How To Be Free: The Five Practices Of True Liberation

A true question can transform your life A sincere question can bring the familiar life To a screeching halt in this moment How to be free?

How to find,

Attain freedom?

This is the most important question that one can ask Because this question is not about freedom from something This question is about freedom,

Period When everything outside has disappointed you There is space for this question to arise Your mind has become a fertile ground for this question to sprout And even if we cannot see this or formulate this question clearly The fact that you are listening to these words implies that at some level you have seen the truth of this question It has glimpsed in your mind Probably forgotten at this point This freedom is not about freedom from people,

Situations or things We spend most of our life trying to find freedom outside The more we try,

The more we are entangled The more we are bound,

The more we are imprisoned The grabbing,

The grasping,

The holding on To people,

Situations and things cripples us Until we are brought to our knees And when I say brought to our knees I don't mean when something bad happens It's when everything is fine And we still feel imprisoned And because we don't understand this bondage or imprisonment We don't understand this crisis that is happening deep inside And then we go harder at life We grab more,

We fight more The more we grab,

The more we reject The more we fight,

The more we run away The more we are bound,

The more we are attached to everything that we are fighting and trying to run away from And it seems to the mind that that which we are attached to is holding on to us is imprisoning us and is responsible for this crisis that we feel So when a question like this bubbles up in our heart which could be precipitated by shock,

Tragedy or some other form of grace Something in us wakes up We have chased objects in life An object in the form of people,

Accomplishments,

Accumulations Whatever be the narrative,

We have chased it We have chased people,

Feelings,

Comfort,

Pleasure Some numbers,

Just like grabbing at sand leaves us empty handed The more we have grabbed at everything that we have chased it has left us empty handed In Ashtavakra Gita,

Ashtavakra says to shun the objects of senses Not as a form of discipline through violence but a deep understanding that nothing can fill that void that we have glimpsed And it's not that before it was revealed to us,

This void didn't exist It did,

That's why we were chasing,

Trying to fill it up And yet we are here,

Unfulfilled It's a difficult process to understand the objects of senses because there are infinite objects around us If you go through the mind's route of reasoning we have physical objects,

We have subtle objects in the mind So physical out in the world and subtle in the mind What helps us see the dynamism of our experience is to collapse all the objects,

All the infinite objects into six sense modalities Objects themselves have a permanence or pseudo permanence to them For instance,

The phone on the table that I see has been there all along So it has an apparent permanence to it With this way of interpreting our experience one cannot really argue about the existence or non-existence of this phone But what happens when we look at the same experience and interpret it by collapsing the object into its sense modality corresponding to the six senses we all have namely eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Tongue and skin as the five senses of perception inputs to this bio-computer and then the mind as the sixth sense of subtle perceptions namely thoughts,

Images and feelings or internal bodily sensations So instead of dealing with permanent,

Pseudo-permanent objects that are abstracted out of these sense modalities we are going back to the basic principles of being a human and understanding that other than these six input mechanisms there is nothing more that we can speak of All these modalities have the same quality of being an object that is,

It appears to you and it disappears in you A sight,

A sound,

Taste,

Texture,

Smell or thoughts and feelings are still the same,

You still experience them but we cannot attribute permanence to them and as long as we are dealing with individual objects it will seem like an eternity to realize that these objects will never deliver there will always be that hope that the mind clings on to to bring freedom,

True freedom in our life and it might seem like an eternity to renounce,

To shun these objects of senses However,

Once you collapse which is not really a mental gymnastics or a theoretical exercise but it's actually representative of our truest human experience where our eyes only perceive sights our ears only perceive sounds our nose smells,

Our tongue tastes and our skin senses and feels and our mind thinks and imagines and this entire human experience is one perception after the other in no particular order like right now,

You are hearing my words then you are feeling your body then you are thinking something it's all happening as one perception appears,

The previous one disappears and once we see this play of perceptions then there is no belief in permanence because we understand that arising of perception and disappearing of perception is constantly happening and as long as we consider them individual objects there is hope that this or that will give me long lasting peace and happiness although that one did not yet and this one did not either but I really feel that this new one definitely will so let me spend five more years chasing it and every chase ends up in a fleeting moment of relief and the next one begins so that's what ashtavakra means by shun these objects of senses by recognizing that they will never deliver they have never delivered either to see through the false promise of these so called objects the void,

