In this article we will tell you:
- Differences between external and internal freedom
- Inner human freedom - what is it?
- 5 approaches to becoming an internally free person
- 6 Tips for Finding Inner Freedom
Inner freedom gives a person a sense of harmony with himself and with the world. Only an internally free person can live a happy and fulfilling life. And if we talk about constitutional law, then each of us has the right to freedom of choice, but do we really feel free? Do you feel like you belong to yourself?
Often a person cannot use the opportunity to express himself, burying himself in the routine of everyday affairs. But inner flight is so important to experience true happiness. Today we’ll talk about how to gain inner freedom and maintain it.
Differences between external and internal freedom
A person is free outwardly when he freely acts as he wants. No material restrictions, such as locks on doors or bars on windows, can stop him.
If we talk about internal freedom, then this concept is much more subtle. Let's say you go to a bakery and choose something delicious for yourself, focusing solely on your desires; no one influences you or persuades you to make a choice. Or the last piece of pie. Only you are given the chance to decide what to do with it - leave it to your neighbor or eat it yourself. But it also happens that politeness pretty much ruins the life of a well-mannered person.
Psychologists assure that a person always has the opportunity to choose. Remember old Freud. It was he who established the dependence of people on their pleasures, and no one has refuted this theory. By analogy with this point of view, we can talk about moral restrictions that go along with the concept of internal freedom. People must decide for themselves whether to eat a piece of the pie or show their good manners. Every person is free to do as he wishes, so when it seems that some decision has been imposed on you, dig deeper into your subconscious, evaluate your real desires.
Next, let's talk about the concept of internal personal freedom.
How to become truly free
The most interesting thing is that in moments like these, no material wealth, no millions of millions can compare, much less replace, this feeling of freedom and unity with the world around you, which is both inside and around you. This is probably why people go to the mountains again and again and conquer more and more peaks.
However, in order to gain the experience of true spiritual freedom, in many cases it is not at all necessary to engage in sport mountaineering. It is enough just to realize your mission on earth and clearly follow the instructions of your own conscience.
At the same time, the closer you are to realizing your life goal, the more provision you will receive with the necessary resources to achieve it. Thanks to the action of this law, almost any life issues are resolved, what is called by default.
This reminds me of a situation when a foreign intelligence agent is dropped behind enemy lines with a previously prepared legend for him. It is enough for such an intelligence officer to get used to his image and strictly carry out the tasks of his leadership in order to justify the trust and benefit the Motherland. At the same time, all issues of material and financial support are resolved in the accompanying mode within the framework of its legend.
Still from the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”
From this point of view, it turns out that if I manage to determine and then begin to fulfill my spiritual mission on earth, then any issues of a material nature that are so important for the life of my physical body will be resolved in the background automatically.
That is why it is especially important to understand and realize that the primary thing in any area of a person’s life, including in the area of personal freedom, is his spirituality. If it becomes dominant, then everything else will gradually follow in due time.
If we take into account that external freedom is associated with a person’s bodily beginning, and true or spiritual freedom is directly related to his soul, then in order to develop and improve internal independence, you only need to devote more time to your sensory experiences.
Indeed, in any unforeseen situation, we are more inclined to trust our spontaneous feelings than sober and cold calculations. As a rule, our usual reactions to external stimuli are of a habitual nature at the level of unconditioned reflexes.
Passengers travel on a bus during rush hour
But as soon as you look at the same situation from different angles, a suitable alternative immediately arises for the successful resolution of the conflict. I think that today there is not a person who, during rush hour, has not stepped on his foot in an overloaded transport at least once in his life.
As soon as this happens, the injured party has a choice: consider themselves a victim and throw a huge scandal (take the side of the material principle) or use this situation as an occasion to get acquainted and develop further relations with their offender (find themselves in the position of an observer from the spiritual principle).
Some will say that it will take a lot of time to think about and make the right decision, which is clearly not enough to give an adequate answer. But practice shows that in such cases time ceases to be linear and goes into a different format (actually freezes), so even two seconds is enough to make and implement your decision.
It is clear that the first attempts will be rather inept and ineffective. But in this matter, as in any sport, you need constant dexterity, hardening, and training to achieve high performance.
Therefore, with each new attempt, the spiritual muscles will become stronger, firmer and more elastic and will allow the practitioner to achieve the desired goal in the shortest possible time.
Inner human freedom - what is it?
