“Do your thoughts fly freely? If not, the regime of mind holds you in its grip.”
—Gesture of Great Love, Tarthang Tulku, page 24.
Do these thoughts and feelings, these impulses and excuses, that keep arriving like drones from some dictatorial regime, fly freely? Or is it in discovering the possibilities that really matter in this human life that we find the freedom to live as our true selves?
Do the bombs landing on communities and on the people living there, fly freely? Do the missiles and planes that deliver them rejoice in their freedom to lift skyward? Or does freedom need a heart to appreciate the ability to take flight and then to care about the consequences?
It’s easy to mistake the business as usual of a mind not at peace with itself for the freedom that lets us forge our own unique path. But the desire to escape the situation in which we find ourselves is not freedom.
Freedom’s hallmark is appreciation for the opportunities that show up on the street we are already walking. We just need to pause long enough to notice what we haven’t noticed before. As long as we blame the street beneath our feet for the difficulties of our lives, we won’t notice those opportunities.
Look, there’s a bakery I’ve never been inside. There’s a meditation hall that always seemed too foreign for my suburban upbringing. Is that Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata I hear, flying forth from that open window above me?
Why do I assume that this familiar street doesn’t include the open doorways that open at its edges? Those unlocked doors may be the hidden passageways I’ve been dreaming of.
If life is a stream of time and I am in a canoe floating along in it, why don’t I pull up on shore and stand among those wildflowers, before another meadow has passed on by?
Lovely! Thanks, Michael.