Freedom

People claim to be free but what exactly are they free from?

 

I don't think "people" would claim to be free,if they really thought about it. "Freedom" is a notion much championed by "democracy",which is a lie. Under democracy we can vote for two shades of the same shit, "left" or "right".Today's society extracts a heavy toll on it's supplicants. To be free today you must either exist as an outsider,on the fringes of society,or be so rich you can do practically whatever you want.

You pose an interesting question. I will have to think about it some more. I hope this thread survives as it is an important question,as minds evolve even though one by one.

 

it's just a state of mind people have that finds them at peace. why would you want to take that away from them?
it could be anything. free from debt, negativity, a bad job, a bad relationship. they feel free and good on 'em.

 

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose"...Kris Kristoferson and Fred Foster


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXV_QjenbDw

 

Freedom comes with strength and strength comes with perception of the truth and its timely application. As Eric Hoffer says, ' The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it. '

Freedom as such can be political, spiritual, psychological and financial.

Strength politically or financially or psychologically speaking comes and goes due to the external variables which are not always under our control. However the internal state of mind can be brought to a state of bliss and peace regardless of external situations and circumstances. So perfection as an ideal may or may not be manifest in action or in practical matters, but it can be flawlessly manifested internally. And this is what Buddhahood or sagehood implies.

So I would say it is spiritual freedom that is substantial and worth pursuing and all others come in its wake.

 

I'm free! And I will never again not be free!

Ok there are laws of the land, but you pretty much do them anyway!

But I choose for me, I decide for me..

I'm free!

 

In politics freedom usually refers to freedom from oppression by tyranny. For example, the Tea Party repeatedly threatening to bankrupt the government is considered a form of tyranny by the minority. The republican party refusing to allow Obama to choose the next supreme court justice is considered tyranny rather than a functional democratic government. Congress suspending our constitutional rights indefinitely, gerrymandering the entire voting system, and authorizing the military to round up citizens like so many cattle are all considered forms of tyranny along the same lines as someone pointing a gun at your head and insisting you tell them you are excited to be free. In other words, freedom is what you don't have.

 

Not looking to take anything away from anyone if that's what you're implying. If it brings them a certain level of peace to believe they're free regardless of their captivity, then that's fine with me.

What is spiritual freedom? Freedom from spirituality? I can see that as even spirituality can be a sort of confinement. Like a vehicle it could only take you so far.

 

Freedom is an illusion. You'll always be bound by something, whether it be biology, physics, finances, slow bandwidth(lol), personal morality, etc..

​Nobody is free.

 

Freedom stems from strength and strength lies in the subtle really. Intellectual strength obviously takes precedence over physical strength and similarly the sage is superior to the merely intellectual.

Napoleon Bonaparte, considered as the greatest general ever by Wellington himself, remarked thus ,“There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.”

On the contrary, spirituality helps us to overcome the limitations and bondages of the body-mind-intellect complex and its everchanging sensory inputs, and identify instead with pure consciousness or Awareness ( I AM) which is of a permanent nature.

As Jed Mckenna puts it eloquently, "I Am is the only thing anyone has ever known or will ever know. Everything else, all religion and philosophy, is nothing more than dream interpretation. There is no other fact than I Am. The cogito is the seed of the thought that destroys the universe. Beyond the cogito, nothing is known. Beyond the cogito, nothing can be known. Except I Am, no one knows anything. No man or god can claim to know more. No God or array of gods can exist or be imagined that know more than this one thing: I Am."


I have explained this more in a thread of mine.

 

"Free is when you don't have to pay for nothing or do nothing" - Frank Zappa.

Frank had a point there from one perspective.

Anyway, as regards spiritual freedom: The spirit is actually always free. Bondage is a result of our not having the knowledge of spirit. Most of the time we're caught up in a web of mental and emotional reactions and constructs. To realize freedom is to transcend our normal awareness which is conditioned and by it's very nature partial.

So my brief answer would be that freedom is equivalent to spiritual gnosis. Other forms of 'freedom', political, financial, social etc are only partial freedoms.

 

How free one is spiritually is not primarily measured in how far this spirituality in all its freedom can take you. It is how free you spiritually are and feel. It doesn't have to take you to any higher level or something. That's a different aspect of spirituality as it seems to me.