It is common for a person to make decisions independently in a variety of situations, based only on his needs, desires, and understanding that this is exactly what he needs now. This is internal freedom of choice.
Sometimes inner freedom is mistaken for some detachment, disinterest in what is happening. But this is not so; most likely, this is a kind of psychological defense that protects against external problems, inability to interact with the world, and lack of adaptation to life. Believe me, any individual needs emotions and contacts with the environment to be happy. By avoiding communication, a person does not make himself better. Such individualism is inappropriate in this situation, no matter how he justifies it.
Why are ready-made life scenarios imposed on us?
In fact, what I want to write about now begins much earlier than graduation. The big and wide world, it turns out, not only knows “what is best,” it also actively (and thoughtfully!) imposes its strategies. For a lot of different reasons - because someone needs to sell something. Because some ideology is beneficial to the state, for example.
Because there is a majority who are terrified that someone will devalue their life plans, and are ready to tear to pieces anyone who does something “wrong.” One can delve into the motives of all these “mass transmitters” for a long time. Another important thing for us is how to become free if there are already quite a lot of assessments, labels, patterns that exist in society, sort of, “by default”? There is only one answer - learn to feel, develop your own opinion and take responsibility for it.
For clarity, I will give a couple of examples. For example, nightclubs. Let's look at this adventure as it is. Struggling to overcome the habit of falling asleep, you swallow caffeinated drinks or alcohol, wading through the curtain of smoke and other people's fumes.
To say a few words to your interlocutor, you strain your ligaments, trying to shout over the music (which hits your ears rather than sounds). The further you go, the more you become deaf, and you ask your interlocutor several times.
And your interlocutor in the bluish reflections rather looks like Dracula, so it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions about his attractiveness (especially if the acquaintance just took place here). Add to this at least half an hour of active movement to the music in the crowd - and you will have nicotine intoxication, even if you have never smoked. You can continue for a long time.
The question is that rarely does anyone look at this matter this way. Because young people think it’s cool in advance. Because it is well advertised, modern and “glamorous”.
Someone who needs to sell this product of dubious quality creates an advertisement that has its effect and gives rise to a number of emotions. Watch any movie. In most of them you can often find an episode where the main character or heroine, necessarily successful, attractive, rich, is having fun in an expensive club of about this kind.
A simple associative game - “success - club”, “wealth - club”, “successful acquaintance - club”. Etc. A picture is a feeling. “I want to be like him/her.” Club.
And it doesn’t matter that it smells bad, the music is blaring, it’s impossible to understand anything, and not all people are that successful and rich. Many are just “applicants”. Those who seek are sometimes in the wrong place. What is important is what has settled in our sometimes uncomplicated psyche. “The picture of success is the club.” “The club is good.”
Sometimes, of course, I admit that a person may want to “break away”, scream loudly, get poisoned by smoke or alcohol - well, who can argue with the fact that the desire for destruction is partly inherent in all of us. And even natural. The question is proportions and quantity. And the question is - was it his free choice? Truly free and aware?
How to become free? First of all, ask yourself this question. Is this really my choice? What's behind it? What needs does this choice satisfy and how? But often the majority do not even have time to do this - the pressure of habitual patterns forces them to act and react “automatically”.
The picture is the same with examples that everyone would consider positive. For example, family. No one will ever say in their life that starting a family is bad. But when, with whom, and how - this can only be a matter of everyone’s free choice. What's actually happening?
“All my friends have already gotten married, and you?” – a concerned mother asks her daughter. Mom is still a significant person, despite the fact that her daughter has already passed 20 years ago. Yes, that in itself is not bad, that the mother is significant. But suppose your daughter is busy with her career. And she’s not that interested in this family yet.
And here are films, pictures, where happy brides (among whom are friends, of course!) confidently walk along the marble staircases of palaces towards family happiness. Smiling mothers and fathers with their children from advertisements for bank loans, enthusiastically walking around new mortgage properties. “You are giving the country records!” - a lady on the subway calls from a poster in which she has triplets on her lap.
And I desperately want to become the heroine of this beautiful picture. “The picture is happiness.” “This is good,” the mind makes its assessment and inflates emotions. Do you really want this, now, and is there anyone with whom? - feelings are silent. They are silent because they are already accustomed to the fact that no one asks them.
