You are not Captive
Slaves p. 115
Below is a reading from my book THE OTHER ROAD AHEAD followed by a comment inspired by the selection.👇
“Freedom is the ultimate: it cannot be derived from anything: it cannot be made the equivalent of anything. Freedom is the foundation of being: it is deeper than all being.”1 This a truly liberating concept. There is no end to human freedom because it is a living idea. Freedom is the command of a living spirit which cannot be suppressed except by our own ignorance and fear.
Over the centuries there have been attempts to deprive people of their freedom and enslave them in various social, legal, and political prisons. Regardless the setting the spark of free will is always within the person.
In the past various religious doctrine have sought to enslave the mind of individuals. Claiming eternal damnation for the slightest offenses or concocting complex codes of conduct that were allegedly Divine inspiration. People became slaves to these doctrines to the point that some even promoted the idea of pre-destination which chained the individual at birth to a decree from heaven. Similarly “the iron laws of karma” would bind people to sins from (unknowable) past lives.
In more modern times we have been treated to scientific schemes of enslavement based on our DNA or genetics which pre-determine not only our behavior but ultimately our abilities. Emanating from eighteenth century theories of evolution which were repackaged over the years into arcane ideas of molecular biology, Big Science has entered the mental slavery discussion with various statistical confections designed to entice people into awarding them grant money.
The resistance to unjust authority or conventions is the seething mass of freedom which boils with a divine fury just under the surface of the taunted and oppressed. It is the metaphor of the “slave” in our mind that helps direct us to a place of imprisonment yet the resistance to that notion is the power of freedom welling up from an uncompromising spirit that gives us strength.
We are not slaves to anything except our fears and our foolishness. However, believing that there is no responsibility involved with our duty to be free from spiritual slavery is the opinion of a fool. Regardless the physical or emotional entrapments we find ourselves in there is still a deep center of spirit that provides energy to go on and meet life within life’s terms.
We can become slaves to our own urges and desires so long as we do not reign them in as part of being human. Allowing ourselves to come under control of material wants and artificial desires generated by forces of politics or advertising is a learning experience teaching us that we are being manipulated. At that point we can see freedom at work in our spirit.
Society is always in motion with changing patterns of behavior and ideas. We are constantly under assault by powerful forces that seek to control our movements, habits, and thinking. These are the dark armies of slavery who would have us live in capsules and subsist on insects in order to satisfy their out-of-control desires for supremacy.
Nonetheless the light which guides us will prevail so long as we can see our way through the fog of falsehood and the maze of entrapment. Using the instructions from the ages and our own inspired intelligence we will find the other road ahead.
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Berdyaev, Nikolai, The Meaning of the Creative Act, p 145