This search for freedom that we are seeking cannot be filled by physical or mental objects and because the mind doesn't know anything other than mental or physical it cannot accompany us ahead in the journey and just because the mind is able to formulate this question doesn't mean the mind knows how to get there or to do something with this seeking that's because we have lost ourselves along the way and let mind give us all the answers and put it on a pedestal so it's important to understand the non-physical slash mental nature of the void the non-physical,

Non-mental nature of the seeking for freedom and in order to get there,

Ashtavakra says practice,

Forgiveness,

Sincerity,

Compassion,

Contentment and truth the opposite of all these five practices is the mind's way of grabbing holding on to that which will never satisfy the true thirst in you not forgiving,

Insincerity,

Indifference,

Discontentment and untruth are the chains that keep us imprisoned so even though we sincerely long for the answer to this question of freedom we seem to be caught behind thick walls of this prison of holding grudges,

Being indifferent,

Insincere,

Discontent and living and operating at different levels of falsehood or untruth and these five poisons continue to make us prisoners and prolongs the freedom this radical idea confirms our intuition that no one and nothing from the outside has made us a prisoner and no one and nothing from outside can free us either being insincere,

Indifferent,

Intolerant,

Unforgiving,

Holding grudges,

Untruthful constantly being with the unreal is the mind's affinity and an internal choice that we don't even know that we are making these choices so the way out is an intentional choice of forgiveness,

Sincerity,

Truth,

Compassion and contentment some might call this purification of the mind which really means that this is a way of unhooking from that which is keeping us bound the mind has affinity to these negatives and an intention to free ourselves is to first see through the facade of these objects and collapse them into the six modalities of sights,

Sounds,

Tastes,

Textures and smells and thoughts and images to see the never fulfilling promise of these objects and their apparently permanent,

Pseudo-permanent nature and then to practice disentangling the mind from these thick chains of imprisonment the more grudges we hold the more bound we are the more we are controlled,

The more enslaved we are and to the mind it might seem,

It might feel that the other person or the situation is making us hold on to a grudge but when we have this helpless attitude we have relinquished our freedom we have voluntarily embraced and accepted imprisonment the more untruth,

The more falseness we follow in life on a moment to moment basis the farther it takes us from freedom untruth has so many different levels of operation in actions,

In intentions,

In thoughts,

In ideas some might come out of malice while most come out of ignorance and naivety of believing whatever the mind tells us whatever is the first interpretation of the mind practicing contentment and it has never been easier to be discontent than now with social media faking everything to us needs to be very intentional the untruth,

Discontentment keeps us going nowhere feeling hopeless so firstly we have to see that the mind is insatiable the body's intelligence cannot be contested when you eat enough,

The body tells you,

You have eaten enough and when you continue on,

It will tell you that you have eaten more than enough and if you still don't listen,

It will just cry out in pain initially the body will tell you,

It's time to go to bed if you continue on,

You will feel tired and groggy and then at some point you will be knocked off and in each case the mind continues eating,

Scrolling,

Watching,

Working,

Thinking because there is no satiety in the mind falling for the false stories of the mind should also be shunned that's where the practice of truth comes into picture there is no intentional malice yet there is untruth and sometimes the mind rebels that accepting or forgiving would be accepting defeat letting go of that person or God or that situation,

Scot-free for all that pain it has caused us 5 days ago,

5 years ago,

25 years ago so it holds on to grudges forgiveness is realizing that someone or something had to be a postman to deliver you your letter being insincere is your mind's way of convincing you to ignore the glimpse and to continue the chase sometimes by throwing tantrums or many times cunningly deviating our attention away so this practice of forgiveness,

Sincerity,

Compassion,

Truth and contentment needs to be imprinted onto our life one moment at a time one day at a time being patient enough knowing that you are dealing with decades of carving of the canyon of prisonhood a few hours or days is not going to counter that it's a practice and instead of shunning it with violence and discipline it needs to be shunned with wisdom and understanding the first step starts here with cleaning house one day at a time you just have to disentangle yourself from the crutches of the mind until you see it clearly until you stand in your freedom moment to moment thank you