What is inner freedom?
There are no independent people.
Everyone has obligations. Being internally free does not mean ignoring your obligations towards others. Conscious necessity forces them to follow. Inner freedom is a person’s ability to make informed choices in various situations, which is determined by his needs, his understanding of what is necessary. This choice should be based on awareness and be only your own. The best films or books (there is a rating) are united by the desire for inner freedom. When the hero, despite the obstacles, takes an important step, in agreement with himself.
Sometimes inner freedom is associated with detachment, indifference to what is happening around. It is, rather, psychological defense, ignoring, avoiding problems, rejection of what surrounds, inability to adapt and interact. A person needs emotional contact to be happy. This is his basic need. This means that avoiding such contact cannot be a good thing, no matter how sophisticated individualism justifies it.
There are no independent people. Everyone has obligations. Being internally free does not mean ignoring your obligations towards others. Conscious necessity forces them to follow. The desire to repay the money you borrowed coincides with your inner conviction and does not limit your inner freedom in any way. But there are things that are not accepted internally, introjects received in various ways from other people, which do not become one’s own beliefs. Most often they are from childhood from parents or other significant people. They dictate how to act or react in different situations. And then the person, like a robot, is programmed to react and act. He wants to do it differently, but something, often unconscious, prevents this. It's as if someone else is doing it for him. He does not choose and does not have inner freedom.
Mom tells her daughter - stay at home, there are a lot of dangers and bad people on the street. This is how she escapes her fears for her daughter. School, college, only the most necessary communication. The daughter successfully carries out this installation, and by the age of twenty she does not know how to communicate at all, and experiences fear of being among people. She is dependent on this life scenario; it leaves her no choice and limits her inner freedom.
There are such limiters in the life of every person. The framework of morality imposed from the outside and not accepted internally, parental “don’ts”, like red flags that you can’t jump over, dependencies with the help of which psychological traumas, traditions, false beliefs, fears are played out... This is impossible. Why exactly? Maybe it’s someone else’s thing that’s not allowed? The more restrictions there are, the less internal freedom there is.
Often such a limiter is comparison. My neighbor has more money, he’s cooler, my friend has a better figure, I know less, I won’t be accepted in this company. Comparison takes a lot of energy. A person is constrained, shy if he considers himself inferior, or arrogant and aggressive if the other seems weaker. However, it also happens the other way around. The main thing is that the motives of behavior are controlled by one’s own complexes. It doesn't matter what others say or think. They are concerned about basically the same thing. The main thing is internal agreement.
Sometimes interests intersect and a compromise needs to be found. My freedom ends where the freedom of another begins. We have to get along somehow. A free person respects other people's personal space because it is a value for him. It is easier for an adult to defend their rights. But parents are not chosen. Children have to pay for their mistakes in upbringing. The mother decides to devote herself entirely to raising her son, sacrificing her personal life, and the son, for his correct adaptation in the world, needs a harmoniously developed adult nearby, and not a victim. Tyrant - the father suppresses the will of the child, deprives him of independence. As a result, the ability to hear oneself and make decisions does not develop. Yes, the starting conditions are different, but everything can be overcome if there is a desire.
The importance that is sometimes attached to actions in life can interfere with decisions. A young woman realizes that she does not want to live with her partner, they are just completely different. In addition, she endures physical and psychological violence, and the situation does not change for a long time. The only reasonable step is divorce. But divorce is too serious a step for her. Behind this lies the false belief that one must get married once and for the rest of one’s life. Her grandmother told her about this, raising her finger up and very significantly. Without taking this step for many years, she suffers, depriving herself of possible happiness, losing precious time of her life. Every day is unique.
Dependence lies at the other pole of freedom. Dependence on other people's opinions constrains and reduces the number of behavior options. “Everyone does this, it’s customary, and you should.” This imposed from the outside is very difficult to overcome. Advertising drives into your head the choice of goods, services, even people. You need to dress like this, it’s fashionable, the car should be expensive, it’s an image, you need to vacation in the Maldives, it’s prestigious. Is this necessary for a specific individual? The flow of information is overwhelming. It is worth listening to yourself, understanding your true needs, making your own choice. This is inner freedom.
