Liberation from the Limitations of the Imitation Life

"Don't try to be free -- for this sets you against any movement of life that doesn't line up with your ideas about the nature of freedom. Better than trying to be free, learn instead to freely explore all of your moments. For instance, be free to wonder about your worries instead of feverishly working to resolve them according to your present ideas about a worry-free life. Then perhaps you will see that these same ideas about freedom are the source of your worries instead of being their solution! Real Freedom is never far behind inner discoveries such as these."

Our life is wasted trying to resolve a contradiction in our consciousness. We race to freedom, and we race to escape our pain. One doesn't exist without the other.

Consensual freedom occurs when the world lines up with what I want. When the world doesn't agree with me, that freedom disappears. Real freedom never crashes and never despairs.

Our lives are imitations. When under "attack" we call up something that we have imitated. Thinking toward a problem is imitation. We draw our experience from the past.

We sacrifice ourselves for approval. We have an image of what we're supposed to be in order to be approved. I have no idea what I truly am because I'm so busy imitating what I think I should be. Our ideas about life always let us down. Freedom is always new and always original. It is not apart from who I really am.

Try to watch and see that at the root we're imitating something we think we're supposed to be. Doubt depression instead of agreeing with it. Be the discoverer of the dream.