Freedom

To experience freedom requires that one start with freedom rather than make freedom a goal to achieve. Most students to Life and higher consciousness start by letting a not-I known as the self-improver suggest that if one struggles hard enough and practices some techniques, or more than likely many techniques, that finally after many years one will gain freedom, that is, if one lives long enough. This approach is based on the idea that one gains freedom by being free from all things we have been taught to believe are bad. However, one never experiences freedom this way.
One does not become free. One starts by being free to. To start being free, one recognizes that one is conditioned and thus behaves as a conditioned person, which is to be in conflict. Conflict is experienced as anxiety. So-I am free to experience anxiety. When one is free to experience anxiety, anxiety disappears in a very short time, less than half an hour. The reason: now that you are free to experience the emotion of anxiety, a not-I can no longer bully you. The same is true for all the emotions-anger, guilt, fear and insecurity. We don't like these emotional states, as well as, by now knowing they are detrimental to our state of well-being.
We struggle against these states, or we resist them, or try to improve self to not have them. All the not-I's then get in the act. Some bully self to quit having them by improving self. Some justify them by saying that under the circumstances they are justified. Conflict is the state of being, year in and year out.
When one is free to experience these unpleasant states there is no condemnation or justification. Condemnation and justification are the work of the not-I's. Then the not-I's are put out of business. There is no longer anything for them to condemn or justify. Conflict,struggle and resistance come to an end naturally with the realization of this freedom. Trying to be free from is bondage. Being free to is seeing the truth, the truth that is truly freedom.