27.07.08
What is Freedom?
Posted in Musings at 11:42 am by Linda 
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Jesus poses the question: “Would you rather be hostage to the ego or host to God?”(T.11.II.7: 1). In the same paragraph he goes on to say: “You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. Yet that is not real freedom, for it still depends on how you see it.”
Here the question of what is real freedom is raised and as usual the Course has its own radical version of what freedom is.
We, especially in the West, think of freedom as the freedom to choose. Our very sense of individuality is predicated on the assumption that I can choose who I want to be and the path I want to take in life. The Course also speaks frequently of our one remaining freedom being our ability to choose: to choose the ego or the Holy Spirit. That represents an extreme reduction according to worldly terms. But the Course goes even further because recognizing that there are two voices to choose between is an essential but fundamentally temporary phase in our spiritual path.
Jesus is plainly telling us that while we still think there is an egoic path to choose we are still bound. The basic premise of the Atonement is that the idea of having a separate will is an impossible one and has therefore never happened. The egoic idea of separation and the whole cosmos that appears to be built upon it is nothing. It is not there to choose except in our delusions. The Holy Spirit and the truth of who we are as God’s Son are always already present. They cannot be not there because that is what we are. That is why the emphasis in the Course is one of undoing and letting go of ALL our judgements so that the truth of what we are can shine through. Reality need be only accepted because it always there as what we are.
The Will of God is eternal BEING in Him and we are that Will. There is nothing outside of that or beyond it because there is nothing outside of or beyond Infinity. When we think we are thinking and willing apart from the all-inclusive totality of Being we are merely hallucinating. Granted, in our deluded state the collective hallucination seems vast. And why wouldn’t it? We are the Son of God miscreating. The thing that needs to be accepted and lived is that the miscreation is a hallucination.
How do we live that recognition? Jesus teaches:
“Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.” (T.11.II.7: 7-8)
So real freedom will dawn upon our awareness when we finally realize and accept that there is no choice. Then there is not so much freedom of will but simply Free Will. Then the possibility of being bound in awareness simply is no more.