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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

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Even imaginary bars can be just as caging. If you believe you can't, you won't.

If you believe you have to obey your bodily urges or have to chase comfort and run from discomfort, you will. If you believe you have to obey like a slave, you will.

Deep down, in the strictest and most fundamental terms, you are always already spiritually free whether you like it or not. We are all free spirits in a way, but the illusion of spiritual slavery becomes sort of self-fulfilling.

The seeming slaves just don't realize (i.e. make real of the fact) they are free. But, by imaging themselves as slaves to their bodily feelings and urges, and by imagining themselves as being in imaginary cages and facing imaginary roadblocks, those imaginary limitations take on a form of reality. By imagining themselves as spiritual prisoners or slaves, they effectively become prisoners or slaves. By not realizing (i.e. making real) the truth, the truth becomes practically untrue for them.

By believing they must obey fear, the coward becomes, for almost all intents and purposes, an actual slave to fear.

In contrast, the brave person is not a slave to fear. They are free in relation to fear. They are a free spirit when it comes to fear. They have spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) when it comes to fear.

The same goes for any bodily feeling or urge, not just fear, but also hunger, jealousy, sexual attraction, the urge to drink alcohol and whatever other bodily urges or feelings might seek to pull you around like a puppet.

Keep in mind, freedom doesn't mean elimination.

The brave person isn't fearless. The brave person still feels the fear, they just realize they don't have to obey it.

The spiritually free person doesn't lack hunger, anger, sexual arousal, or other bodily urges and feelings. Rather, they are free in relation to them.

The feelings and urges become like beloved but impotent children in the backseat of a car you a driving, whining about how they want to go to Disneyland instead of the dentist, telling you to turn left instead of right.

Ultimately, you decide, and only you can decide for you.

That doesn't mean you don't go to Disneyland. It doesn't mean you never happen to do what the fear or other bodily feeling is impotently commanding you to do. In fact, blindly doing the exact opposite of what a would-be tyrant tells you to do makes you just as a much a slave as blindly doing what the would-be tyrant tells you to do.

Rather, realizing your freedom means that if you go, you know that you go because you are choosing to. It means you take happy, all-accepting self-responsibility for it.

You don't say "I want to not go, but my feelings are ordering me to go" or "I should not go, but temptation is forcing me to go" or "I'm trying to not go and fight my feelings but I'm failing to win that fight against my feelings". That's all dishonest irresponsible impossible nonsense. It's over-complicating gibberish meant to cover up the simple truth, which boils to almost only two words ever: "I choose".

Whatever you are doing, you are choosing to do; otherwise, it's not something you--the real you--are even doing.

When it comes to your choices, you always get exactly what you want, meaning what you what you choose.

No matter how real it ever feels or even sort of becomes, the spiritual slavery and imprisonment is always merely an illusion. If you realize truth, meaning make fully real and revealed the truth, then what's revealed is that you are always free, whether you like it or not and whether you admit to it or not.

When I tell you to take self-responsibility, I am not asking you to change what you do, at least as externally visible to others like me. If you drink 5 glasses of wine every night, I'm not asking you to stop. If you have seven one night stands every week, I'm not asking you to stop. If at the casino you gamble away every penny you can ever get your hands on, I'm not asking you to stop. All I'm asking is that you admit you're getting exactly what you want, meaning what you choose.

That can be a scary and uncomfortable realization. Realizing that truth, meaning taking it from being practically untrue and unreal through dishonest denial to being fully real and true and accepted, is scary and uncomfortable for many. But it's also liberating. You're are realizing (making real) your invincible spiritual liberty. It's empowering. It's an invincibly happy thought that gives you invincible unwavering true happiness that is invincible inner peace. Imagine the unwavering constant invincible happiness of saying like I say: I always get exactly what I want. I only do what I want and I never do nor have to do what I don't want to do. That is heaven. The truth is heaven, and the comfort zone is hell. Realized freedom is heaven, and the illusion of spiritual slavery (e.g. addiction or being a slave to fear or slave to temptation) is hell.

It's an imaginary hell, to be sure. But, like the effectiveness of imaginary roadblocks and imaginary cage bars, imaginary hells torment you just the same as real ones.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes

Imaginary bars can be just as caging.png (830.38 KiB) Viewed 814 times

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[Sushan]

Wise words, and I completely agree. When you believe you are forced by your bodily urges or circumstances, then those beliefs become self-fulfilling and trap you in spiritual slavery. Recognizing that you always have a choice is empowering, and that is the foundation of true inner peace. It is not that you never feel fear or hunger; it is about how you decide to respond to them.