A smoker is addicted to a cigarette, and while he smokes, he has no choice: to smoke or not. But there is a choice to quit smoking. The fewer dependencies, the more choices there are. A smoker will go smoke during a break, while a non-smoker has different options. The first step to overcoming any addiction is recognizing it. By getting rid of addictions, you expand your space of inner freedom.
Sometimes there seems to be no reasonable solution. This is the result of internal “taboos”. Search activity helps a lot here - active behavior to find a solution in conditions of uncertainty of the result. There is always a choice: accept the lack of a solution or continue searching for one. Inner freedom presupposes the presence of choice, which means that if you resign yourself, then there is no longer any freedom. “Success is moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” W. Churchill. (Nobel laureate in literature, by the way). Every great achievement includes a phase of failure. But search activity sooner or later leads to achieving results. Without it, inner freedom is limited.
Inner freedom, like freedom in general, requires courage, because... it assumes responsibility for one's life. For many people this is an unbearable burden. E. Fromm writes about this in his book with the telling title “Escape from Freedom.” Freedom comes with responsibility. These concepts are inseparable. It's easy to be irresponsible. There is no need to make decisions if you trust God, the ruler, your wife or your neighbor. Then you can simply go with the flow, nothing depends on yourself, you don’t have to answer for yourself, and there’s no need to talk about any freedom. And I don’t need her, someone will say, and that’s fine. And this is also a choice. To each his own.
Some decisions come easily, others cannot take a step without evaluating this step from all sides. It seems to them that they must definitely take this step correctly. However, there is no objectively right or wrong for a person, unless we are talking about moving towards addiction. He himself is both an object and a subject at the same time. Any external view is superficial. From the outside it seems that a successful doctor who suddenly quit her job at a prestigious clinic and began making and selling dolls has committed a ridiculous act. But if you consider that she dreamed of this all her life, and entered medical school at the insistence of her parents, then the picture changes. Now she is finally doing what she loves and enjoys it every day.
It is difficult to find and understand your limitations, but the process is greatly facilitated and accelerated if you manage to successfully cope with at least one. The experience of success appears, which gives rise to confidence. To go around the globe, you need to take the first step, says Chinese wisdom. Thus, “squeezing the slave out of oneself drop by drop,” a space of inner freedom is born.
Is this why we experience joy when someone overcomes his limiter before our eyes and makes a free choice? A classic example: the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” where the final episode is a symbol of a breakthrough to inner freedom. Such moments give rise to experiences that help you rethink episodes of your own life, giving a special, incomparable feeling of flight, insight, a sense of success.
A person who has inner freedom is characterized by a light, perhaps slightly ironic attitude towards life, as well as a sense of humor. Remember the phrase of the internally free Munchausen: “I understand what your trouble is. You are too serious. An intelligent face is not yet a sign of intelligence, gentlemen. All stupid things on Earth are done with this facial expression. Smile, gentlemen! Smile...."
A free person lives in harmony with himself. He does the job he loves, he goes home with pleasure, because a person close to him is waiting for him there, he can change his life if something goes wrong. He has a space of choice - inner freedom. There are such? Of course, there is, and there is always something to strive for.
Not everything in the world is in the hands of man, life is finite, there are tragic accidents. Sadness and loss cannot be avoided, and happy people cry too. This is an existential reality and cannot be changed. But within your life there is always a choice. Inner freedom brings you closer to understanding your purpose, allows you to feel the world in its entirety, this is finding your true self.
Author: Chvalun Evgeniy Viktorovich
I stopped worrying about the future
I accept that there are things in life that I cannot control, no matter how much effort I put in. Every time I find myself worrying, I tell myself, “Time will tell.”
I may not always get what I want, but I know that I always get what I need. I trust the flow of life and want to believe that we live in an intelligent Universe where everything works out perfectly. Sometimes in life you have to wait.
"Easy life. Everything happens to you, and does not come from you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, not too early and not too late. You don’t like it…you do things just to make yourself feel better.” (Byron Katie)
How to find inner freedom?
