Freedom is the sense of being able to think, speak or act
in accordance with what one wants,
without hindrance or restraint.
Freedom is something that all people want.
And to a degree,
it's something that all people need.
However, it is a guarantee, in this life experience,
because we live with other people,
that all of us are going to experience
a lack of freedom at some point in our lives.
For some people, freedom is such an obsession,
that it ruins their life.
To visualize commitment,
you can think of standing at the end of a bowling alley
and rolling the bowling ball down towards the pins at the end
of that bowling alley.
Obviously, if you have an aim,
to achieve that aim, you have to commit.
With no commitment,
there is absolutely no success
in any sector of your life.
It doesn't matter whether it's personal relationships
career, spirituality, anything...
you have to put your energy into something,
in order to get anything out.
But here's the thing;
it is not possible to not commit.
In fact, if you don't commit,
you have committed to not committing.
Let's look at responsibility:
Responsibility is the opportunity to act independently
because you are the one who has the duty
to deal with something autonomously.
This makes you the one who's accountable.
Responsibility is also required to achieve an aim.
Not taking responsibility is a lot like
standing at the end of a bowling alley
and just waiting there for somebody else to throw the ball for you
because you don't wanna take the responsibility for whatever happens
as a result of throwing that bowling ball down the alley.
You don't want to be accountable for the result.
This basically means you fail
at every aspect of your life.
you can't put yourself into spirituality,
so, awakening doesn't occur.
You can't put yourself into... career life
and so you don't achieve any major goals.
You also will fail in relationships,
because what happens if you don't take responsibility for that relationship
is that you've put 100% of the responsibility of the relationship
in the other person's court.
It's up to them to solve the relationship,
it's up to them to meet needs,
it up to them to repair ruptures in their relationship
and that's not going to last long term.
That person is gonna leave.
But a great many people,
especially the people that identify with
the spiritual and/or hippie movement,
what they do is they don't take responsibility
and they don't commit,
and they confuse that with freedom.
Both commitment and responsibility come with a certain kind of pressure.
We could consider that pressure the price of free will and autonomy.
That pressure is only worth it to people
if they can see that they get something positive
out of taking on that pressure.
Some of the things a person can get as a result of taking on the pressure
is authority, self-esteem, a sense of self accomplishment,
control, and rather ironically,
freedom, for example.
If we have an issue with commitment and responsibility,
we have trauma related to both.
The people who have the hardest time
with responsibility and commitment
come from household where they perceived
one or both parents of theirs to be dictators.
Now, what sets a dictatorship apart
is that power is maintained through force.
And that force is carried out through consequences.
Consequences that a person can't afford.
Some of these consequences might be facing total disapproval,
ostracization,
being scapegoated by the whole family,
loss of belonging, shaming, isolation,
emotional punishment,
and even physical punishment.
Because they can't face these consequences,
they choose to comply.
But because they don't wanna HAVE TO choose
to comply or not comply,
it feels as if they are being forced into that choice.
And so what these people do,
is they lose touch with the fact
that they made the choice in the first place.
Instead, they live their life feeling forced into everything.
These people feel as if they have no freedom in the household.
Especially no freedom to be themselves.
The freedom they had was the choice to give up their freedom,
and personal desires, and authenticity
to avoid the consequences set forth by this parent.
A child growing up in this type of environment
also didn't experience any rewards coming as a result
of taking responsibility or of commitment.
They experienced the exact opposite.
For example, when they committed to a decision
they were made to feel like it was the wrong decision
or like the price for mistakes is just too high
to commit to a course of action.
This is especially true
if one of these consequences for making a mistake
was blame and loss of closeness/love of their parent.
Responsibility came with consequences
that were priced too high.
To learn more about this,
watch my video titled:
"How To Get Over The Fear Of Commitment"
Freedom is all about personal desire.
When we want something enough,
we are willing to put ourselves completely into it
and take the risks and the pressure
involved with the responsibility and commitment therein.
But here is where people who struggle with these two things
got their wires crossed.
If you are one of these people
who confuses freedom with lack of commitment
and lack of responsibility,
here's how your wires got crossed:
The belief that you were imprinted with in your early life is that
you couldn't want what you want.
It is wrong and comes with consequences
that are too high to assume.
You had to want what someone else wanted for you.
You can't authentically make yourself do this.
So you can't authentically commit to someone else's desire
if it opposes your own.
You also couldn't authentically take responsibility
for carrying out their desire.
You simply lived your life to appease them
so you could stay safe and avoid the consequences of not doing so.
But deep down, this made you feel controlled
and you resented it and didn't feel free.
You lost awareness
that this is a choice you yourself made
simply because it is never a choice
you wanted to have to make.
You felt forced into that choice.
And because your association with commitment and responsibility
is associated and linked with all these unpleasant experiences,
including the giving up of your own personal desire,
instead of seeing commitment and responsibility
as freedom, which it is,
you see it as the loss of freedom.
If you are the person who had this experience,
the duty inherent in responsibility
feels like jail bars.
If you are this type of person,
the pressure of accountability feels like a ball and chain.
If you are this kind of person,
any time you commit yourself to something
and put all of your energy into it,
it feels like a trap.
Basically,
you perceived duty,
pressure, accountability
and committing to something
so as to not be able to back out of it at any second,
as a potential hindrance to your freedom.
But, because of this,
you don't commit to anything,
you don't take responsibility for anything,
and you call it freedom.
This isn't freedom,
it's a perpetual state of lack of responsibility.
This is not freedom,
it's a perpetual state of lack of commitment.
This is not freedom,
this is perpetual avoidance.
You have to understand
that with freedom comes intense levels of commitment
and intense responsibility.
This is also true in our relationships.
If you choose with your free will,
to take somebody else as part of yourself,
which is what love really is,
then it means you're taking their best interest
as part of your best interest.
Nobody is forcing you to do that,
you're choosing it with your free will.
but that comes with the responsibility
of their best interest.
This doesn't mean giving up your desires,
and it doesn't mean requiring the other person
to give up their desires,
it's that you're both taking each other's best interest
into account.
Basically, they commit to finding a win win scenario
for both them self and the other person,
because they've taken responsibility for their part
in the relationships in their life.
These people who assume the responsibility
the accountability within their relationships,
not to be confused with lack of freedom,
they commit to also finding people
in their life to be close to
who are intensely compatible
so that this can actually occur.
For more information about this, I want you to watch two of my videos;
The first is:
"How To Create A Safe Relationship"
and the second is:
"Take Them As Part Of You" (The Golden Key To A Good Relationship).
If we do not uncross these wires,
so that we can associate freedom
as innately involving commitment and responsibility,
we will end up completely alone,
having achieved absolutely nothing
except for a life of avoidance.
This is the difference between succeeding
at never feeling tied down or caught,
which is avoiding what we don't want,
and really genuinely creating the life that we want;
Creating what we do want.
And I must warn you here,
so many spiritual and social ideologies
were created specifically to justify a perpetual state of avoidance.
Because they were created by leaders and teachers,
who themselves,
were just as avoidant as the disciples that their teachings attract.
This is your life.
You came here to live it.
You can think and say and do what you want
and have a deep and happy relationship
at the same time.
You can be free.
But, freedom comes with great commitment
and great responsibility.
If you want a life that is truly free,
your first commitment should be
to improving your relationship to commitment and to responsibility.
When you are living out your true desires,
with people whose desires are compatible to those desires,
I can personally guarantee
that the pressure and the risks
inherent with responsibility and commitment
will be worth it.
Have a good week.