Freedom

Rob Staveland

What is the “American way of life ?” Apparently, it is the freedom to buy things, to have possessions, to be secure in the belief that a world of poverty, terrorism, hunger, and fanaticism is some other world. And because the world of this freedom is not that other world, it appears as if the sovereign right of Americans is to ignore poverty, hunger, and terrorism. So freedom has become the freedom to consume without regard for the consequences. Journalists, politicians , pundits, even our president--especially our president--speak in these terms.

Soon after Sept. 11 there were signs that a debate might take place on a national level as to why so much anger worldwide is directed at America. Unfortunately, that impulse faded quickly. To ignore consequences requires that we maintain a state of willful ignorance. It is an ignorance that we will doubtless pay for in the end. And indeed, even as we hear our leaders speak of freedom we are having more of our freedoms taken away. If the polls have any truth to them, we want them taken away. We are willing to trade our freedoms for the illusion of security. We want the world to give us what we want and otherwise not bother us. Freedom then, has come to mean the right to remain ignorant. In as much as ignorance is a true form of slavery, freedom, in our time and place, has come to mean slavery.

It is not uncommon to assert that freedom means freedom of choice, in particular the freedom to choose between good and evil. Yet our current conception of the struggle between good and evil has little to do with exploring personal responsibility, or individual moral development. Good and evil are merely jargon-words. And for the most part theirs is the jargon of a consciousness rooted in vengeance and retribution, a consciousness Americans are as immersed in as our “enemies.” In this shadowy consciousness, we attribute our own failings to others while ignoring them in ourselves. In this way the notion of good and evil belongs to the language of freedom, even as we use the terms to hide our ignorance.

As Americans we also hear much of freedom of speech. What is often meant by that phrase is that we can say what we want, hurtful or not. We talk of freedom of religion, but the kind of religious freedom we are referring to makes religion into something we possess or own, something we can discard or alter whenever we want to. We speak of the freedom to do as we wish with our property, our children, and our emotions. These freedoms are debated in the language of ownership and domination.

All of these ideas about freedom are based on the illusion that freedom means the right to chose our actions. There is another historical imagination of freedom, however. In this ancient imagination, freedom has only tangentially to do with the choices we make. Freedom in this ancient sense does not refer to a right to choose, although it was understood that our choices might lead us toward or away from freedom. The human capacity to choose could, in a way, be called free will, but free will is not freedom. It is merely a limited capacity, bounded by our ignorance, to choose to move toward freedom or away from it. Choice is an abstraction but freedom is not abstract. Freedom itself, in this imagination, is a divine being. It could be said that in its purest sense, freedom is love. Dante speaks of this kind of freedom in the Paradiso. What his guides and teachers lead him toward is an understanding that freedom is not simply the ability to choose to do good or evil. Freedom is found only when one chooses to align oneself with love. Conversely, to chose to do evil is not freedom, but to become utterly a slave.

Another word for this kind freedom is sovereignty. At one time the word also referred to the ruler of the land, to the land itself, and even to the soul of the land. In other words, it was understood that one’s freedom is only to be found in one’s respect for and intimacy with the earth and with life itself. Furthermore, it was understood that sovereignty carried with it a burden of responsibility for the consequences of one's deeds. At one time the only human beings that were allowed the right to be responsible for their actions were the rulers. Only the kings and Queens were sovereign. Only they were free. All others were subject to the will of divine powers --the gods. The King and Queen’s sovereignty was reconciled with the will of the gods by the understanding that they were themselves divine --if not gods themselves, then representatives of gods.

With the beginning of the Christian epoch, however, something changed. Christ entered into human evolution. From the time of Christ-in-Jesus forward, sovereignty was no longer vested only in the few. What entered into human evolution at the beginning of the Christian epoch was the right to sovereignty --to freedom --a freedom that was now possible for all human beings. No longer was it only through rulers that cosmic evolution could do its work. Thenceforth, the cosmic creation could move through any person that was consciously available as an instrument of the evolution and care of the earth.

This possibility is referred to in mystical literature as the marriage of Christ and Sophia. It is the wedding of one’s conscious being to the soul of the world. Sophia, in the ancient sense, means wisdom. It is the deep understanding that every phenomenon is a manifestation of spiritual creativity. Christ, in the sense referred to here, means conscience. The Christ made it possible for every human being to have an individual moral responsibility to participate in the care of and for all of creation. But this marriage is not only about humanity as a whole. It is about each and every individual human being who makes that choice. It is the mutual pledge that one will serve the other -- that the individual human being will serve the evolution of the earth, and that the earth will serve the evolution of the individuality of the human being.

