The Illusion of Freedom

I have always wanted to escape. To break free. There has always been something in me that is obsessed with freedom - certain I don’t have it. For years I wrote about being trapped inside a prison. A prison not only in my mind, a prison of my own mind. 

I would write about how painful it is. How, if I could just get out I could be everything I want, have everything I want. But how do it get out? It would frustrate me endlessly. I would cry and scream. Hit myself over the head. Begging. Pleading with myself. Just let me out. 

Sounds like insanity to me now. And it is. I was never trapped. Not by anything other than the belief that I was trapped. That belief was fuelled by fear. Fear of the unknown. Our brains need familiarity to feel safe, but our hearts crave joy. Our hearts want to connect, to surrender in peace. To love. But if this doesn’t feel safe, the brain fights. 

It will keep us in a state of psychological suffering, even physical danger, if that is what it knows. The mind hates change. Change is all life is. We are in constant flux, ever evolving. As a species and as individuals. Are we able to balance this? Maybe, but the first stage in any conscious progression, is understanding. 

Understanding why we feel comfortable in where we are. Why do we feel comfortable working jobs we hate? Why do we feel so uncomfortable taking rest? How do we manage to betray our hearts wishes everyday and filling our time with ‘shoulds’? 

We are trained to believe certain things - even if it hurts

From the moment we are born we are being fed information. Some of this information is vital to our survival, learning to eat, walk etc. Some is crucial for our development, acquiring language skills, emotional recognition etc. But all of these things are also learned within a framework of certain contexts. For instance, if we grow up in a household where anger is repressed and then exposed through violent outbursts which are given no explanation or even acknowledgement after the fact, we may grow up believing this sort of behaviour is normal, expected and the absence of it would feel strange, and strange equals unsafe. 

Every single thing about you has either been programmed through your DNA or through whatever you’ve been exposed to in your external world. Every choice you make is based on this programming. Even what we perceive as conscious choices, are being influenced by the subconscious mind. 

Seems pretty doom and gloom. If I left it there it sends a ‘throw in the towel’ message, but it doesn’t end there. It is important to see yourself this way because it can be the beginning of understanding. Understanding how our brains are working and how we live with that. I am not an expert on the brain, I read and try to keep up with latest findings and theories but even the worlds best scientists and leading experts aren’t 100% sure on how the brain works and what’s it doing, we are figuring these things out as we go. 

Learning our patterns 

Brains love patterns. We seek them out, build them, even invent them where there aren’t any. These patterns govern our lives, but more than - we turn them into stories. Stories about who we are, why we are and how we got that way. Stories about what we want, and what we think we need to be happy.

 Have you ever asked yourself: Why do I want what I want? 
Where did that want come from? Is it really mine?

Lets say you really want to buy a house. Simple enough. But then you realise: your job, the savings plan, your whole routine - they all revolve around that goal. So you stop and ask yourself, why the house? 

Maybe you come up with answers like:

“I don’t want to rent forever — that’s not an investment.”
“I’d feel safer owning my own place.”
“It’s what responsible adults do.”

These are all valid reasons, but dig a little deeper:
Why does renting feel unsafe?
Why does owning make you feel more secure?
Who told you safety come from bricks and deeds?

Freedom at its best - choosing our programs 

This is why learning our patterns is so important - because when you start tracing your behaviour back to your beliefs, you start uncovering the foundations do those beliefs, the underlying code in the program. The story behind the story. Once we can see, we can ask: Is this mine? Do I want to keep it?

This is as close to freedom as I believe we can get. To face our stories and have a shot at influencing them based on what makes us come alive, on what fills us with joy. We can’t be free of stories - I have not yet seen a case of the human condition that is free of going through life without a story - but we can pick them instead of being enslaved to the conditioning we receive in a system that isn’t built with our best interests in mind. 

I challenge you to do this in your own life. Look at your goals - even if you think you don’t really have any goals there are things you are working on - are they actually your goals? What does working on them feel like to you? Get writing about it, talk about it, sit in front of the mirror and literally confront yourself with questions you’ve maybe thought to ask. 

Humans lie. White lies, grey lies dark lies. We lie. And there is no one in the world we lie to more than ourselves. Get comfortable asking yourself uncomfortable questions. Get comfortable being open minded enough to receive unportable answers. 

May you buy the house anyway - but maybe now the drive is different. Because now the story is yours, and now you turn the pages with curiosity - excitedly, enjoying every twist and turn instead of frantically flipping through just ticking things off trying to get to the end.