Freedom Is Not a Feeling

One of the most difficult but important things to understand, if one aspires for enlightenment, is that freedom is not a feeling. Freedom is not any particular experience, no matter how profound the experience may be. Freedom is not peace; freedom is not joy; freedom is not ecstasy.
Peace, joy, and ecstasy feel free, but that is just a feeling of freedom; it is not freedom itself. A person who is not free can have an experience of sinking into the peace, joy, and ecstasy of the ground of being and feel during that experience as if they are free. But that doesn't mean they are actually a liberated human being. And on the other hand, a person who is free may experience pain, fear, frustration, confusion, or anxiety, and not lose their freedom.
All experience comes and goes. The feeling quality of your own experience will always be changing, and all the more so if you live a deeply engaged and committed life.
So if you want to be a liberated human being, that liberation is dependent only upon the position that you are taking in relationship to your experience; it's not dependent upon the quality or the content of the experience itself.


Andrew Cohen