The First Taste of Freedom

She wrote:

“I like your pureness, your freedom and your simplicity. The desire for freedom and love is not freedom but it sets in motion the transformation, enabling you to feel suffering and contradiction. Freedom is tranquility and not the anxiety that pushes you – that is within mind. Freedom is to be able to touch the other intimately – to give oneself the possibility to listen and to respect oneself. I know that there is this cup of tea beside me, these sheets of paper, this music in the air. All the rest is mind, attachment and a habit.”

“What will happen depends on my awareness, my knowing to remain myself and not moving so that others enter into me, leaving behind hurts and scars. Only understanding can heal. In life it is not important what happens but how we live them: love, freedom or the anxiety that comes from what has not been lived fully. This not-living creates bonds and this is what I feel, this is what I go there into life to watch. It is my unawareness that hides all the ‘violence’ that I endure. How I would like to tear apart this veil!

Yours, Sahara.”

Dear friend, if you just try to survive, you will not live. To live, one has to have passion – not a passion that commands and restrains the flesh or the mind, but a passion that is as subtle as the spirit. Only then the spirit can lead the flesh or the mind, and yet you won’t find yourself torn between contradictions. Then one gets the first taste of love, which is a matter of taste, not of sight. Love will then take you to higher realms, gather form into action and leave no trace at all. If it ever leaves a trace, then love has not walked your way.

Certainly, love is freedom and not the mere desire that binds. Freedom is not being able to do what one merely wants to – it is observing carefully why one wants to do a particular thing and not the other thing. It is not being free from something – which may only be an urge to escape. Freedom is gathering all your likes and dislikes, and setting a good bonfire to all branches of your mind. Freedom is this flame of indiscriminate passion. It is this love that neither your gods nor your traditions can instill in you. Freedom is a green pasture where your society has not had the courage to break into and graze peacefully.

As you say, freedom is the ability to listen, not only to yourself, but also to the other. But this requires a great deal of passion and of patience. Do we have the ears to listen, or the eyes to look? We are often led by the blind dictum of society and we remain proud to conform to its norms. Sadly enough, love has become a fairytale that first invites us to fly and later clips our wings. We have become second-hand creatures, with no capacity to love nor to see the boundaries of freedom, let alone wander into this dimension. Just try this simple experiment. Take a good sip from your tea-cup. If you are so overwhelmed by the taste that you have no words for it, then you have had your taste of freedom.

If this does not happen at once, do not be disappointed. Empty your cup everyday. Fill it with some freshly brewed tea. Try the experiment anew. It might take a week, a month or a year, but do not give up. And do not forget to hold high the torch of awareness on this dark and dusty road of life. One day it is bound to happen. That day you will get your first taste of love and of freedom. The dark veil of which you speak will then vanish by itself.