Fredom is letting go

Freedom lies in letting go. When you release your grip, then you are free. I think of the story of the monkey trap, where the monkey puts his hand into the vase to grab some nuts. Then, he closes his fist holding on to the nuts, and he cannot pull his hand out. He traps himself by holding on because of his greed for his goal, yet if he were to let go, then he could be free The same principle applies when applied to our goals. We think that reaching the goal will give us freedom, and so we hold on tightly to the idea that we have to achieve that goal. That holding on is felt as an attachment, a desire or a craving which starts to control us and directs our behaviour. My experience has been that there is nothing wrong with desire or wanting or hunger; it's a natural force which drives action. The problem arises when we become fixated to that desire, and the fulfillment of that desire drives our actions. A common desire lust. If you are caught up in lust, then all you see is a world of sexual opportunity and gratification. You feel you have to have sex, or you must get a partner, for without that partner, your life would be suffering and empty. You think you will find freedom in the sexual act, and in the release of the tension of the sexual act. This is what is meant by attachment; when you become fixated on a solution or a set of conditions to provide you with happiness or safety, and you then become driven by that fixation. The alternative solution is to let go. This is easier said than done, but with the correct practices, you can start to learn to do it easily. The key to letting go is to understand the fixation, or attachment, as an energy blockage, because the emotional energy driving the attachment can only be released under specific conditions. Your goal is to unblock yourself, free yourself from the fixation, and get yourself open and flowing again. To do this, you have to learn to keep the emotional energy moving, and in this way, you stay open and free. There is a simple practice to help you do this. You simply begin by noticing the desire of craving or aversion arising. Instead of getting lost in thoughts or plans to fulfill that desire, you just notice the energy and the associated thoughts. Then, you breathe the energy of the fixated emotion into your heart, and you breathe out fullness and care from your heart, letting that fullness expand out from your body into the world around you, and then disappearing to infinity. The breath is effortless, so on the in-breath, it's simply an effortless feeling of your emotion and a drawing to the heart of the attachment and its emotion, and on the outbreath, its an effortless release. If this is done repeatedly, again and again, then the attachment is released, yet the energy is retained in your system as it is transformed into another emotional state (In this case it's transformed into care and compassion and an openness to the world around you. You could transform the emotion into any emotion you want.) This transformation of emotions is sometimes called transmutation of emotions. There are a couple of key points when doing the practice. If you can notice your thinking, then you are not your thoughts. If you can notice you feelings, then you are not you feelings. By noticing your attachments and working them, instead of being driven by them, you learn to let go, and then you find freedom. This freedom is often misunderstood as a passive existence. On the contrary, this freedom allows you to make choices in line with your highest truths and values, and to live according to your highest possibility. You get your limited controlling demanding self out the way, and you open to letting life support you and bless you and provide for you, in creative, novel and spontaneous ways. Once you have found freedom and that freedom is grounded in a radical release of attachment to results, then paradoxically, that's when you can start to freshly create the type of life that you desire.