As with any illness, where the path to recovery begins with the recognition of the very fact that you, friend, are sick, the path to gaining inner freedom begins with the realization that you are, in fact, a slave. First of all, a slave of the ways of thinking “installed” into your unconscious during education and socialization, worldviews, rules of behavior, decision-making criteria, etc., that are inadequate to reality. and so on.
As a result, many things that a person would like or could do and that would bring him new opportunities, new resources, pleasure in life, happiness, comfort and mental well-being, he does not do because “it’s indecent”, “shameful”, “so normal people don’t do this” and other “stoppers”. As a result, he lives a relatively well-fed and safe life, deceiving himself every single day that everything is, in general, not bad for him, that he lives, in principle, no worse than others.
The unfortunate fate of many people is a consequence of the choices they did not make. They are neither alive nor dead. Life turns out to be a burden, a pointless pursuit, and deeds are only a means of protection from the torments of existence in the kingdom of shadows Erich Fromm
Recognizing oneself as a slave is unpleasant, uncomfortable, painful for pride, but without this one cannot gain inner freedom. You can lay clean, fresh parquet on a holey, rotten floor and for a while everything will be fine, for a while the illusion of “repair” will work. But one day the floor will collapse along with the parquet and the unlucky poor fellow who laid it.
I stopped making assumptions about what other people feel, want, or think.
I am not them, so there is no way to know what they feel or think.
I stopped playing out imaginary scenarios and letting my mind play tricks on me. Every time I find myself worrying about what other people are doing or saying, I think it's time to get back to reality.
Thanks to Byron Katie's book "Work", I learned to analyze the thoughts that bother me and ask myself: "Is this true?" Many of my assumptions are probably misleading. For example, I may assume that someone doesn't like me when in fact the person is just having a bad day. Or maybe the person is just shy. Always different.
The moment I realize that I cannot recognize someone else's thoughts simply because that person is not me, my mind clears and I can act with an open heart.
“I discovered that the undoubted causes of all the wars and all the truces in my little world were my assumptions.” (Byron Katie)
Methodically squeeze out the slave drop by drop
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in a letter to his colleague Alexei Suvorin, advised:
Write a story about how a young man, the son of a serf, a former shopkeeper, choirboy, high school student and student, brought up on honoring rank, kissing priests' hands, worshiping other people's thoughts, thanked for every piece of bread, was flogged many times, went to class without galoshes who fought, tormented animals, loved to dine with rich relatives, was a hypocrite to both God and people without any need, only out of consciousness of his insignificance - write how this young man squeezes a slave out of himself drop by drop and how he, waking up one fine morning, feels that it is no longer slave blood that flows in his veins, but real human blood...
Suvorin did not write the story, but the phrase became a catchphrase.
It is precisely squeezing slaves out of oneself drop by drop that is the only possible, reliable and effective strategy for gaining inner freedom. This process is not very pleasant, painful, since you have to tear out from the flesh of your consciousness the slavish attitudes and ideas about life that have firmly sprouted there. This is definitely not a comfortable walk along the seashore (as many imagine the process of personal growth).
Well, WHAT exactly to do is generally clear. And now, please, HOW exactly to “squeeze the slave out of yourself,” HOW to increase the level of internal freedom in yourself? Perhaps this is the question that interests the reader most of all. And perhaps I will disappoint him by saying that HOW is, in fact, the whole process of methodical and consistent (but unlike technical instructions) personal growth, regular work on squeezing out various kinds of blockages from your psyche. Yes, there are special techniques for this (access to them can be obtained, for example, within the framework of the School [of systemic development]), but the point is not in the techniques, but in intention and self-discipline. What good is a pistol if at the right moment there is no internal readiness to pull the trigger to shoot?
I stopped competing with others
Now I know that my desire to fight was a manifestation of my ego, which needed self-examination. You don't have to know that someone else has lost to feel good. I love harmony, cooperation and win-win.
I stopped comparing myself to others. I choose to ally with people based on love, not fear, and I believe in success. I want to believe that we live in a supportive universe, with enough room for everything and everyone, including me.
