There are a couple of aspects that I first must come out to truly live a free life. After all is this not one of the things we strive for?

Even in resilience and doing hard things we are striving to be free. We do hard things as a paradox to be free of doing hard things.

Yet we will not do the hard things to become free until we have the awareness that doing the hard thing provides that freedom from hard things.

I have written about the “hungry ghost” an endless desire that is
never fulfilled. I often state that overcoming this “Hungry ghost” is
the first key.

I would step back a step further to say that awareness is the first key. To see reality as it is. To see that hard things brings freedom from hard things, to be aware of illusions that may appear to be freedoms but are only prisons.

This ties into the idea of love. The concept of love is “cheesy”
but it’s essential to defining reality, breaking illusions and bringing fourth awareness to what we really see.

Illusions

What are illusions that keep us imprisoned?

What are the things that take away freedoms, and appear to give freedoms?

Smoking a cigarette, may appear to be a good idea to de-stress, give a small buzz, and a sense of freedom as you step away from chaos to have a smoke.

To spend a weekend, drinking bottomless amounts of alcohol, while having fun.

Absolutely neglecting health and fitness for the freedom and pleasures of eating and feasting on whatever delights without caution.

Changing who we are by identity, by mask, by behavior, by desire to be noticed and recognized, and when we get attention we feel good about it.

Getting caught into a bad relationship through lust or desire for security, we compromise our self and freedoms to remain in what we justify as love.

Many illusions we also go to justify which makes it an illusion of freedom hard to detect. We remain in a jail cell, by addictions by unrestrained desired and justify their existence. The hardest part to break these illusions is to actually come to the awareness that they are not what they appear to be, nor what we so deeply desire to make it, through justifying it.

How do we identify it?

The love evaluation

When we look at the idea of love, absolute love provides freedom it does not take away, it does not shift change or manipulate. Sometime we consider the illusions love, when we go drinking all night or using alcohol to silence an internal wound, we might think of it as self love, neglecting health fitness, the lack of work appears to be self love, smoking and a bad relationship can be justified as “what you deserve.” in fact all of the above can be justified as “what you deserve.”

Then we must ask about each possible illusion:

Does it take away from my life short term or long term?

Does it shift me from my authentic self?

Does it manipulate or have a desire to change and control me?

If anything gets answered with a yes, it may be time to determine if this is to be categorized as a prison, with the illusion of freedom.

There was a saying that we cling onto rocks as tightly as possible, as we perceive the thing grasped to be of great value, grasping onto diamonds as if your life depended on it.

When we cling to things we love it is hard to let go, we are so attached to it, it is a part of us, we love it and it loves us.

Until you are asked to open your hand, only to find out you were only holding clumps of dirt. Then there is no need to cling so tightly. We can let it go.

So the first thing we need is to have awareness of these illusions of rare gems that we cling to and realize that they are merely only clumps of dirt that has been imprisoning our grasp and effort to hold them.

Love will never take away; it does not manipulate, and allows for true born given authenticity and self acceptance, never the opposite. So if love offers these things than love is freedom, yet we can’t have freedom until we have awareness of what illusions is not love but a prison.

Then we can go to what I often consider the first step, overcoming the “hungry ghost” breaking free from the prisons that hold us.

These prisons take many forms, so spend time asking the three questions in everything we do.

Does it take away?

Does it shift me from my authentic self?

Does it manipulate or have a desire to change and control me?

Then choose love and be free.