In our world it has become fashionable to live for the sake of an idea. "I want to start a family." Read: “I have an idea for a family, and I want to make it come true.” We are looking for a person to match this idea. Not the other way around - feelings arose, a desire to be together arose on the basis of feelings - and then a family arises in a natural order. This is often not the case in our world. The idea of “how it should be” appears first. And more often - even before there is an experience of feelings.
It’s one thing to tell a child “one day you will probably fall in love and have a family.” Another thing is to give him a plan for when this family should be, what it should be like. When, moreover, you believe in this plan from childhood, becoming free will not be easy.
As a rule, the instillation of a plan (and no matter by whom - parents, society) occurs long before the experience of feelings appears. And a 10-year-old girl already knows that she needs to give birth to a child before she’s 25, “otherwise it will be too late.” Sometimes you don't have to say anything directly to your child. It is enough to condemn someone’s “unsuccessful” lives in her presence.
And this is enough for the child to understand what time he needs to give birth in order to receive parental approval. And we forget more and more what our own real feelings and desires sound like.
This experience of someone else's suggestion, which is not yet connected in any way with the feelings of the girl herself, with her real experience, becomes a conviction. By belief. Or rather, superstition.
I often remember one of my clients, whom everyone around convinced: “look, what a positive young man is courting you, asking you to marry - they may not ask you again!” And she gets married and gives birth to a child. And then she gets lost - she doesn’t understand why she needed all this?
The maternal instinct simply hasn’t had time to kick in yet, because everyone develops differently. And it was simply too early for her then. But now everything is “right” for her. And inside there is emptiness and fear. Because she doesn't feel what was expected of her. No real love for her husband, no tender feelings for her child. And she cries at my reception. And she is tormented by the question, which, alas, is already rhetorical - how to become free?
This whole nightmare is built on simple mechanisms: the need for approval + fear of rejection. We are not taught to approve of ourselves as children. We are taught that others must evaluate us .
This comes primarily from parents. We expect approval and praise, love and unconditional acceptance from them, and this is natural. But sometimes they grade us. Because others have rated them and continue to measure them according to different scales and templates.
And this vicious circle has been going on since the Stone Age. And the Stone Age had its own strict laws: people were afraid to survive alone.
Of course, it’s easier to kill a mammoth in a group, and you can take turns keeping watch from wild animals at night. The group becomes the key to survival. To be rejected by a group means to lose your chances of survival. In a sense, this is still true. Most of us still cannot provide for ourselves outside the group.
We need people in order to earn money, exchange the products of their labor and their talents, and exchange emotions. And there's nothing wrong with that. But should we depend so much on other people's lifestyles?
You use medications thoughtlessly
Are you sad? Take this pill and you will feel good. Are you tense? Don't worry, use this medicine and you will be free from worries. Can't sleep peacefully at night? Just take this medicine and you will sleep like a baby.
Medicine can be good if taken carefully and treat diseases, but when it comes to getting rid of the root cause of diseases, this is usually not achieved, especially when psychosomatic problems play a role.
Always remember that healthcare companies are profit machines that don't really care about your health. They - and many brainwashed doctors - want you to stay sick so you can continue to fill their pockets.
Do you support politicians?
Politicians don't want to bring real positive change to the world we live in. On the contrary, they are trying to prevent any changes so that they continue to sit on the throne of power, pretending that they care about the problems of the people.
Supporting politicians is a clear sign that you have a slave mentality who cannot think for themselves and take responsibility for their lives, no matter how many times history has proven that politicians do not solve problems. Freedom and responsibility always go hand in hand, so if you want to be free, take responsibility into your own hands and stop blaming others.
Politicians' PR campaigns are set up in such a way that you won't even realize that this is just a clever move to make you like the politician. And you turn a blind eye to the problems that are caused by the activities of some politician, blindly believing that all this is ultimately better for you. Think about it: is your life getting better or worse under the control of politicians?
You feel forced to work
We humans have the technological ability to easily meet the needs of every person living on Earth, without the tedious work that we have to do today. However, in the economic system we have created, money is scarce, so almost every person must work and compete with other workers to get food and shelter, even if their work does not contribute anything useful to society.
If every day more than half of your waking time is spent by the corporation you work for, doing things you hate doing, taking orders to earn low wages that allow you to simply survive, then you have to wonder if you are truly free or just a slave.
Don't be afraid to take steps to change jobs. Think about your childhood dreams and aspirations, perhaps they will tell you where to direct your energy and help you earn money while enjoying it.
