Foreign. The reason that we squirm through life is because we do not have freedom. The reason that we do not have freedom is because we are imprisoned. What are we imprisoned by? We are imprisoned by our attachment to the self, our likes, our dislikes, our thoughts about the way things should be,

our demands, our cravings, our beliefs, our opinions, our residing with this group or that, and so on. Each of these is a chain that binds, each of these is a bar that imprisons us. One will naturally ask that if such things were shared, how would he or she

do anything in the world? What about success? What about drive? Understand this: your most powerful drive is the drive to be free. What we seek first and foremost is freedom from all problems. The drive for success is itself a drive for freedom. All things are reactionary.

I am still looking deeply into the matter, so I am not certain if I have hit the bedrock of truth about this. I believe I have, but I must inquire further in order to be unequivocally certain about this at this stage of my exploration. I will

offer this: What if everything we do, no matter how sacred, incomplete in itself it may seem, is simply a reaction to not being free? What if everything that we do in our lives is not for the thing itself, but at the root of it is a search for freedom?

What if freedom was behind all of it: success, achievement, relationships, happiness, motivation, and so forth? One of these things were born of a search for freedom. What if freedom is the one and only thing a human being seeks for his entire life, but he calls it by so many

confusing names that he goes on a wild goose chase in search of those names and thus never acquires the thing he was seeking: freedom from problems, freedom from turmoil, freedom from confusion, freedom from pain, freedom from fear, freedom from incessant thought

freedom from conflict, freedom from need, freedom from urges, freedom from compulsions, freedom from absolutely everything. Could it be that the reason that choice doesn't really exist in our lives is because in order to truly have choice, we must first have freedom to choose?

If you believe that we are free human beings, we have the freedom to choose, I will challenge you upon that assertion. Our very behavior, no matter how joyful you may think it'd be, is absolutely not done out of choice, it is done out of compulsion.

This is why the prescriptive information from therapists and priests and gurus and psychologists is complete and utter nonsense. They say you can choose to act this way or that, you can choose to be angry or not, it is your choice how to respond. If someone could really do such a thing

on a consistent basis, there would never be any anger, jealousy, hatred, conflict, and so forth. No human intention need chooses to be miserable. Choice can only happen if one first has arrived at freedom, which leads me to this: a human being that does not have freedom

is doomed to a life of compulsion. He is doomed to a reactive way of living for the whole of his life. He will flinch at this, run from that, chase that, hide from this, strike at that. Though he may live in a palace, he will

Live like an animal trapped in a cage. I remember a lovely human being who was indeed trapped in a cage of her palatial mansion where she lived alone. As she walked down the marble hallways, the tap of her heels was the only sound

she heard, and she was being driven mad by her loneliness. Every human being is trapped. Trapped in conflict, trapped in the need to perform better, trapped in the need to succeed, trapped by the need not to lose, trapped by poverty, trapped by wealth, trapped by relationships.

Freedom is never accidental. Without it, we have absolutely nothing. A compulsive and reactive life is no different than the life of an insect. At least an insect lives only a short while. We must go on living for decades. The freedom to not have a single stray

thought, the freedom to never again have conflict, the freedom to never feel anxiety. So many freedoms that we simply do not have. Without freedom, we are simply a collection of reflexive habits, reactions, opinions, and hopes. We are slaves. A slave can never truly live.

Never. Truth be told, we do not even have the freedom to die because of the compulsion to live. There you have it. Even life has become a compulsion. [Music]

Freedom Is The Only Thing - Kapil Gupta

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