Buddha instructed his disciples to “be a lamp unto yourself,” and to “work out your own liberation with diligence. Likewise, Jesus taught that the truth he was teaching would make us free. But how do we get our souls free in a time such as this? It seems to me freedom must be born at different levels:
First, we must get free of what other people think of us.In other words, we must learn the difference between our character, and our reputation. It is a very helpless feeling when someone calls us names or attacks our reputation.
It is empowering to identify ourselves with what we can control (our character) and detach from the mirages other people project upon us. Ironically, to be to be the servant of all requires enormous independence. To serve our highest value we must disregard the barking of disingenuous critics.
Then, we must separate the idea of what happens to us from who we are. This next step can be hard because it seems logical to be happy when good things happen and to be sad when bad things happen. Identifying what is happening to us is understandable, but is a foundation of sand. Not identifying with circumstances like success or failure brings tremendous stability into our lives.
Perhaps the most challenging level of liberation is getting free from the tyranny of our hopes and fears. Life teaches us that our hopes do not necessarily lead to happiness, nor does getting what we fear necessarily lead unhappiness. Like a loving parent listens to the hopes and fears of a frightened child so must we learn to listen to our own emotions with transformative compassion.
It is love that transforms our fear into courage, our selfishness into justice, our desire into discipline and our confusion into wisdom.
Life teach us that what we want does not necessarily make us happy and what we fear does not necessarily make us unhappy. We live on a kind of roulette wheel of fate so it does not make sense to stake our peace of mind on any one spin of the wheel.
Is there is a freedom that the world does not give and cannot take away? To find such freedom we must stop identifying with our reputation, with our fate and with what we imagine would make us happy or sad. Freedom means being who we really are.