Truth Really Does Set You Free

Any kind of disease - emotional, physical, societal, ecological - arises from a singularity: our inability or unwillingness to connect the truth of what is happening in reality to the distorted picture that lives in our sophisticated human cortices. So all unpleasantness in life is from not seeing the big picture. There is a reason for it to be this way. Illness, imbalance, or suffering is the impetus for all action in the manifest universe. This is a foundational law of physics.

Awareness - deliberately putting one's attention and senses toward what is really happening inside and around us - is our shield against disease of the body-mind or the world around us.

Truth - honest and direct - is our sword.

What is freedom, anyway? I think it's free will, and nothing more.

There are many people who feel trapped, even though they have all their material needs met and they are healthy. Conversely, there are some people who have nothing and nobody and yet they are irritatingly cheerful every time you see them.

I myself had a spontaneous moment of happiness about a decade ago that was so overwhelming, I started to cry. I felt this great pleasure rise up in me and I realized at once "I am happy"!

I immediately tried to assess why. Let's see, I thought, I have debt, I didn't get accepted at the school I want to go to, my job is a little boring, I live in a basement apartment with a parking lot for a yard, I'm single... why in the world am I so happy? There's no reason for it.

Then I stopped thinking that way because it was harshing my buzz.

Happiness is not connected with external reality. It really isn't. Happiness is a state of mind. And, of course, minds can be filled with conflicts and lies and imagined better possibilities that deceive us over and over again into believing that nothing is as it should be. What an incredibly complicated web we weave - especially when it's ourselves we deceive.

Truth - the intentional kind - is the sword that cuts through everything. That's why we so often fail to express the truth; it would upset whatever delicate balance of circumstances we have created in order to not have to deal with an uncertain changing world. Never mind the other people whose opinions matter to your quality of life, even if you just tell the truth to yourself the universe begins to shift. Telling the truth gives you immediate access to your free will.

Awareness - the only real shield that anyone has against disease in the body-mind instrument or in the world around us - comes with incredible ease if we would only be completely truthful with ourselves about something that is revealed to us continuously in our day-to-day lives:

You have total free will at all times.

Yes, it's true. In any given moment, you have an infinite number of options and you can choose any of them. Even in the moment before your death you have the option to think any kind of thought, breathe at various speeds, have your eyes open or shut, and an infinitude of combinations and variants of these. Even the relatively blind, deaf, insensate and immobile fetus exercises his free will moment by moment.

The confusion lies in the fact that:

everything that occurs after you exercise your free will is totally out of your control.

The result of your actions, the consequences, and the rewards or punishments for your actions are dependent on cosmic law, God's will, social regulations, and so on.

I've always been frustrated with the legal system because of just this phenomenon. Take the choice to kill another person, for example. If I put a gun to someone's head and pull the trigger and the person dies, and if I then get caught, I will be on trial for first degree murder. However, if I make these exact same choices and I don't get caught, then I won't be on trial. If the person doesn't die, I won't be on trial for murder - I'll be on trial for attempted murder, which carries a lighter sentence. If the bullet jams in the gun or I forgot to load it or I mistakenly used a water gun, then perhaps nothing will come of the situation at all.

See, there are a million possible outcomes just from that one simple act of free will, and I have no control over any of them.

Not only do I have no control over anything that happens as a consequence of my actions in the world around me, I have no control over the thoughts and emotions that happen to arise in my own body-mind! These biologically-programmed evolved responses to the experiences I'm having in my life are again controlled not by me, but by cosmic law, God's will, social conditioning and so on.

I never for a moment had any control over my genetic inheritance or any of the experiences that cumulatively make me who I am.

So who does have this control? Who's the one that's doing all these things that make stuff happen the way it happens? Who is the "doer?"

This is where the arguing and the religiosity get into the game. The theists say it's God, the fundamentalists say it's their God, the atheists say "There is no doer," the egotists and New Age spiritualists say "It's all me! I cause everything!"

I've got my own opinion, of course. I'm sure you have yours.

Anyone's individual day-to-day life is simply the ongoing process of him exercising his total free will and the resulting pleasure or pain, over which he has absolutely no control. Everything in the entire universe is hitched together, and you, dear individual, are not the Cosmic Controller.

Allowing yourself to become completely aware of this in any moment enables you to live life with complete acceptance of whatever happens. With complete acceptance, there is no more compulsion to blame or condemn anyone for anything, neither yourself nor another.

At any time that you can suspend the nonsense, slice through it all by accepting the truth of whatever is real for you at this very moment, you will find yourself suddenly without the need to judge any experience. You will, for that moment, know that you have total free will and no responsibility whatsoever for the outcome your choices. In this mindful state, you will find yourself in the peaceful mindspace known as "happiness."

Use your free will to choose to enjoy your happiness. You have no control whatsoever over anything else.