I want to be free. We all want to be free. And surely everyone, everywhere, has an absolute and sovereign right to be free. Isn't that the kind of world we want?
What does it mean to be free? Can anyone ever be completely free? We are never free of consequences, after all. Even total inaction has consequences. Simply allowing 'stuff' to continue unopposed has consequences.
So we can never be free of responsibility. We are responsible for the consequences of our action and inaction, for our raised voices and our silence.
It can feel as if we aren't responsible if we're 'not involved'. We disconnect and distance ourselves from 'the problem'. It's nothing to do with me. I don't get involved. Our very lack of engagement with the major issues of our time has extreme and distressing consequences for those trapped by activities which we do not actively oppose. How is it that slavery is still a problem, everywhere, even here in Britain? How is it that women and children are still being terrorised into a life of sex-slavery, everywhere, even here, in Britain?
It's because we don't get involved. It's nothing to do with me.
How is it that so many people are still dying of starvation, when elsewhere food is stock-piled and thrown away? When markets are manipulated to make higher profits for rich investors?
Because we accept what we're told; that it's complicated, that the governments in those 'far away' places are corrupt, that this is how economies function, it's regrettable, unavoidable. Is it? Is it really unavoidable? I don't know, I don't get involved.
We need new thinking. We need guts. We need to start acting like these things are unacceptable. They are avoidable. Come on, we know this, in our hearts. These things are avoidable. First we need to speak about them. We need to acknowledge our part in it. Then we need to press our collective will, our collective intention, and our individual imaginations into service and ask: how can we re-arrange our society so that these injustices no longer happen? How do we re-organise so that it's impossible for someone to be beaten and raped repeatedly until they acquiesce to be farmed for sex, for someone else's profit? How do we instigate change that removes the possibility of profit and the motivation for such abusive power over another person? How do we heal this disease from our society?
How do we re-organise the way food is produced and distributed so that no-one starves?
It's not beyond our collective capabilities. But you and I need to accept our responsibility and act to make these changes. We need to say, 'I am responsible for the attitudes in my society. I say No to slavery, and No to starvation while billions of pounds of profits go to the already over-rich.'
Here are some organisations working for just this kind of change:
I think, at this point in my learning and growth, that it means to be aware, to be awake, to be fully cognisant that life's journey consists of choices and consequences. Choices and consequences. Aware that I am responsible for all the choices I make, and that all my thoughts, emotions and actions - or my inactions - are choices. Until I realised that, I couldn't describe myself as free, I was on a strange kind of auto-pilot, almost at the mercy of my emotions and my ingrained beliefs. Programmed by my experiences. I had to question that programming, question everything, go on a quest to discover how to step out of that programming. Now I do feel that I am on the road to freedom, so that my choices are made more and more from my authentic inner wisdom. This is how it is, for all of us.
But, I realise, while I am free to choose, I am not free of the consequences of those choices. And I am not free of responsibility. That's really not the purpose of this physical existence.
24 October is
Global Oneness Day. What is done to one, is done to all. What is done by one, is done by all. My feeling is, until every last person on this planet is free from being used and abused by others, none of us has embraced or truly understood the meaning of freedom.
