Enlightenment is Spiritual Freedom
what is Spiritual Freedom?

It might very well be an objectionable fact to our personal-self but the Truth is Life is Impersonal. Life (the Impersonal Life-Force) has called us here and Life will call us away, not by our personal wishes or desires but by Life’s Eternal Power - the Impersonal Spirit. Life is Spirit and Spirit is best physically demonstrated by Nature, a magnificent web of inter-impersonal connectedness, apart from one species - the human family.

We have claimed arrogant dominion, and therefore exclusive rights, over all merely on the basis of our conceited self-centredness. Our personalised God (the product of our personal-consciousness) told us at some time, somewhere that we are the chosen ones. Since then, whenever that was (the places and dates and names of individuals who were the first and only true recipients of God’s words are still in dispute) the human family hasn’t been getting on too well.

Personal-consciousness, you see, tends to break everything down into personally separate and manageable chunks. So now, thanks to our obsessive personal-consciousness rather than Nature Consciousness (impersonal Consciousness), we are no longer One human family but have split further into separate identities.
Devised by egoic or personal-consciousness, these distinctions were for the purpose of supporting personal-consciousness.

Well, where does this persistent tendency of humans come from to assume that we are a special species, the personal species of a God that set us apart from the One Spirit Nature of all existence? We humans have set ourselves apart from the Spiritual Reality on the basis of a chronic tendency to perceive everything in a personal way. So much so that our so-called sacred ideologies inevitably put us centre stage and often suggest the world was made for us to do as we please in.

Oh, and of course, from time to time thank that God profusely for all the goodies we apparently deserve and then pray for more. Or, conversely, God forbid – to hell with God – if things do not work out in our favour.

Yes, the body is for now your personal abode, that is not in dispute. However, the Spirit that Lives the body is Impersonal. The Spirit is Senior, Eternal, Real. (It is unchangeable. Only Its forms are changeable). However, do we relate to body or Spirit as our-self? Which one do we identify with to inform us, guide us, support and encourage us? I am not suggesting for a moment that the body is not some aspect of You but the Greater aspect of You is Spirit, the Real Identity of You is The Great Unconditional Spirit. Which of these two dimensions has the greater influence relative to our inter-relatedness to ourselves, others and world?

When we fundamentally identify ourselves as the body, we contract or shrink the Great Free Spirit that Lives the body and all down to a confined and limited self-consciousness - a kind of personal Spirit. We live as a lesser Being looking for the Greater Being and only getting more confused, then compensating with all kinds of self-defending judgements, excuses and philosophies. The evidence of this is everywhere. Consolations and entertainment are elevated to the meaning of Life.
Once again, there is no Being empowerment in all that.

Not only does self-consciousness enclose us but we further infuse it with an insidious cultural bias. Our Nature Given otherwise Free Spirit becomes entrapped and frustrated within the precarious self-conscious scaffolding that underpins who we think we are. With so much to defend have we really got the time and energy to Live?

Again, I must make it clear this is not a consideration or discourse about right or wrong, or how one should behave, or about anything at all, but about sanity itself.

Unless we literally wake up or move beyond the spell of self-consciousness, its overwhelming influence can distort and limit the way we see the world, our self and its tendency to obfuscate fresh perspectives from outside itself. We tend to ignore new understandings because the results do not accord with the ego-self, the cultural-self, the self-consciousness - all the androcentric worldly identities.

Where is the Freedom of Spirit in this?

Self-consciousness (or the tendency to take everything personally) clouds our perception, our courage, our strong sweet tenderness of Heart. It is a self-imposed contrivance preventing one from letting go – letting go into Life.
We tend to cling to a view of the world through a restrictive personal, cultural lens and yet, all the while the body, like all Nature, is in a constant state of metamorphosis.

Everything is brought about by Nature, we are the beneficiaries of Nature. All manifestation is embedded in and takes its life from Nature - the One Great Eternal, Impersonal Life Force.

Nature’s task, Nature’s function is to transform everything, to constantly reorganise and reshuffle the deck. Nature thrives not by holding on to itself but by so wonderfully and extravagantly demonstrating the power of Spiritual Freedom. The Laws of Nature are Impersonal, meaning they are not for or against us. The Forces of Nature are not aimed at us personally nor are they focused on the Self for Its own sake. That is not the agency of Nature; the agency of Nature is the Way of Life for All.

