FREEDOM: How to Question and Unlearn Everything You Know
- By: Dave Ursillo
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If we can at the very least rethink everything that we are conditioned to see as freedom, will we discover a greater, purer sense for what freedom actually is?
Last week, my friend Jonathan Mead — a leading personal development blogger at IlluminatedMind.net — argued in a blog post that the ever-popular niche movement of “lifestyle design, travel the world, location independence” blogs, books, and web-based products cannot, in fact, sell anyone actual freedom:
“Freedom is not found in patterns, nor on the edges of contrarianism. Freedom isn’t about escaping the 9-to-5, revolution, or breaking away.” Jonathan Mead
In response, I commented that perhaps the greatest value any of these books, blogs and philosophies is found less in the actually content or intended objective of each, and more in the subtle concept that the reader begins to “unlearn” the hard, confined and constrictive rules of conventional living that society has drilled into them since youth — a process that Jonathan describes as, “the absence of conditioning.”
Over the course of our lives, we’re conditioned in many ways: some explicit and up front, others subtle. Our conditioning has been influenced by an array of personal experiences, our families, friends, education, where we grew up, when we grew up, how we grew up, and so on. With this in mind, I find myself today wondering, “Is the key to actual freedom as simple as questioning and unlearning everything that we think we know?”
1. ESCAPE YOUR MIND / TURN OFF THE INNER VOICE
“Virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop.” Eckhart Tolle
Unlearn the incessant thought — the inner narrative voice — that critiques, judges, and comments on everything we see and do from morning until night. Rethink the assumed notion that this dialogue never stops. Focus on nothingness. Fixate your attention upon openness. Make your mind steady and calm. Quiet the voice within your mind — tell it to shut the hell up. Let there be quiet. Find freedom within your own head.
2. ELUDE ATTENTION / LIVE TRUE TO SELF
“Express yourself completely, then become the quiet.” Lao Tsu
Unlearn living from interaction to interaction: find, embrace, and concentrate upon aloneness. One of the greatest tragedies I see in people is when someone lives only through others — in other words, one who qualifies his or her worth, value, and life based upon a relationship or social status with others. Human beings need others, but we do not and should not qualify our lives based upon how others perceive and accept us. Escape the eyes of others. Rethink attention. Embrace the quiet.
3. PUSH YOUR LIMITS / EXTENT YOUR BOUNDARIES / RISK DISCOMFORT
“Our limitations and success will be based, most often, on your own expectations for ourselves. What the mind dwells upon, the body acts upon.” Denis Waitley
What we perceive to be stopping us from achieving our goals, finding our happiness, and improving our lives are merely our perceptions of limitations. Take a pen to paper and journal a list of 10 things that you identify as limiting you or holding you back. Now that you have them listed, unlearn them: flip a fear of change into a compelling need of change; flip fear of failure into failing on purpose just so you can recover and realize failure isn’t a big deal at all.
What are your boundaries?
These limits are not breaking points — points of “no return” after which we collapse, die, or cease to exist — but merely indicating lines that show us where we can expand and extend our personal boundaries of growth and inner development. Unlearn comfort. Risk discomfort. Push the boundaries. Rethink your potential.
4. BE FLUID / BE OPEN / BE FREE
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” Tao te Ching
Freedom takes many forms, but never just one. Freedom is openness; not a series of strategies or rules to live by. Freedom is fluidity; not confining ourselves to perceived notions of living. Unlearn that living like a rock will protect you from the elements. Be fluid like the water, strong but malleable. Unlearn what we call strength; rethink what we call freedom.
5. JUST… “BE”
Stop trying to be. Stop trying to be free. Just be.
