Bharat S. M. Karavadra

Freedom…

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

…is one of the greatest gifts you can give or receive.

If you genuinely give freedom to someone then you have accepted that them being with you and your reality (your family, friends, clients, employers, suppliers, staff, beliefs, desires, material assets, etc) is not enough for them, perhaps because they are not happy in your reality. Therefore by giving someone freedom, you are giving them an opportunity to be in or create the reality in which they can find their happiness. Do not however concern yourself with what someone does with the freedom you give unless it has direct consequences on your life and with even that possibility in mind simply get on with  life.

If you genuinely wanted, have accepted, and especially received freedom from someone or a situation, then simply get on with your heart’s desires – a whole new reality has been opened to you. Be excited about the potential you have been given, but do not concern yourself with the person or situation you have been freed from (because you wanted freedom from it) and simply get on with life.

Even though I have stated that you can give and receive freedom, you can only actually give it but I mentioned receiving freedom above to quickly summarise the perspectives of the giving and receiving.

You cannot actually acquire freedom from anyone or anything because freedom is something that you have within you and if you have it you can only give it and therefore have no need to receive or want it. I hope you get that – it’s a fundamental truth.

So why have I mentioned acquiring and receiving freedom, if I say that you can only give it?

Well, you may think at certain moments in life that you want freedom and in the simplest terms, at those moments, you you actually want freedom from the thoughts and feelings you are having with people and situations, and not freedom from the actual people or situations. Let me demonstrate:

If you find yourself not having positive thoughts and feelings in certain situations (e.g. a study course, a job, a relationship, a party, etc) something in you at some point will say something like “I need to get away from here” or “there is something better than this” and you can interpret these as feelings or thoughts as effectively wanting freedom from the people or situation.

In this scenario it is you who has accepted that you need freedom and it is you who is giving freedom to yourself– you are not receiving it from anyone or anything outside of you. That’s another fundamental truth and I hope you get that.

So why do you still find yourself asking for freedom from people or situations that you find yourself in?

It’s because you have admitted somewhere deep inside yourself that you’ve made a mistake. Please do not take the word mistake literally as it is simply a metaphor for another fundamental truth.

The mistake is in your beliefs and expectations and the people and situations you want freedom from. Your beliefs and expectations simply are not coherent (do not fit with) the people and situations. Let me demonstrate:

If you take up a job with beliefs and expectations and they are not met within that job, the more time that passes, the more your thoughts and feelings will say “I need to get out of here” or “I am not enjoying this” and at some point you may resign from the job or, if you stay, find yourself not performing as per the requirements of the job and someone will notice this and raise the issue with you.

A job is effectively a relationship with an organisation and hence the same concept applies to any relationship whether it be with family, friends, a career, a course, an interest, etc.

When you want freedom there is effectively no relationship between your beliefs and expectations, and the people and situations you want freedom from, and because the beliefs and expectations are in you, it is only you who can give yourself freedom so that perhaps your beliefs and expectations can be met.

Getting beliefs and expectations met is a huge topic itself and I may write about this at some point but in brief your beliefs and expectations will sometimes be met and sometimes not be met. However, even when they are met sometimes you will find yourself not enjoying yourself and the solution is simply to remove the beliefs and expectations that do not serve you.

Getting back to the topic of freedom, the summary is that freedom can only be given by your self to your self. However some people still believe that thay have to be given freedom. Why is this? I’ll use the scenario of a  job to demonstrate why:

You may find yourself not enjoying your job and as I said before it is because of your beliefs and expectations. However, other beliefs (not the ones why you took on or wanted the job) may stop you from doing something about your lack of enjoyment and negative thoughts and feelings. For example, a senior member of your family who you respect may have helped you get the job as they knew a manager or director of the company in which you took the job. You may have got the job on the senior member’s recommendation because you believe they are a trusted person.

You may then find yourself believing that you may get told off at worst, or at best, get questioned about why you are not enjoying the job and why you are not “performing” and why you seem “down” at times.

You may also make up a story in your mind about the outcome of being questioned and by doing this you have effectively created another belief within you.

Something in you wants freedom from the job and something in you is stopping you from giving yourself freedom from the job. The “somethings” are now one something which is effectively conflicting a combination of beliefs and expectations. In such a scenario you will find yourself going into a downward/inward/negative spiral and life will not be fun for you and others around you.

However, in this scenario the need for freedom exists and, on a grander universal scale, freedom will always exist. Because freedom needs to exist and you are not giving it to yourself and someone who is aware enough will within themselves notice that you are not happy because freedom is being suppressed, but they will not always know that you actually want freedom

 As I said, you can only give yourself freedom, and in this scenario of a job the only way you will give yourself freedom is by resigning your position or being asked to leave. You may however think that being asked to leave is not you giving yourself freedom, but it is if you move on peacefully, however if you put up a “fight” then you still have not given yourself freedom, and it due to the conflicting beliefs in yourself.

For those of you who have read the original article you will know that I will have expanded on it but something still tells me I need to expand on this 0ne.

I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.