Freedom From The Desire For Freedom…

 

I had once imagined that these pages would one day turn into a book that I would then send into the world and it would return to me a stream of income and companionship, that would end the loneliness and financial struggle, that has characterized much of my adult life.

That was largely wishful thinking…

Then they became a type of confessional, and now, they are a way of describing the ongoing swings of the pendulum, that rock me between the thinking mind’s hold on my life, and the liberating experience of freedom from the desire for freedom.

Freedom from the desire for freedom is – I have come to see – the only real freedom that exists.  

It cannot be acquired through the thoughts that travel the electric impulse highways, of our conditioned minds, the thoughts that if we are asleep enough, we imagine them to be our "self”.

As the Silence in me grows and matures, the distance between thoughts stretches to longer and longer periods, and when thought returns it cannot do so, at least for long, without me noticing its reappearance.

The most interesting thing about the reappearance of thinking is a kind of slyness that really gets my attention.  Now that I am, to-the-bone-sure, that my authentic self is not the conditioned mind and its many streams of thought, I have a kind of distance or elevation, on the thoughts that pour into my mind when they do reappear.  This distance allows me to see things, about the stream of thinking that are quite revelatory and very arresting.  The most important by far is the slyness, born of ignorance, that I have already mentioned.

It is as though the thinking mind has a kind of survival at all cost quality that attempts to reacquire me, in ways that are so below the radar, that unconsciousness overtakes me before I even notice, that I am gone from the present moment.

The moment I notice that I am gone from the here and now, and have fallen once again down the rabbit hole, the stream of thought will change its direction or content.  In other words, if mundane and “mindless” thoughts will not keep me anchored in the past or the future, then the conditioning of my “thinking” mind will up the ante and begin pouring thoughts of a charged or emotional nature through my system.

They take hold of the ancient limbic system at the base of my brain…and, we are off to the races…

Once some cocktail mix of an adrenalized and blended thought/emotion stream is afoot, returning to silence requires focus and commitment.  I cannot begin to tell you how seductive the choices that the conditioned mind can make.  From absurdly unimportant nonsense, to a volley of life threatening story making, in the span of a single heartbeat. 

A good long while ago, sitting with my teacher in a Monday night workshop, a middle age man asked George if he had come to the Impersonal self all at once, in a blinding flash, a moment of pure illumination, or had it been somehow different for him?

There are stories going back as old as time, about the moment of illumination.  My personal favorite is Saul who was so transformed on the road to Damascus that he converted from the zealous and avenging prosecutor of the early Christians, into a follower of Jesus.  So complete was his conversion that he was re-christened Paul.  It is said, “The accounts of Paul's conversion experience are described as miraculous, supernatural, or otherwise revelatory in nature.”

My Teacher’s response to the question of the timing of his illumination was a simple one…”No,” …he said…”I had to grow into it.”

There were many things, too numerous to count, that were of great value in being his student, but this may have been the best of them all.

He never put forth the notion that some supernatural event was the explanation for his eternal stillness, for his overwhelming internal Silence, for his palpable dignity, nobility, and grace.  It was something he had “grown into”…

I like that best about him.  He grew one small measure at a time, into his ability to see the veil of illusion that is the story-making and conditioned mind.  I am sure his strides were longer by far than the ones I am capable of, but like me, he took one small step at a time – toward the depth understanding that what we say to ourselves, what we believe about life, how we use the gift of the capacity for thinking to trap ourselves in a lifetime of suffering, is a self created prison.

It seems a kind of jacked up system.  The very thinking that makes the “civilized” world possible must then be entirely released, if we are to save our world and ourselves.

I have heard a great many different spiritual teachers, George included, who describe it in this manner:  “the natural world, is below the thinking mind, while the awakened human being has risen above thinking”.

This is not a condition that the thinking mind can truly understand.  I have spent more of my time on this planet, “thinking” about these ideas than any other single activity.  The suffering of my early life was so desperate, so ugly, so painful and so demanding, that the desire for freedom was my singular and driving influence.  I have given everything to this desire, like an avowed lover I have given my all.  

Freedom from the horrible panic attacks that once governed my day to day existence, freedom from the fear that I could not hide from, freedom from the loneliness that kept me sleepless and pacing the floor night after night, freedom from the desire to kill myself to end the terror.

The desire to be free, however, could only take me so far.  It guided me to first one spiritual source, and then another.  It led me, finally, when I was mature enough, back to my Beloved Teacher, and demanded that I be faithful to his teaching, to the degree that I could not entertain other teachers or other forms of teaching.  It required that I remain chastened and pure in my allegiances, and in the ways and means by which I used my otherworldly capacity for directing my attention.  If my life’s habits have given me even one gift, it is the gift for directing my attention.

Now that I am capable of understanding that the “self”, cannot and does not awaken…but rather…we awaken from the self, I now discover within, the willingness to become free from the desire for freedom.

Once Silence begins slowly growing, or like Saul you are blinded by its sudden and overwhelming appearance, the kernel of willingness necessary to lean into the ability to give up the desire for freedom, begins to really take hold.  It is a very subtle thing, so quiet you have to listen with your ear to the ground, so delicate it is more the whiff of a fragrance rather than an outright smell, so restrained it can’t be touched without it dissolving like the gossamer wings of a moth, so fine that its presence soothes the fevered brow and heals the broken heart.

Giving up the desire for freedom means giving up the personal will, not an idea that any mind-generated “self” could even come to terms with…much less pursue.

Unless you have discovered the Impersonal Self, or are in the process of discovering it, then your life is guided by the personal will.  The personal will can best be defined by the, I-want-it-I-don’t-want-it, pendulum of personal desires.

Here is the tricky part, what we want or don’t want is entirely driven by unconscious patterns, born of the conditioned mind and its deep desires for imagined freedom.  Fixations that masquerade as deeply held dreams, or deep longings, for a different life than the one we believe we “should be” leading.

We blindly follow these impulses as though they are real, or have some form of intrinsic meaning.  We want to be great, or to have whatever good we imagine is out there, in some other place and in some other time, than the place and time we currently find ourselves in.  Often the drive is to find ourselves free of some imagined constraint, the bad marriage, the boring job, the unwanted weight, or the uncaring relationships…whether we are running toward some imagined goal, or running from some believed in constriction…the result is the same, we find ourselves in a form of hell that cannot be escaped from.

The name of that hell, is what I am calling, the “desire for freedom”.

And that is a dog that just won’t hunt…

The development of the desire for freedom is the very bedrock of the conditioned mind.  It is upon this desire and the attraction of personal preferences, that the “self” is born, and grows into the monster that now threatens the very survival of our species.

Conversely, the oh-so-delicate and very ethereal willingness to free oneself from the desire for freedom, is the always-open doorway out of the self-constructed prison of the thinking mind.

It is as though the heart of us, the soft and yielding true nature of the awakened being that we may return to, does not have a horse in the race to “save” us.

It seems an odd system to me… the dominant mind, the one that can prattle about nothing all the live long day, or so much worse, cause us to live the hell of a panic disordered life, has a grip of iron and the strength of legions.  While the eternally still, utterly relaxed, joyfully attentive, true nature… is fully content to merely watch what unfolds, ever yielding to the Presence of Now.

What a lark!!??!!  How amazing…

Adayre R. Miller

3/17/13

photo courtesy of flikr photo sharing and tim phillips photos, to see more of this artist’s work, please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyrephotographyaustralia/7140266451/