Do you experience your constrainment to your body as a lack of freedom? I don't (as I'm not really convinced what the spirit is or can do without a body. If that would indeed be nothing we should value our time in it a lot more And also see it as the only and ultimate freedom we have while actually having and being aware of our spirit or just ourselves). Maybe it's a matter of perspective. Imagine a paralyzed person.

 

Yes a different aspect of spirituality. It seems you are talking about the feeling of spirituality as freeing. Where as i am talking about breaking free from that spiritual identity. Is this correct?

Nooo, to me the body is a gift. And i make the most out of using this beautiful gift.

 

I don't believe in spirituality. I don't believe spirits or souls or any of that bullshit.

The "spirit" or "soul" is supposedly what makes up our personality(our emotions, our empathy, our likes and dislikes, our loyalty, our sexual preference, etc.). From a logical standpoint, we KNOW that the "spirit", or "soul", basically amounts to nothing more than chemical reactions and electrical synapses in our brain and nervous system. When a person's brain activity ceases, everything that makes that person who they are, as an individual, completely ceases to exist.

In terms of an afterlife, the only afterlife I can imagine is the recycling of energy.

​I say, again...........freedom doesn't exist, spiritually or otherwise. Only the illusion of freedom exists.


​

 

"freedom's only privileged extended, unless enjoyed by one and all"
i do not believe any human alive knows the will of any god.
freedom is what each person robs from every other person when they choose to be inconsiderate of them and of all other things.
governments are not freedom. ideologies are not freedom.
and the ideological excuses made for aggressiveness, are tyranny by any other name.

democracy is not freedom. that is correct. but it is an opportunity, to hold hierarchies accountable.
this is almost a separate issue. as separate as anything ever is. which might not ever be entirely.

freedom is a good thing, but not one well or often understood.

once every possible result has been taken into consideration,
no further license need be required, to behave in any way which violates none.

that is freedom. any freedom which does not violate, rob, impinge upon, however you want to say it, the freedom of any self aware living thing else.
and self aware living thing includes nearly, if not all, mammals, reptiles, birds and fish.

it is only because of the unwillingness and/or inability of some individuals,
to take into consideration, the lives, well being, and freedom of others,
that regulation along with some means of enforcing it, becomes required.

thus consideration is the friend of freedom,
while the lack of it, is the friend of tyranny.

 

I can see your point. I'm quite similar as i often use terms like spirituality, spirits, and souls very loosely. Sometimes using these labels can help drive my point across. Or sometimes i just like playing around with different points of views.

 

presumably the tyranny of hierarchy.
which yes, productive social agreements are capable of being crafted without formality of hierarchy.
but it does take the self discipline of consideration to do so.
a universally, or near universally, mutual, consideration at that.
too often the excuse is made that this is beyond human capacity.
i personally call bullshit on the claim that it is.
rather people have deliberately seduced each other away from it,
it pursuit of illusory personal 'gain'.

 

Yeah, sometimes you have to use those terms, because most people(even many atheists) simply can't fathom the idea of NOT existing after death.

 

what i do believe, is that there is more to everything then what we see when we look at it.
there is nothing to stop this from including completely non-physical things.

i agree we do great harm by basing our lives upon baseless, shared assumptions about them, to ourselves and everyone else.
that doesn't mean we have to throw out with the bath water the possibility of their existence,
nor even their potential for friendship.

but it does mean, whatever such things might exist, owe nothing to what any one or any belief, claims to know about them.

consideration remains morality regardless of what unseen things might or might not exist.
why, because it is in everyone's own personal, as well as mutual interest.
why, because the degree or lack of it, creates the quality of the conditions we experience of living in this, or any world.

the universal wonder of strangeness, is something we all can, and most do, experience, regardless of what any of us do or do not believe.
i totally agree though, that there is no good thing that wishes to be feared,
nor is anything bad or wrong, simply for refusing to endorse or support, any and all hierarchy.

but the only way for regulation to not fill the void created by lack of the self dicipline to be considerate of all things,
is to poses and encourage everyone to practice it, to the greatest degree it is within our capacity, which is considerable, to do so.

 

This is what I believe. This is what makes ME feel connected. This is what I show atheists who want to feel connected to something bigger than themselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU