Freedom, Honesty, and the Tightrope of Balance
Libertad, honestidad y la cuerda floja del equilibrio
A student describes a growing sense of freedom as old conditioning falls away, and asks the teacher to speak more broadly about what freedom really means in this context.
Freedom, Honesty, and the Tightrope of Balance
A student describes a growing sense of freedom as old conditioning falls away, and asks the teacher to speak more broadly about what freedom really means in this context.
It feels like this is where the gold is. The stuff I was conditioned to run away from, to get a handle on, just letting it bubble up, letting it be as juicy as it is. The way you talked about it was so expansive. You used the word "freedom" a few times, and that's the word that's been coming up for me over the last few months. They seem to be connected. This allowing, all the taboos, all the forbidden stuff, just letting it get out of control. Good. Bring it on. There's something so expansive in it. And as you say, there's no effort. It's just noticing. It just happens to be there.
I haven't really reflected that much on the word freedom. I just notice that I feel the freedom, and I feel a sense of empowerment. They come together very strongly. Part of it is what I was talking about: the more the conditioning falls away, the more freedom I feel. There's something there, but I'd love to hear you say more about freedom, how you see it, what it means in this context.
My teacher used to say: if you know what it is, it's not freedom. If you think you know it, you don't. I'll start with that, because it's very tricky. The mind is very tricky. It's going to be really good at telling the story we want to hear, and then we'll buy into it and think we know. We'll rationalize something as honorable because we always want to do the right thing. We want to be good, we want to do the right thing.
The mind's rationalizations
It's very easy to fall into rationalization, and this happens with anything. It could happen with drinking coffee: we can tell ourselves a story, "Oh, right now is a good time to have a coffee because of this and that," and maybe it wasn't the right time. Maybe it's caffeine addiction speaking. But the rationalization will construct a story where we're fooling ourselves. We are using the mind to tell ourselves a convincing narrative so that we can buy into an action. That, let's call it, is not free. It is conditioned, whether through substance or through habit. It's all the same kind of thing.
You spoke about allowing, and that rings true to me. It's close to what we're talking about with freedom. But it depends on whether you then mean allowing certain behaviors.
No, no. My point was: jumping in until it's over my head and I'm drowning in it. That's what I mean. It's out of my control. All the stuff where I had all my ducks lined up, "this is what I'm allowed to do, this is what I'm not," just let it all go. Bring it on. That's the feeling I have. But again, it feels very personal, and I don't want to stay with this personal interpretation. I want to hear you speak in a more expansive way. I know that what I'm talking about is very authentic, but it's also very limited.
The tightrope of balance
You're describing certain barriers of control and repression opening up, and that's a good thing. But it can open to the opposite extreme as well. Another metaphor my teacher used a lot, and this is all working with the personal stuff, is the tightrope. If you're trying to walk on a tightrope with a lot of effort and intention, you fall. You cross by being perpetually in a state of balance and loss of balance, constantly adjusting. He would say, "I lean to one side, or I lean to the other."
You'll see this in Buddhism: the middle way, with the eightfold path. Before you can be open to seeing the truth, you have to work on all these human qualities: patience, containing emotions, that kind of thing.
So, "I lean to one side, I lean to the other" means: I've been constantly, for all my life, in this state of control and repression, and now that's opening up, but I could start swinging the other way. The question is how to maintain that balance. At first, when we are so conditioned in one direction, the opposite feels incredibly free. Suddenly it's like, "I'm free to move to the other end." And it is a kind of initial movement towards freedom.
But freedom, in this metaphor, is the ability to balance without fixed conditions, because the moment itself is guiding the response. The moment is saying, "Oh, I'm falling this way." On a tightrope it's easy to know when you're falling, but in life you can tell yourself the story that you're not falling when you are. So what is it that recognizes the truth? That cannot be pointed to. It cannot be put into a book. It cannot be put into rules, because then it becomes one fixed position or another. Freedom is that which can't be described or pointed to. But this serves as a metaphor.
Suppression versus repression
Another thing my teacher would say is: find the point where control and loss of control meet. It's again this balance. Right now, you're discovering an opening in deep layers of control and repression. That is a great thing, like something finally cracking open. But now it's a journey of sitting with what's coming up and also learning to suppress rather than repress. Suppression is basically being present with something, feeling it, holding it, and not acting on it or from it. Repression is when you don't feel it anymore, when it's no longer in your awareness, forgotten, as if it doesn't exist.
For example, I could be in a lot of pain and I want to go and, I don't know, drink coffee because it takes my pain away. In that moment, I sit with that pain instead. But this is an example, not a rule to always follow. My point is to listen and tune in. You're going to be able to see the rationalizations, because they are basically you trying to fool yourself. If you really want to know, you'll know that you're doing it.
For instance, if I'm going to act and do something that's going to take a discomfort, fear, or pain away, I can look at what the reasons are. What's the motive? Is it an escape coming through the back door with an honorable script of why this is the right thing to do? Then it's a form of avoidance, and I'm not really sitting with it. But again, this could become so extreme that it turns into a form of repression in a different way, because one could develop extreme stoicism around being in pain and struggle. That's conditioning at the other end. Sometimes it's not such a bad idea to just grab a coffee.
