Are you free?
What do you mean by "YOU"?
If by "YOU" you mean the individual, the person, the separate entity, the one who began on such and such day and time, the seeker - then the answer is NO - because this "YOU" is itself the cage, the prison. The "Individual-You-Take-Yourself-To-Be" IS the bondage, so how can that "individual" BECOME free?
If by "YOU" you mean the whole itself, what we call the "Universe", the totality of appearance, Brahman, the Absolute - then the answer is NO - because this "YOU" was never bound, was never in need of BECOMING anything, of getting anywhere, of gaining anything. This "YOU" is not in need of freedom, even when it is known in expression, as this moment, as this sky, these clouds, this birdsong, this painful leg, this thought, this pang of hunger, this gust of breeze.
Therefore Freedom was never necessary because what you are was never bound. The one who becomes Free was just a convention, a figure of speech, a way of expressing. The one who was to BECOME Free never actually existed. Freedom may then be said to be freedom from the illusion of the one who becomes free.
Freedom then wasn't something achieved but the disappearance of ignorance of what you really are.
Writings on Nonduality and Vedanta from Randall Friend
5 comments:
"The one who was to BECOME Free never actually existed."
What???? Seriously??? Really??? Those are the most common questions I have NOW! Isn't that funny? Isn't it just HILARIOUS? After all this time, and that was all there was to it.
You tried to tell me all along, too. Such an idiot I was. Thanks, Randall, for all the patience. Maybe one day... hot brown!
Mike,
We might say - what-IS patterned that way, that is all. Now it's patterning differently. In the end it's still the same essence, different pattern.
What IS, IS. Understanding or not.
love
randall
Ultimately, self-realization is just more thought. It can never quite capture the absolute truth - yet like the bottom of the bucket which breaks away and the water falls out - the so-called person or entity you took yourself to be no longer holds water... it is realized to be only a figure of speech, a way to communicate, a useful concept yet not an actual "thing".
Like the mirage which was once thought to be water, the person is no longer believed in. It never existed. It was only a concept. That habitual and unconscious separate-self-reference no longer arises, naturally. Why would it?
And 99% of thoughts are self-reference.
"U"niverse
You are the "U"niverse.
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