I don’t even know how to start this piece. I’m savvy enough to know that I am entering an area that is totally slippery with paradox, where the ground under my feet is not the ground under my feet. I am reasonably certain that I am going to be broken open, I hope I can convey something of this experience, as I explore the mixed and contradictory feelings which accompany this look at freedom. You see I have the powerful notion that personal freedom is an inside job, and I tend to believe that we all need help. There is a contradiction here that makes it difficult for me to begin.
OK, to be upfront, I need help. I’m hoping you have thought of some of this stuff, or will think about it, and share with me what you think. You just might hold the key that can help me find the way through this dilemma.
You see I am stopped, stymied by the twin realizations that follow. I cannot be free as long as another is not free, and I cannot free anyone. What good is it to say that freedom is ultimately an inside job, which I believe, if it is also true that freedom is dependent upon what I cannot effect? Others determine their freedom, or do they? I determine mine, or do I? You see, despite my passionate interest in freedom, I really have no answers. I am just confused.
I think there is a difficult paradox here. To the extent I am connected, and I know I am, it is true that my freedom depends upon the freedom of others. To the extent that I am a separate unique being, and I know I am, then my freedom depends upon my choices. The problem is that both, my separateness and my connection, are true, and together they leave me no clear path of action. I want to be free, and that depends upon others, which I cannot free. Have I gone as far as I can; would it be wise, or unwise, to focus upon others? I want others to be free, but their freedom depends upon my freedom, which I am responsible for and must procure alone. Yet I know that I can only go so far alone.
Recently a friend confronted me about the amount of urgency that I inject into my writing. He rightly points out how perfect everything seems to be right now. Things seem to unfold as they must. And adding the pressure for change only seems to create resistance. His perspective, which I share, is that the necessary changes are underway. Perfection seems to be perfecting itself.
Still I find myself banging around inside the sense that things could be improved. I don’t like, and don’t want my daughter to grow up with, the sense that we are slowly extinguishing the chances for complex life, including ourselves, surviving on this magnificent planet. My heart is broken by what I see and experience. It doesn’t feel right to not try to do something about it. Am I not part of Perfection trying to perfect itself? I believe I am, but I admit that the sense of urgency I feel, probably a function of my breaking heart, is truly counterproductive. This time of emergency, when so much is at stake, confounds me.
I think I know this much. Some part of this is an inside job. I am responsible for lining up the parts of me, and giving myself what I need to operate in an integrated and self-chosen fashion. This is what only I can do. I can be a distinct part of the whole. I can be a microcosm of the whole, a kind of mini-wholeness, which increases the integrity of the already integrous whole.
Being an aspect of this larger integrity puts me in an inherently vulnerable position however. I feel the paroxysms of Perfection perfecting itself. This occurs as longing, desire and grief. I suffer when I am not me, when I fail to be true, when I fail to hold onto myself, when I fail to do the real inside job and when I fail to open. I am learning that I also suffer when I do open, sometimes joyously, when Perfection discovers some new way of perfecting Itself.
As I have been thinking about this dilemma, as I have been steeping in the paradox of freedom, I have come to realize that it cannot be just an inside job. I may like emphasizing the internal dimension of the freedom movement, because of my own sense that the interior aspect of life is largely ignored by this culture, but I know that really it is an inside/outside job. A truer apprehension of the paradox of freedom is that both dimensions are important. OK, so I live largely in a world that seems to adhere alone to the side of the paradox that holds freedom as some thing which external conditions, if they are just right, will insure. I know that is only half the truth. And I would be wrong if I extolled, alone, the virtues of an inner life. The truth is, I can go only so far without them both.
I want to make a difference. That’s probably an ego-desire. But, I do honestly want to make a difference. I don’t think that is strictly ego-concern, I think the better part of me has that concern too. Maybe, it is not in my hands. Maybe, just by the fact of my existence, I do make a difference. Maybe, it’s not up to me at all. Can I rest in that awareness? Yes, and not quite. It is hard to hold on, to know what to do, how to be, in the midst of this heart-breaking and magnificent experience.
Life asks much of us, of me. I am learning that just following my own tendencies (in this case considering freedom to be strictly an inside job) isn’t enough. I may be enormously satisfied, to find my tendency mirrored by others, but I am not contributing to anybody’s freedom (my own especially), if I am not exploring getting involved with the freedom of others, as much as I am involved with what I consider my own.
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