Freedom and honesty
What I'm getting now is that freedom has everything to do with honesty. They're inextricable. I can't be free without being honest. And also, you keep coming back to "there's no rule," and that itself is the freedom. Knowing that there's no rule. Freedom is only now.
And the responsibility.
Responsibility, honesty, and realizing there's no map. It's interesting how they all converge. The freer I feel, the more I'm forced to be honest, and the more honest I am, the more free I can become. It's fascinating.
I really wanted to hear from someone else. It's good to be able to bounce this off of you, because I don't want to be in a rut. I don't want to give it form. When I hear you, my personal experience is revealed as just a manifestation, but I shouldn't make that into a god. It's just what's manifesting right here, right now. Who knows what it will look like in another minute.
The personal work you're doing, at the level of personal work you're doing, it sounds like there's been a shift where some deep fears and pains are opening up, and you're meeting that. That's a really good thing. It is a huge step into freedom. Ultimately, one can realize freedom at the absolute level, but at the human level is where it really starts to make a difference, when that realization is integrated as we humans move and act and flow in complete harmony with that freedom.
The trap of arrival
It's so easy. I keep hearing you and then I keep seeing these human tendencies. I had this image of, "Ah, then there's an arrival." It's just the tendency. And it's so great, because when I hear you, I can see the tendency for what it is. Now I'm free. But who's free? What? There's nobody. Every time, it's wonderful to just notice. And again, as you were saying before, there's no effort. There's just noticing. There's nothing to do about it.
You're noticing the tricky mind. That's your mind, but your mind is not separate from all minds. You can start to notice the way you personally like to fool yourself. Then you can start to see the collective mechanisms that also operate in you and your mind, at a more archetypal level. As you start to see through the more personal patterns, you begin to notice, "Oh, this is something more collective." But the first thing is to look at one's own structures and mechanisms and the way we fool ourselves.
For me personally, this was really strong, and I think a lot of what you say about yourself is a little similar. For me, it was a lot about knowing. A lot of anxiety about knowing. From a very young age, I had my head in books about science, wanting to know how things are, wanting to be the one who knew. That's been something very tricky, because the mind will say, "Yeah, this is the truth, here you go, here's your carrot," and it's very tempting to go, "Oh yeah, I know the truth."
"I got it" is always a thought
It's so interesting to hear you. I'm getting another little nuance as you speak. It's so great to hear you because you can be so precise sometimes, and you can parse things for me in a very meaningful way. But that's not what it's all about. That's a tool, but that's not why you're helpful. So again, it's one of those little traps. I can relate to what you were just saying, because there's this satisfaction of "I got it, I figured it out." But there's no arriving.
The only "got it" you can get is a thought. The only thing you can say "I got it" about is a thought. And so that's not it.
If I got it, I don't get it.
Exactly. My teacher was a master of this. He said that the only true teaching is the first line of the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that is spoken is not the true Tao." The moment something points to it, it's not the true thing, because the "it" that you can get is a thought. It's only mind that can go, "I got this, I got that." It's a belief.
It's incredible how powerful that impulse is, that urge to own it, to finally know. Very, very powerful.
The guardians at the gate
If you keep noticing that tendency, remember it's happening for a reason. In a sense, there's an escaping from an experience that is uncomfortable. Ultimately, it's not knowing that we're escaping from, but the uncertainty of mystery, the reality that existence is outside of thought. There is a realm where knowing isn't the mental knowing we're talking about. You can use the word "knowing" to point to the knowing of our true nature experientially; that's where words fail. But the knowing we're discussing here is mental knowing, and there is a realm where that simply doesn't have room or existence.
That's what we're trying to recognize, because it's present right now. Meditation is a way to glimpse it. People access it through drugs, or high-intensity experiences, or very developed hobbies. People start to tune into that "beyond mind." But it's not something you achieve. It's something where you basically create a quietness in the mind and see what's already there. The mind is inside of that not-knowing. The mind is inside of that silence.
There are gates, and there are guardians of those gates. The guardians are our fears and our pains. By being able to sit with our fears, our pains, our discomforts (and I use the words "fear" and "pain" broadly to mean anything we don't want to experience, because shame is a form of pain, a form of fear; you can get into all the nooks and crannies, but it comes down to fear and pain), those guardians are what we don't want to sit with.
You'll see this in religions, in contemporary meditation practices. Doing twelve days of vipassana: what's that about? It's to sit with what's happening, sit with what you're feeling, sit with your crazy mind. There are different strategies and techniques. I did a little bit of that in the meditation today: bring you straight into what you don't want to sit with right now, and sit with it. Practice that. But also, simultaneously, recognize that it's not going to get you anywhere. There's nowhere to go. It's already here. In that kind of tension, something can start to move, or you can see through it. Then freedom is not a thing, or the opposite thing, or one thing or another.
One last thing. Specifically when you notice your mind going, "Oh, I got it, I know it," let a little note go off: "Ah, here I am again." But don't stop there. Now ask: what is going on? What am I feeling? Because the "got it" is wrapping things up and moving you away from that.