Freedom

Efforts to be spiritually free

June 14th 2024

You believe yourselves to be free simply because you are in a position to do as you like. Yet, if you analyze yourselves, you will see that many of your choices are dictated by certain overriding instincts, desires or appetites, which you cannot resist. Your freedom is therefore more apparent than real.
How valiantly human beings have fought to be free! Even death has often seemed preferable to the loss of freedom. What a pity that they have never made the same efforts or fought so courageously to be spiritually free. They are interested only in external freedom; their inner enslavement does not bother them. Those who are in a position to satisfy all their basest tendencies think that they are free. No, it is precisely in this instance that they are slaves.*
* Related reading:

Freedom is the privilege of the spirit: when it rules in us then we can claim to be free. For this we must learn to reestablish the true hierarchy within us and become king of ourselves. It is through the light of our mind that our feelings, thoughts, instincts and desires are then obeyed.