Freedom

To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble.

To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble.

One can choose adventure in the most ordinary of circumstances. Adventure of the mind, or to use an old-fashioned word, the spirit.

You are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others.

Whoever would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave.

It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them. 

No man is free who is not master of himself. People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.

When man is free, without any motive of fear, of envy or of sorrow, then only is the mind naturally peaceful and still. Then it can see not only the truth in daily life from moment to moment but also go beyond all perception; and therefore there is the ending of the observer and the observed, and duality ceases.

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that the truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are.

We are usually full of reasons however why certain things would not be possible. In realising our freedom however, we come up against what Sartre calls the ‘anguish’ of existence, which is that everything is (terrifyingly) possible, nothing is pre-ordained, or has any pre-ordained purpose. we are just winging it and making it up as we go along, so are are free to cast aside our shackles at any moment. We freely label things, and are just as free to remove those labels. 

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

For a consciousness to be capable of imagining…it needs to be free.

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Freedom cannot be granted to you by others. Each person can liberate only himself.

We have created a way of life which is contrary to mankind’s moral and physical nature, and yet we want to be free while living this kind of life.

Real goodness is always simple. Simplicity is so attractive and so profitable that it is strange that so few people lead truly simple lives.

They say that the highest good is freedom. And if freedom is goodness, then how can a free person be unhappy? If you see a person who is not happy you should know that he is not a free man; he is a slave of something.

The most important and necessary expression of freedom is to give your thought a specific direction.

Freedom cannot be achieved by looking for it, but in looking for truth. Freedom should not be a purpose, but a consequence.

A person can understand himself as a material or a spiritual being. When you understand yourself as a spiritual being, then you are free.

The free man walks straight ahead; he has no hesitations and never looks behind, for he knows that there is nothing in the future and nothing in the past that can shake his freedom.

Freedom does not belong to him; it is no more his property than the wind, and as he does not possess it he is not possessed by it. And because he never looks behind his actions are said to leave no trace, like the passage of a bird through air.

Man can never understand his freedom while he regards himself as the mere instrument of fate or while he limits his freedom to whatever he his ego can do to snatch from life the prizes which it desires. To be free man must see himself and life as a whole, not as active power and passive instrument but as two aspects of a single activity.

At each moment the mystic accepts the whole of his experience, including himself as he is, his circumstances as they are, and the relationship between them as it is. Wholeness is his keyword; his acceptance is total, and he excludes no part of his experience, however unsavory it may be.