To the degree that one aligns one’s self with the purposes of love one is free. To the degree that one chooses not to align with love, one becomes a slave. The freedom to hurt the earth, or to live at the expense of others, or to dominate another’s will, or to do entirely as one pleases with one’s property, regardless of the consequences -- these are not real freedoms. How can one’s freedom be built upon another’s subjugation? When one aligns oneself with freedom, one experiences a desire that all may be free. This then, is the deeper experience of freedom. It is found in the individual’s participation with love for the care of all creation. This is not love as an abstraction, but love experienced as an actual divine being.

When our focus is self-centered, our awareness of the implications of our actions is limited to merely that which is evident in our self-interest. We flounder inwardly in the face of a decision, feeling our lack of vision, hoping that our choices go where we aim them or wishing for someone else to give us advice or to make our decisions for us. And yet, at other times, we may feel moving within us this being that is freedom --a profound inner guidance that we know we can trust. When we can't feel that guidance we yearn for it, and turn for assistance to that which has a greater vision than our own. We do this in a multitude of ways. In so doing so we may align ourselves with spiritual beings that provide for us the vision we lack. But in doing this we replace one set of difficulties with another. We may be faced with the question of how we can communicate with spiritual beings. Another, graver question may arise when we attempt to determine that the guidance we receive is benevolent. Only by aligning ourselves with a power that is not coercive can we expect our intentions to go straight as an arrow to where we aim them.

In simple terms, we learn to communicate with the world of spirit by attending to it --by training our awareness, heart, mind, and will, to be ever attentive to the movement of spirit, both inwardly and outwardly. This does not happen by accident. The development of spiritual perception is a primary endeavor, a principal part of the work of being human. It is the work of a lifetime, or many. Yet even in a single lifetime, we can become familiar with the spirits that desire to help us. Our listening may be Sophianic --through meditation, or dreams, or attending to the voices of the stars, or sitting on a beach listening to the wisdom of the ocean. Or we might communicate through conscious channeling, or by learning to hear a quiet voice in the stillness of the heart, or by practicing a form of art. We might also communicate through riskier methods such as divination, or trance channeling. One might hear voices, or have compelling visions telling one what to do. Spiritual guidance is always near at hand. The difficulty is one of discernment.

This leads to the larger question of how we determine the intentions of those spirits that propose to guide us. This is the other part of the marriage, the development of conscience. We must, with the utmost sincerity, the utmost urgency, strive to develop our own moral discernment. As we do so, we must never obey spiritual guidance that is contrary to our own moral perception. Moral perception is different than spiritual sight. That is, it is the same but different. A great deal of effort is being put forth in our time to develop spiritual vision, but far less effort is being expended in developing moral vision. Because spiritual sight is so illusive, and because of the difficulty of translating boundless cosmic creativity into the capacities of knowing available to those bound within matter, spiritual sight is easily deceived. Moral perception is primary and immediate. Moral vision, which should be the heart of all spiritual vision, is not so easily deceived. Moral perception, when it is consciously developed, is true.

And how do we develop moral vision? We develop moral vision by engaging with the cosmos as if it is a moral cosmos. We develop moral discernment by practicing the understanding that the essence of each part of creation is a moral quality, or a moral tone, and by striving to perceive that essence or tone at the heart of each being, each phenomenon that one meets. More importantly, we develop our outward moral perception by developing our inward moral perception --by perceiving and clarifying our own moral qualities, even as a musician strives to sound forth a tone that is ever more pure and yet ever more unique.

As we develop our capacities for perceiving the presence and activity of spirit within this world of matter, and as we ground this spiritual vision in the immediacy of clear moral perception, we develop our potential for freedom. This is the marriage of Christ and Sophia. This is freedom as conscious wisdom, or love. Again, this is not an abstract notion. It is basic logic, rooted in experience.

Freedom may come at times as a gift of grace. In general, however, the striving for freedom is a great work. And as we devote ourselves to freedom, as we shape ourselves into the instruments that freedom may play upon, we enter into the heavenly chorus, the music of the cosmic spheres. As we do this, we allow grace into our lives, and we become graceful, body. soul and spirit. We become agents of grace.

And so this prayer: that America may indeed become a land of freedom; that America may become a land full of people filled with a deep care for all of life, and with the discernment to care well and wisely. Let America herself become an instrument of love, an agent of grace.