To perceive the world, yourself and others from the Spiritual Reality means to perceive, to see and to understand on the basis that Life is Impersonal. Life is beyond or prior to the thoughts and dreams and ideologies of our limited, self-conscious personal minds. It is not that we cannot have a mind, dreams and aspirations, but if these prevent us from harmonising our self, our Will with Nature, we become self- possessed. We become ego maniacs. We suffer all the symptoms of existential agitation, constantly trying to arrange conditions in such a way that we will finally be in Peace.

Self-consciousness or personal consciousness subsumes us into itself, then makes up stories, identities, popular beliefs and comparisons, along with its favourite devices of control - self-doubt, guilt and shame. All this is only further compounded by all the unnatural moral aspirations of human -centred religions: phantasmagoric creations of human self-consciousness.

I enjoy Socrates’ humour. He used to call all that is born of the self-consciousness “the monsters under the bed - only used for frightening ourselves and children.” Thank You Socrates.

Lest we forget, Nature pays no heed to human-made national, cultural or religious borders. Nor does it accommodate personal borders. Nature both weaves and unweaves Its own creations and we are of Nature.

Unless we truly understand self-consciousness and its resistance to accepting Life as It is, we will not understand Spiritual Practice. Self-consciousness keeps hijacking our Heart’s Clarity, our Divine Will, our Spiritual Freedom.
This is most often the cause of our dilemma. Over and over again, we lose sight of or abandon for the sake of others what is important and what isn’t. The un-focused mind wanders randomly, leading its host into dilemmas that are not hers or his to consider. Again, this is much of the root of our own Spiritual disempowerment.

Perhaps, without being Fully Conscious of it, we are trying to squeeze Spirit Consciousness (the Impersonal Self-Being) through an almost impenetrable wall of self-consciousness (the personal self-mind) then getting disenchanted and fed-up with the whole affair.

How easily we inadvertently adopt the interests and opinions, the values of self-consciousness and its habit of interpreting events and others.

Well, what is Spiritual Freedom?

First of all, before we go there, if one does not have a genuine love of the Impersonal Spiritual Real, one cannot Live these Spiritual Freedoms in a consistent way.

Spiritual Freedom

• The Freedom never to depend on the approval or admiration of others. There is no strength in that.

• The Freedom from self-consciousness and therefore being able to harmonise our Will with Nature.

• The Freedom to do and be what the Spiritual Reality wants and to accept whatever the Spiritual Reality Nature sends, gives and takes.

• The Freedom to Be, and therefore to Live and Communicate what Spiritual Value is.

• The Freedom from our personal beliefs, ideologies and their judgements that prevent us from being Lived by the One Free Spiritual Being Reality.

• To change your mind and to accept a view, a perception of this existence from the impersonal point of view, rather than tenaciously clinging to the personal, is an act of Spiritual Freedom.

We are in Truth Spiritual Nomads. In other words, in Truth we have no fixed worldly identity, no immutable category, no permanent worldly address, no worldly ownership of anything at all.

We are, in Truth, Spiritual Nomads wandering through Nature’s outrageous smorgasbord, which It lays out for Its own Delight. And we are that One.

It is only by the greed of our egoic, androcentric zeal that we elevate our herd to the status of the superior species. And from that false point of view, we are forever trying to cram Life into a few choice rational sentences, into beliefs and morals that will fit comfortably with our worldly, preferred, self-conscious, ideologically made-up self.

Time for a little bit of tragic comedy. There are still many of our herd who like to think all the lesser species once fitted neatly and oh, so perfectly into Noah’s Ark.
And of course, no prize for guessing who saved these lesser animals.

Beloved Heart, Live this Way.
More and more, stage by stage, age by age, let the One Great Impersonal Love Being Live you.
God or Spirit is Love and You are that One.
Love the Discipline of Love and let that support you through your changes, your sorrow, your loss of loved ones, your difficulties, your relationships, your joy and silence.

I am always with You here in the world.