Knowing Freedom from Strategies About Freedom
Conocer la libertad frente a las estrategias sobre la libertad
A question about what it means to "know" what will bring freedom, and how that very knowing can become a strategy of avoidance.
Knowing Freedom from Strategies About Freedom
A question about what it means to "know" what will bring freedom, and how that very knowing can become a strategy of avoidance.
Earlier you were saying something about how, if we think we know what will bring us freedom, then it's not that. At least, that's what I remember. Would you be able to explain that a little bit?
What I'm referring to as "knowing" is when there is a sense of a strategy or a plan that starts to become a reality of "this is the way." That is very different from something that is an exploration, where there's curiosity and excitement.
When strategy replaces exploration
When it becomes a strategy, which is what very easily happens, it starts to become in service of avoidance. It becomes a way to not relate to what's happening now. I say it like that because it is so much more likely, given how we are and how our minds work, that we will end up in strategies of avoidance. That's why it's important to have a sense that the feared word, the feared direction, is more likely to be the way toward what we want, toward where freedom is.
So if I'm hearing you correctly, having a sense that I know what will bring me freedom is actually an avoidance strategy: "It's not here, it's not this, I have to find it somewhere else." And therefore I will only know what freedom is once I feel it. There is no way of being like, "Oh, this will do it, this will do it." Only once you feel it, then you know you got it. Is that what you meant?
Yes, but I will say: once you recognize it, because it's not a feeling. In fact, that again becomes the strategy: to have a certain kind of feeling that we identify as the right one or the positive one, and then to create strategies for preserving or creating that feeling more often. That becomes the trap, which is not freedom.
Freedom is not a feeling
And this is again something where, if you believe what I'm going to say, that's not it. But if you recognize something that can be put in words, it would be, for example: freedom is only now, and it's always present. Now, that could become a belief. But it's a way to point to it, in the sense that it will help undermine all the false beliefs and strategies about freedom.
I'm not talking about the freedom of doing something or the ability to experience something. That's not the kind of freedom I'm talking about. It's beyond experience.
This helps a little bit, but I might need to just spend some time with it to become clear. I would love to hear what else you have to share.
That which knows experience
What I'm pointing to does not depend on, nor is it conditioned by, any experience, any place to get to, any state of mind, or any feeling. It's often pointed to in the form of "that which knows experience," that which knows a feeling, that which knows a state, that which knows a thought.
It's very elusive, because we try to know it through thinking and understanding. But if you look at that: even now, with your eyes open, what you're seeing is known by something. You could say, "Well, yes, it's me." But what you're referring to when you say "I" is known by something as well. So it's not you.
The belief that we are the body
That's a really hard belief to question, because we feel completely dependent on this body and mind. We feel that what we are emerges from what the body and mind is. But that's a belief. A lot of dialogue about it might help. A lot of contemplating on it might help. Because that belief system is very, very tough to see through: especially the sense that what we are depends on the body, that we are inside the body, that we came into existence with the body, and that we will leave existence when the body leaves existence.