What is freedom?

What does it mean to be free?

I remember, when I was younger, I thought that being free meant being able to do exactly what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it.

Then I discovered meditation and I thought that being free meant controlling my thoughts and trying to force myself to be peaceful.

As the years went by I realised that in either case, I wasn’t free.

So what is inner freedom?

I find it helpful to bring to mind the analogy of sailing a boat.

So if you just let the boat do whatever it wanted, if you believed that was freedom, the wind would blow you or the current would take you (this is being a servant to your wild thoughts and impulses) and sooner or later you would end up ship wrecked!

Surely, when sailing, you would want to navigate where you’d like to go, right?

So the freedom would actually be to sense it to the current weather conditions, to rig the sail, take the helm and navigate to the chosen destination.

Being in charge of the boat is actual freedom.

Just as being in charge of our mind, is actual freedom.

And it’s important to remember that this isn’t a forceful controlling.

It’s more of a tuning in to the inner weather conditions (the thoughts, emotions, impulses in the moment) and knowing that there is choice, that we can develop wise and skilful responses to our experience.

And over time, as we learn not to believe every thought and follow every impulse, we build resilience and grow our ability to ride the ups and downs of life with more ease.

"The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master"

~ Robin Sharma