A Question of Freedom

“Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind?  For both you cannot have.  Which do you value?  Which is your goal?  For one you see as means; the other, end.  And one must serve the other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own.  Means serve the end, and as the end is reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless.  No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it.  Yet he will seek for it where he believes it is and can be found.  He will believe it possible of mind or body, and he will make the other serve his choice as means to find it.” – A Course in Miracles; Chapter 22, Section VI, 1:1-10
 
This passage from A Course in Miracles asks us a direct question.  It’s interesting how this blog seems to be taking a turn toward questions and answers, but then I realize that it is the nature of the unwinding mind.  We ask questions until we exhaust ourselves, pretending there is some ‘answer’ missing still.  In our exhaustion, if we’re lucky, we find the stillness, the emptiness, the freedom… the expansive Self.
 
Every seeming question is about Freedom.  We may ask, “How do I get well?” if health is an issue.  We may ask, “How do I make enough money?” if money is an issue.  We may ask, “How do I feel good about myself again?” if guilt and self-condemnation are the issues du jour.  But every single question is about freedom.  Freedom for something, or freedom from something.  All lies, you see.  Because Real Freedom is completely expansive and includes everyone and everything.  It is the Freedom of BEING that ironically results in freedom within the life we live, without even trying.  Because the unified, expansive Mind reflects in unified, expansive life situations. 
 
The question that the Course asks is very direct.  Are we seeking this freedom of unified Mind, or are we just seeking for mental solutions to take care of the physical issues we really value?  I can honestly say that most of my life, even much of my life studying and teaching the Course, was spent in searching for freedom of the body… for pleasure, for success, for recognition, for companionship, for accomplishment, for avoidance, for security… the list of seeming reasons goes on and on.  But all were related to freedom for the imagined self in a body, in a world of bodies. 
 
I had a dream the other night, and I won’t bore you with the plots, twists, turns, and weird associations.  But the symbolic part was this enormous tree, vibrant and alive, but completely hollow.  You could walk inside and never see the top… it was like a huge, dark, infinite unknown.  Some part of me wanted to be afraid of the unknown part, but the wiser part knew it was completely safe, and somehow holy.
 
It was several days later that the Inner Voice clarified the symbol.  Our True Self is vibrant, eternally Alive, but completely empty of everything but the spacious, infinite Altar of Self… Unified Mind Awake and Infinitely Free.  And if this is the freedom we seek, we gladly give over every other aspect of our lives as means to find it… and find it we do.  It is our True Self, the Reality of All that Is.  The question of Freedom is answered the minute we ask a true question. “Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind?  For both you cannot have!”