How to really be free
I’ve found the last year really difficult. I’m living in Italy and the restrictions on freedom became increasingly worse from August and haven’t improved 7 months later. See, I’m someone who has spent my life struggling with feeling dominated by authority. Whether that was my father, or teachers, then bosses and colleagues and then the government. In my high school yearbook I answered the question “What do you want when you grow up?” with “Freedom.” I knew I was someone who couldn’t tolerate authority but I thought it was just a matter of personality.
It wasn’t and isn’t. It’s one of the many gifts I’ve been given to help me move towards understanding how this reality really works.
It’s challenging to continue to remember that what you’re seeing outside yourself isn’t really real. Especially when it’s going on all around the world and it’s a huge effort to draw your attention away from it. At the same time it’s the best opportunity to master this once and for all.
I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last year trying to think about where I can go to be more free. I’ve researched a lot of countries, what they’re like and how I could conceivably get up and move there. I physically could, very easily, but something has been holding me back.
What’s holding me back is that I know how this 3D experience really works. I can get up and move somewhere else, but soon enough things would feel the same for me. I still wouldn’t feel free. Either the world circumstances would change once again or the country that I chose would change. It sounds like I have a lot of power doesn’t it? I do. So do you. It’s just not in the way you think.
I’ve tried a lot of things other than my go-to classic of escaping whatever I don’t like and looking for a new physical situation to make me feel better. Recently I’ve been passionately interested in the Freedom Truckers in Canada. This has meant I’ve found myself putting a lot of my hope in them. This is exactly the same as searching for a new country to live in. I’ve also wanted to be a whistle blower, trying to wake the people around me to the truth of this situation we find ourselves in. I have to laugh really at how ineffective that’s been. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to be a crusader for the right side of history. It’s such a futile waste of time.
We can’t solve problems with actions.
I know, I know, you have, in the past. Yeah, me too. Or it seemed like I did. I left Australia for Italy, solving the problems of my life with a relocation, and now look where I find myself. I left many jobs for other jobs, solving the problem of the first job by finding a new one. And then would find myself back in a version of the same theme about 6 months later on average. It’s been the same with relationships.
You simply cannot move on to what you prefer until you leave behind what you no longer want with complete detachment.
You can’t be free until you truly know and believe that where you are right now is all that you need to be free. I know my next perfect place to live will turn up when I’m feeling perfectly happy with where I am and completely detached from where I’m going, or not going, next. When I truly feel free to live my life exactly how I want to, because I know it and generate it inside of myself, then that’s when my outer world will reflect that back to me. As long as I stay attached to an outcome or circumstance to make me feel how I want to feel, instead of detaching my expectations from anything outside myself completely, then I cannot live in the world I desire. Neither can you.
Detachment or non-attachment means that there’s nothing outside of yourself that you have expectations about. There’s nothing you’re holding on to in order to make you feel a particular way. There’s no-one and no-thing that you’re relying on to improve your life. There’s no “I’ll be happy when…”
Everything you desire you first must generate inside of yourself. Your relationship with freedom is a relationship between you and you, not you and the world.
This is true for everything. It’s true about love, abundance, peace, joy, excitement and any other way you want to feel and experience.
Knowing it is one thing. Practicing it is something else.
So each day I take myself by the hand, and as I start to look at what the Canadian Truckers are up to, I gently tell myself that I can of course look at whatever I want, but is this really where I want to put my energy and focus? Maybe I start looking at that dreadful Trudeau or Ardern or Draghi and start to feel despondent. Then I remember I can turn it around with the feeling I’m generating and the focus I choose to apply.
Some days are better than others. Today started off less than ideal. I woke up feeling out of sorts and I didn’t do anything much to redirect my focus or choose a different way to feel. And of course the information pouring in for me from social media and even the street outside my door was of the doom and gloom of how not free we are. But then again, it gave me the inspiration to write this.
What’s important is that you know that in every moment everything is a reflection of your feeling and belief state. There is nothing else. And you can turn anything around in any moment by changing your focus, choosing a different way to feel and detaching from the outcome. This last one comes naturally after a few days, once you’re consistently doing the first two.
You’re free when you know deeply that you’re free.