“Love is cooperation, not competition.” (Wayne Dyer)
On the way to freedom
The main obstacle on the path to freedom is not outside, but inside. This concentrated expression of all the restrictions imposed by society on an individual can be called an internal controller or overseer. You can consider it a “program”, an aspect, a subpersonality, an inner voice, a Freudian Super-I - the name does not matter. It is important to understand its function. And it is very simple - do not let you go beyond what is permitted by the prevailing system of ideas about life in society (morality, culture, historical and ideological mythologies, etc.).
The overseer points out what to think and what not to do, because it is “indecent”, “shameful”, “shameful”, “inconvenient”, “not good”, “wrong”, “bad” and so on and so forth. Since you are not aware of the fact that your behavior is controlled by an overseer, it seems that you think and do everything, that it is your choice. But that's not true.
The path to freedom is the path to weakening the taskmaster. It is impossible to defeat him, and it is unnecessary, since such a victory means a final break with society, and therefore a refusal of self-realization, because self-realization presupposes active activity in society, promoting its change and development. The desire for absolute freedom is essentially a fiction, unattainable within the framework of an individual human life.
And in order to weaken the overseer you need to be strong. Strong in your spirit. Become aware of and control your aspirations, desires and other motivations. This is again the path of working on oneself, the path of serious, adult personal growth.
I stopped chasing perfection
I am perfectly beautiful and beautifully imperfect, and that is what allows me to be myself.
Perfection is an illusion; it does not exist. I stopped exhausting myself with the pursuit of perfection, and now I strive for “good enough.” I have learned to accept my mistakes as a necessity that accompanies growth and makes me wiser. If I fail at something, it doesn't mean that I'm a failure, I just minded my own business. We either win or we learn. But we never lose.
“Every time you feel better, it’s like a patient recovering. Just do your best under any circumstances and you will avoid self-judgment, self-deprecation and regret." (Miguel Ruiz)
Surrounded by slaves
Many researchers have noticed that despite all the progress in social relations, people did not become freer. The reason here is that freedom also has a downside - you have to be responsible for it. Before yourself. Since all your decisions have consequences, and the consequences tend to affect you most directly, before taking any serious step you need to think carefully and weigh the risks. It’s easier for a person who is not free – others make decisions for him. And even though he still feels the consequences on his own skin, the responsibility for this can always be shifted onto others - they say, “it’s their fault.” This makes your soul feel more comfortable.
Therefore, most people are internally slaves. This makes it easier and simpler for them. These slaves, like dogs tamed by humans, can be different. Well-fed slaves, hungry and dissatisfied slaves, well-groomed slaves, well-fed slaves, idle slaves, chain slaves, pitiful slaves in their insignificance, slaves in the “grain place”, retired slaves and so on. But one cannot despise them for this; only weak and vile people mock the unfortunate.
Therefore, we need the understanding that everyone around us is slaves, first of all, to understand one simple, but seemingly terrifying thought (from the point of view of the internal “overseer”). This idea is as follows: the opinion of others is ALWAYS the opinion of slaves, and the value of the opinion of slaves is equivalent to the value of a dog barking at a passing caravan. In other words, the quality of an internally free person is a complete disregard for the opinions of others. Agree, the idea is seditious. But there is no other way.
I stopped self-criticism
I pay attention to how I talk to myself. I don't call myself names, I treat myself with dignity and respect. I stopped telling myself things I would never say to a good friend. I am self-sufficient and self-worth.
I have come to understand that in life we do not get what we want. We get what we deserve according to our own opinion. That's why you need to believe in yourself and treat yourself as a person worthy of the best that life has to offer.
“You've been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try praising yourself and see what happens.” (Louise Hay)
Learn to see all shades
The ability to contemplate is also a quality that is inherent in children, but with age we lose it. However, nothing prevents us, even as adults, from learning to see all the shades of life again. It is enough just to open your eyes and become observant. We can see a person much deeper if we stop “meeting people by their clothes.” We can see the pain of another person behind the rudeness if we stop judging and taking everything personally. This is also a skill that comes through awareness of the fact - the world is much deeper, brighter and more subtle than we see it. And no matter how much we see, the depths will not end, because life has many more shades than we are able to contemplate during our entire earthly journey.
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