What is freedom? If you listen to the theologian and philosopher St Augustine, real freedom doesn’t mean the right to do anything whatsoever. It means being given access to everything that is necessary for a flourishing life – and, it follows, being protected from many of the things that ruin life.
What is Freedom?
Climate change does not happen in isolation. The changing environment cannot be divorced from our political and economic systems. We cannot rise to this unprecedented challenge without acknowledging that climate change forces a fundamental shift in global society. It means shifting to a society that values people and the planet over profit and pollution. Deeper than that, it requires recognition that the struggles of people around the globe are rooted together, and that solutions do not exist in isolation.
I can’t agree more.
I was surfing the web, reading some blog posts and I found this one posted by Kevin Matthews, a 24-year old American. I thought it was a really good articulation of what North American main-stream society faces and also the paradox that I believe many of us are starting to see. That we love and want to be a part of this society that provides so much freedom, opportunities, but also realize that there’s a need to balance its neurotic pathologies. For example, just always being ‘frigging busy’ and obsessed with achievement and instant gratification.
Anyway, read for yourselves if you have a chance and Happy Mother’s Day!
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There is an idea of what it means to be an American citizen. On one end, some might use words like freedom, opportunity, or democracy. On the other end, some would disagree, and instead use tyranny, oppression, or authoritarianism. AQAL dictates a certain level of truth to all them. The aim of this perspective is to address that truth for what it is, to acknowledge and bring it to the surface in order to transcend and include. That should be enough to at least crack the existential mirror with which many of us surround ourselves, and open our minds to the deeper realities of existence.
By no means am I an expert in anything. I hold no degrees. I swipe membership cards, answer telephones, and schedule tennis courts for a living. I live with my parents. I haven’t had a spiritual awakening. I’ve made so many mistakes in my short life that I’m surprised anyone would take me in, but I’m grateful to those that have. There is one thing that I’m really, really good at, however, and I bet many of you are too – living the “American way.” In the brief course of my Integral studies and life practice, however, exactly which direction that way points, to me, is not so cut and dry anymore.
In the United States there is always someone or something competing for our attention. Our lives unfold amidst the chaos of an increasingly faster, updating, and challenging world where we create major demands on our time in order to fulfill lavish wants and basic needs. Some might say that we play out an increasingly complex, stressful and adventurous existence where we’re just as impacted by the advances of science and technology that better our lives as the ideas and innovations that inspire them. Especially in this digital era, the world’s wisdom is literally in the palm of our hands.
Not everyone has it easy; obviously, like any society, there are unfortunate circumstances like poverty and crime that present the opportunity to look for a solution, if not find the solution itself. Challenges like these are both real-world and age-old issues, and will always be an underlying component of society. Samsara abounds. A challenge for many of us is that we don’t really have first-hand knowledge of what poverty actually feels like, or the experience of seeing gang-warfare in the streets. I know I don’t. We can talk about these issues, but when it comes time to actually do something about it most of us find excuses not to. We blame our job, or our family, or some other external circumstances to justify our reasoning. Then we go out and drown our own issues with a bar tab. This reflects a bigger problem than, I believe, most Americans realize.
Rarely do we make the time in our busy schedules to just be with ourselves without distraction or interruption. Because our lives are so intricate, I believe most Americans are either unaware or don’t care that our emotional and intellectual freedom is appropriated, in the name of progress, nearly twenty-four hours a day, every day. Catherine MacCoun, in her book entitled On Becoming an Alchemist, puts it best:
Its odd that Americans, who are so fierce in their defense of freedom of will, raise no objection at all to this incessant trespassing on their freedom of attention. If you think of attention as a form of wealth (a currency we rightly speak of “paying”), the average American gets robbed several times a minute.1
This competition over our attention is so deeply rooted in American culture and society that we just really can’t help ourselves. We are so accustomed to the way we live, and so blindly follow the American way, that it is considered taboo to even question the system and think independently, even though the system is designed to allow it. The underlying motivation for all those attention-grabbers is the primordial strive toward excellence. The drive to excel, however, has a strong and elusive shadow, deeply ingrained in the faculty of human ego, which favors fierce competition over cooperation and tarnishes our ability to effectively differentiate between genuine, lasting happiness and temporary relief and gratification.