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Flickr photo credit: Jonas B
9 COMMENTS... READ 'EM BELOW AND SHARE A THOUGHT
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Cameron Armstrong
hmmm, I should stop asking myself what would society think about me if I do this or say that? To a certain degree I should do I want
Dec 17 2010 / 02:12 am
Dave Ursillo
It's not necessary to stop asking what others would think of you. But, can you ever experience what we might call "true freedom" if you *only* make decisions based upon how others judge you? I think that while weighing how others will perceive your words and actions has its place, it's only a small matter of consideration -- in the end, we must decide for ourselves what is right.
Dec 17 2010 / 10:12 am
Shalon
Hi Dave,
I would like to say that all of these tips have been useful for me in my life, and it is nice to see them in one place and be reminded. I think freedom is an ever-evolving spiral, where we learn and forget, learn and forget, always going deeper/higher into our experience.
It is particularly through recognizing the ‘voice’ that has helped free me. My favorite novels deal with this exact topic (C.S. Lewis often writes about the Voice–see Perelandra). Sometimes I still mistake that voice for myself, but more and more often, I am able to quiet it. I don’t know if you have a similar experience, but I feel there is a strong link between that voice and feelings of victimization or unhappiness about how life is.
My awakening moment came when I met someone who helped me see that I am the creator of my experience and that my feelings of victimization were actually a falsehood that I perpetuated as a means to justify my misery. I will always feel indebted to that woman, no matter how difficult it was for me in that time to accept what she was saying. It felt like a slap in the face, at the time. I thought, “how dare she tell me that I created all this mess!” I didn’t know it then, but that was the voice. Looking back, I see now that it was in those first very difficult days that I began my journey to personal freedom and I strongly believe that it is only through taking (guilt-free) responsibility for our lives/our choices/our perceptions that one can begin that journey.
Dave, what was your awakening moment and what led you to that place where you became committed to freeing yourself?
Dec 17 2010 / 05:12 am
Dave Ursillo
Thank you Shalon. Let me start by saying *this* is poetry: "...freedom is an ever-evolving spiral, where we learn and forget, learn and forget, always going deeper/higher into our experience."
Your experiences with "the voice" inside our heads are what best-selling author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has made his name known for, especially in "The Power of Now." It's an incredibly powerful book that first awoke me to the idea that the incessant thought in our heads -- as much as we become accustomed to it, familiar with it, and associated to it as no different than "who we are" -- that it is rather unnatural. I just began to reread it this week.
My awakening moment... there have been many! I can pinpoint a handful of moments over the last, say five years, that I felt that I have experienced something we could call a revelation or passing moment of enlightenment. They were mostly born from great inner turmoil, heartache, depression, desperation, confusion -- a litany of terrible and unwanted emotions that, in hindsight especially, I understand have their important place in compelling significant inner growth.
Dec 17 2010 / 10:12 am
Shalon
I discovered Eckart Tolle through this amazing series he did with Oprah that is broadcasted for free here :
http://bit.ly/am7y46
I read the Power of Now years ago but found this series much more fun and celebratory.
Dec 18 2010 / 07:12 pm
Dave Ursillo
I had never tuned in for the series he did (I mean, ya know, it was with Oprah after all...) but I heard great things about it. I'm glad it helped you! And I still have to read A New Earth!
Dec 23 2010 / 08:12 pm
Eileen Andrews
Being silent and still in my own head is probably one of the biggest challenges for me. This was a great post.
Thanks Dave!
E
Dec 17 2010 / 10:12 am
Dave Ursillo
Align scenarios and circumstances in your life that contribute to a quiet mind. Instead of trying, set the necessary pieces and see what it's like... :)
Dec 23 2010 / 08:12 pm
Jessica Rosen
“Rethink all you know. Discard that which offends your soul.” – Walt Whitman.
Uncle Walt sure knew his stuff. I try to keep these words in mind. Sometimes I need a post like yours to remind me, though. Thanks for this. It also reminds me of Benjamin Hoff’s THE TAO OF POOH, which contains the simple, complex concept: “Pooh just is.”
Take care,
Jess
Jan 18 2011 / 11:01 pm
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