If you want to be free, that desire for liberation should be stronger than the desire for anything else, writes ANDREW COHEN
Are you serious about becoming free in this life? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you have to be willing to take a stand that is immovable. If you are deadly serious about liberating yourself from fear and ignorance, you have to be willing to take an absolute stand in relationship to thought, to feeling and to time. If you want to be free, you have to be strong, clear and above all, doubtless about what is important. Indeed, if you are sincere, you have to allow the desire for liberation to be more important than anything else.
Given the right environment and company, it’s not difficult to taste, even if only briefly, peace, joy and bliss, to know what it’s like to be free from the tyranny of the mind. In that kind of experience, it’s possible to discover how extraordinary life can be. But the fact is, most who do taste this kind of experience, fall from it soon after. They may stumble upon it once again, but most often, it slips away as it did before. This is why it’s so important to take an absolute stand if you want to be free in this life.
Life is so full of endless temptations and distractions. It is so easy to lose one’s way. Five, ten or twenty years later, one may suddenly remember and exclaim, ‘How could I have forgotten?’After so many years, we usually have lost touch with our inspiration, and therefore, may have to struggle very hard with doubt to once again find sufficient strength of conviction in the possibility of liberation. Now we may feel that we’re no longer worthy and even question whether it’s possible at all. This is why our intention to be free must be absolute from the very beginning — always stronger than the mind, more powerful than any other impulse or desire. Only then will there be any real chance of success.
It’s one thing to start on the spiritual path. Many people do this. But it’s another thing altogether to succeed in liberating oneself from fear and ignorance in a way that is profound. This is because very few take the possibility seriously.
When we are ready to take the possibility seriously, our life will change in a way that is radical only because finally, we have become sincerely interested in what it means to be alive. That means we have become serious about life, about death and about love. No longer do we allow ourselves to be casual about that which is important. To succeed in liberating ourselves from fear and ignorance, an absolute commitment has to be made. That means, one is willing to make tremendous effort if necessary not to be moved, never to waver.
When you penetrate beyond the superficial layers of spiritual experience and begin to see not only into the nature of your own mind but deeply into the nature of reality itself, everything begins to shift. Then the unknown is no longer just a word but has become a living fact of your own experience. It is at that point that the part of you that fears freedom will rise up and tempt you to back down. It can take many shapes. It can take the form of your best friend, of your lover, even of your own reflection in the mirror. ‘Go back. You don’t want this,’ they will all tell you.‘ You must not let this happen. Please, please go back to the way things were.’
Will you be able to recognize this for what it is? Will you be so committed to the possibility of liberation that you will be able to see the many faces of your own ego?
The only way we will be able to survive the endless storms that the mind can create is through discovering for ourselves that nothing is more important than becoming free. In that discovery, we have to find a willingness to come to an absolute reckoning in our relationship to what it means to be alive, as soon as possible. The sooner we are able to arrive at a conviction that is absolute, the closer we will be to taking a stand that is immovable. A stand that is so immovable, so irrevocable that no storm will be able to affect it. Only then will it be possible to be free.
Andrew Cohen is currently teaching in India.
For details, please go to: www.andrewcohen.com/events■
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