Gary Hipworth's Blog

Is freedom about human rights?

For example, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from violence, freedom to elect your government.

I would call these freedoms various forms of external freedom, and they are certainly to be valued but for me this is not the best kind of freedom.

What about the freedom of choice?

I can choose between various alternatives or I can choose not to choose anything. But if I look more closely at how I make my choices I discover that I have weighed up all the pros and cons of the different alternatives and this information has come from my memory bank and past experience. I rarely make a choice based on having no knowledge or past experience of my options as this would seem to be too risky and at best foolhardy. For me once again this kind of freedom is an improvement because it comes from within me but it is still tied to my previous conditioning, that is, to the past. I am like a goat on a lead, but tied to a memory tree.

What about my attitude?

It is not what happens to you that counts. It is how you react to what happens to you, especially when you have unfortunate surprises. But even this kind of freedom is still a reaction.

The prefix re in react gives the game away. Re literally means to return to a previous state, go back, do it again etc. Surely this is only repeating the past and you are once again like a goat tethered to a short lead.

Is there a state of freedom that has no attachment to anything, that is free of all illusions, free of time and space, free of language and words?

If there was such a state then this would be real freedom.

But my thinking, noisy mind would have to be quiet for this state to be.

This silent consciousness was our birthright before social conditioning and the ‘me’ was invented by man for improved group communication and physical survival.

Doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me.

But then who said life was fair?

Please Life give me back my free innocent consciousness!

Sorry my dear friend, it was never your consciousness in the first place.

That’s why it was free.

You are the problem.

Let go of yourself…and there is no how.