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Sue Landon, Editor

Freedom Rev. Marcus J. Capone, Director

     The cornerstone idea of President George W. Bush’s recent Inaugural Address was freedom.   Underlying his message was the premise that the freer a people are, the happier and more peaceful they are.   But what exactly is meant by freedom?

     We generally view the idea of liberty as a freedom from something we don’t want — oppression, slavery, injustice, stupidity.   As we know in metaphysics, if you focus on a “negative” you create the “negative.”   I submit that we change our focus and phraseology to affirm a freedom to do or be something, i.e., “freedom to express our highest potentials; to live in a just society; to voice our ideas; to choose our reality.”   Freedom to something implies a forward direction; freedom from something affirms the bondage.

     This difference of direction becomes important once we attain the freedom we desire.   How many people do you know who have said how much they hated their job and couldn’t wait to get out, only to find that once they retired, they were lost.   They are glad not to be doing the job, but have no direction or purpose in their life. They spent so much time waiting for freedom from that they never considered what they were being freed to do.

     A lot of the time we hold on to a thing we say we want to be free from because it actually fulfills an important need for us.   They may have said they wanted to be free from the job, but in truth it gave them a sense of purpose and importance.   They weren’t quite ready to be free.

     The more I observe of life and people, the more I am convinced that people must rise to their own freedom.   The freedom to be or do something, has meaning when it is gained, not given.

     People need to be ready to be freer.   A victim of spousal abuse can be rescued from the situation, but can’t be rescued from their own desire to return to the abusive spouse.   In reality, they can’t be rescued or freed at all.   After they first decide to free themselves, then help can come.   It is only after we as a people decided that we needed to be free from Britain did help come from the French.   Had it come first, in all probability, we would have rejected it.

     We all know of the dangers of allowing children or adolescents freedom inappropriate to their age.   They just aren’t ready yet.   Just because a six year old wants to drive a car doesn’t mean it is appropriate.

     What then must one know before one is ready for more freedom?   Friedrich von Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty stated it clearly:  “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions.... Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”

     Freedom can’t be given to a person, one must be ready to accept responsibility — be willing to bear the consequences of his action.   Our jails are filled with people who exercised freedom without responsibility.

     The truth is that in accepting life in this bio-shell called a body, we have accepted limitation.   So freedom will always be a matter of degree.   The only time we will have total freedom is when we unite with the Divine.   The higher we raise our consciousness, the more freedom we have (the less bound we are) and the more we are at the causal end rather than the effect end of the Law of Cause and Effect.   So if we really wish to become free, we must live moment to moment, a higher reality and consciousness.

     Freedom always begins by accepting responsibility for our choices.   As we practice this simple principle, we align more fully with our own creative power and the breadth and implications of our choices.   Eventually we choose more wisely and raise our level of awareness and become freer.   Interestingly, we become freer not because someone saves us or redeems us, but because we grow wiser and less bound through our choices.

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