American society, for the most part, is entirely based on competition. We would have never become the nation we are today without the combination of democracy and capitalism that we so desperately value, including the varying degrees of competition inherent in every aspect of our lives. Some of it is healthy and provides room for advancement and healing, while other unhealthy forms serve only to beat out the other guy and maximize the bottom line. Unfortunately, because this unhealthy competition simply arises in our local environment, it creates an underlying current in our society of want for profit and material gain that can be both highly visible and extremely subtle.
The tragedy of this is that many Americans end up deceiving themselves through mindless acts of wanton greed. We hide behind our grievances and issues with impulsive and immediate gratification and self-fulfillment instead of facing them head on. We make ourselves feel better by claiming to be in support of some worthwhile cause, yet the lives we lead make us blind hypocrites. We look to the external world to “fix” our internal issues because it is very easy for us to do, but the only progress we make is on the depth of the hole in which we are standing. The reality of our situation is that we are excellently poised to develop and foster a world that promotes well-being for everyone, yet we get too caught up in the highs and lows of our mundane lives to see it.
So, if we truly are excellently poised to solve our individual problems and those that plague our society, how do we go about doing it? Obviously there’s no quick fix scheme. It is important to understand and recognize that there will always be problems, too. It seems that whenever we solve one, another pops up. This is simply the nature of the universe. The mistake in thinking for Americans, I believe, is that we try to solve problems, like poverty and crime, without having our own lives in order. We try to conquer these timeless issues without transcending our own inner demons. Although this is inspiring, it only hampers the effect of our actions.
This mistake in thinking reflects a deeper truth – we think too much. As stated above, most of us don’t take the time out of our day to clear our minds of useless and destructive thinking. Instead, we allow ourselves to repress these issues where they wait in hiding for the opportune time to bloom bigger and badder than before. This happens, of course, during the worst possible moment. What this boils down to, I believe, is that Americans rely too heavily on their intellectual capacity for understanding and problem solving while discounting the clarity and peace of mind that comes from cultivating inner wisdom.
Inner wisdom is readily available to everyone but, sadly, it requires more sacrifice and dedication than most of us are willing to give. We believe sitting in meditation is a waste of time because we aren’t accomplishing anything. Or, we become too quickly impatient and drop our practice because results are slow to come or because it is painful. These excuses are rooted in fear. The commitment necessary to gain profound inner wisdom scares most of us away, yet we are already unwittingly committed to a lifestyle that handicaps our potential for growth.
Here’s a great way to consider meditation:
Our unexciting practice may appear to be very negative. This is not so. It is a wise and effective way to work on ourselves. It is just very plain…On the other hand it may seem as if I am speaking about gradual attainment. This is not so either. In fact this is the sudden way, because when your practice is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.2
Meditation gives us the mental space to effectively grasp and manage our external challenges and circumstances. Sometimes, in making space, we also uncover different truths about ourselves that provide an opportunity for growth or deeper understanding.
There’s no wonder most Americans don’t get it. Our understanding of the world is defined by things that perform a physical function – the “if I can’t see it, well then, it must not exist” mentality. This is almost as bad as entitlement mentality – the “I deserve that but I don’t have to work for it” one – which must be overcome before any of us begin to truly “wake up” on a recognizable scale.
In the United States, entitlement mentality runs rampant. I think people get their emotions confused with the Consitution confused with the Declaration of Independence. Happiness is not a guarantee. Again, samsara abounds. The pursuit of happiness, however, is a guarantee. We have the right to pursue our greatest desires, not the right to just take or have them. This has levels of meaning deeper than this perspective needs to address, but it is nonetheless a substantial issue among many Americans today.
The essence of a meditative practice lies in non-attachment. What this means is that we should not have any intentions for or labeling ideals attached to it. We sit for the sake of sitting. For Americans, this takes on the additional meaning of learning how to disengage from the cultural mainstream that controls our lives and direct our attention inwards. Once our inner lives are under control, then we can efficiently and effectively tackle the challenges we face as a society. By no means does this suggest ignoring what is necessary for us to live and provide for ourselves and our family. Nor does it suggest getting rid of our creature comforts. It simply proposes that we make the time during the day to just sit and relax, and rest in pure emptiness and awareness. That is it.
In retrospect, nothing I’ve said here is new. If anything, my words are only a reflection of my own unfolding inner process, and represent the challenges I need to address in my own life.
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
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Notes
1Catherine MacCoun, On Becoming an Alchemist (Boston: Shambhala, 2006) 53.
2Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 1970) 58-59.
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– Ju
Julius Ko 