to say we are politically free in a culture that allows for personal choice, action or thought. However, in order to truly have personal choice, action and thought we must know ourselves. This requires waking up that pilot who had been clunked on the head by the ship’s anchor and suffered amnesia. Freedom of choice demands that we pay attention to our actions, for our actions tell us what belief is driving our choice. Most of the time our actions are automatic; without thought. They are reaction more than they are actions. This is why Elias impresses upon us to pay attention to what we do, for in what we do lies the underlying belief that feeds our projectors.

You’re walking across your living room and stub your toe on the leg of the chair. Most of us scream, fall to the floor and grab our throbbing toe. It’s an automatic response requiring no thought and is devoid of choice. In this response we have no freedom. This is a belief driven reality, so let’s look at the beliefs behind our automatic response in this situation and see if we can find our freedom of choice in the act of stubbing our defenseless toes.

The first and most predominating belief is in cause and effect. The effect of my throbbing toe is due to the cause of hitting it on a hard object. This belief in cause and effect weaves its way through virtually everything we do. Then there is the belief in pain and the secondary belief that pain is bad, which is an aspect of the belief system of duplicity. There is also the belief in accidents and in victimhood. All of these beliefs conspire to eliminate choice, which is the bedrock of real freedom.

This is what I do on those rare occasions that I stub my toe. I say rare because I work diligently at paying attention to myself (which includes all of my environment) and when I’m paying attention to myself I don’t need to stub my toe as a communication that my attention was not on myself. Anyway, I stub my toe, which I use as an immediate trigger to draw my attention back to myself, I receive a fleeting sense of pain which immediately triggers my recognition of my belief in good and bad (duplicity). I accept (don't judge) the belief ,which diminishes the intensity of the pain. It’s sort of interesting because now I simply “notice” the pain without the judgment of it and when I do that it fades quickly. I chose not to experience the pain just as I used to choose to experience the pain. The difference is that now I know I have a choice. It is no longer an automatic response which represents a total lack of freedom. I welcome comments or questions for it requires a true shift in the way we view reality to get it down. It works!
Bill Marshall