Inner Prisons, Outer Prisons—Liberating the Mind
October 6th, 2006
Freedom is the most precious thing to me.
I experience it as the garden in which love grows.
When I feel free I feel joyful,
and spontaneous feelings to reach out in caring, creative,
and sensitive ways to others without separation naturally arise.
Freedom has many dimensions.
There’s relative freedom and ultimate freedom;
inner freedom and outer freedom;
freedom to … freedom from …
And Natural Great Freedom—the innate freedom of our True Nature.
One who has freed his or her mind automatically helps others
to do the same, while one whose mind is enslaved tends to
enslave, restrict or deny the freedom of others.
To set the heart free is to release consciousness
from compulsive behaviors, attachments and fixations
that bring suffering—especially the deeply ingrained addiction
of identity as a separate self.
This distorted and distorting view ensnares the mind in the
poisonous prisons of greed, hatred, and delusion—
the very opposites of freedom.
Liberating myself from the inner prisons that create outer prisons
is the purpose of my life, and the work of liberating
my own mind is not separate from the work of liberating others
since we are so profoundly and intimately interconnected.
This is why freedom and responsibility are inseparable
and why true freedom is only found when we are free together.
by Michelle Levey
Hawaii & Seattle
Author, Consultant, and Educator
Website
Freedom and responsibility, yes, that’s great, a much needed approach to freedom in these uncertain days. To be truly free we must exercise a certain responsibility or risk losing that which we have gained.