10. The Fear of Freedom
10. The Fear of Freedom
Hitting the Road Jack, Aparigraha Revisited and the Elephant in the Bedroom
The journey from and into spirit continues from:
From the beginning:
Essay playlist is here.
Waking Up from Spiritual Practice into Confusion, Tyranny and my Apology to You
It was now late in the year 2021. After my years of yoga bliss — aka sadhana (daily spiritual practice) and svadhyaya (self study and the study of spiritual scripture), aka social dis-engagement, blindness and abstinence — we had returned to social engagement only to miss the mark in several ways. Our Psyche-Somatic Resonance Awareness Process (PS-RAP) had guided us to actively engage the society by rejecting the tyranny we had been until then inappropriately ignoring — history is pretty blunt that the forbearance of minor freedom infringements by governments eventually result in the death of citizenry and society by those governments.
I formally apologise for my unwitting forbearance to the convid medical tyranny because with my inactivity I actively supported the repetition of brutal history even as it was developing in the disguised wolf who had quietly enacted baby steps towards tyranny around the world.
Yoshiko and I experienced a short period of confusion and disorientation while we researched with eyes that now included seeing beyond our cloistered yoga-bliss the society and community within which were were cocooned. With early injection knowledge it was with something akin to enthusiasm that we jumped up to engage actively with ‘our’ society. We jumped up to land flat on our faces ostensibly in complete failure. After the bustling feel-good do-gooderism, all our eyes saw was mud. Well, that and the powdery snow of winter in Yukon at -25°C when we joined the freedom protestors on a main street.
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Our naïve and newly opened eyes had been blinded by good intentions. And so it was that we missed the mark in all ways possible! We had wanted to help the people around us, friends, social media acquaintances and communities. We didn’t recognise that we had fallen into the Mara (limiting ego perceptions/actions) good-intention trap of helping others who were not asking for help. We didn’t recognise until after the fall into the mud that our good-intentioned pushiness was a form of bullying, a subtle form of missing the practice of ahimsa (peaceful action). It turned out that during the time of our svadhyaya ‘our’ community had left us and ventured to another dimension of intention and awareness. We were no longer members of ‘our’ community and that expanded separation between us was made crystal clear in the time of covid.
Our practice of sadhana and svadhyaya had expanded our awareness into increased freedom by enriching our personal autonomy and agency. In the meantime the unified propagandised scriptures of governments and their various spokespeople and media bullies had successfully convinced society to contract into one of severely reduced freedom and the near complete removal of personal autonomy and agency. In other words, tyranny.
Tyranny, an ‘official’ definition:
1. government by a ruler or small group of people who have unlimited power over the people in their country or state and use it unfairly and cruelly; 2. a situation in which someone or something controls how you are able to live, in an unfair way. (Cambridge Dictionary.)
And covid policies were (and are) a tyranny of the most well-structured kind, the one in which the subjects do not recognise the state that they are in. Early in her interview with Jordan Peterson, Yeonmi Park describes that situation perfectly. Paraphrased: “If you are complaining about the tyranny you are in, you are not in the deepest tyranny. When I was in North Korea I didn’t know I wasn’t free.” This is what happened to most of the people under the guise of fear-of-virus-death: an imposed tyranny that people call freedom to live without fear of death-by-virus. The virus is dead, long live the virus!
Yoga is to Be Free to Be, Free to Express Without Fear-Masking
I didn’t know it at the time that what Yoshiko and I were actually doing with our daily yogic sadhana svadhyaya practices was exploring our artificially imposed psychic and somatic limits, how we had been living our lives so as to delimit our freedom of movement and the freedom of Self to freely express. We were freeing ourselves from societal imposition of the diminution of the Self.
And how had we been delimiting ourselves? Fear, of course. So it turns out that yoga, when properly approached, is about the removal of limits. And fear is the delimiting force majeure. Eventually, with clear intention and without being sidetracked into the false paradises, spiritual by-passes, that Mara proffers along the yogic path, the ultimate limit and limiter that yoga removes is fear. Yoga is not primarily or even most importantly about poses.
Fear of what? This seems an almost too obvious a question, of course, especially in the masking time because the list is very long. Our culture is full of the psychoanalytical lists of fears of this or that kind: success, failure, disappointment, achievement, poverty, abundance. And all the tangible noun-phobias, of course: people, water, germs, air, bacteria, fat, sugar, dirt, crowds, aliens, protestants, nuclear war, moslems, viruses. We have all the lists, lists without end. And for many the ‘list-fix’ is some kind of palliative triage to limp us through the long dark winter of the soul, a moribund kind of endless diatribe of blame and complain, addiction behaviours and activities that may include drugs of all sorts, prescription and otherwise including alcohol, cigarettes, food, self-help books, sex, exercise including yoga and meditation, and/or technology of all kinds including injections.
Another Wake-Up Wack-a-Mole Across the Head
The silence was deafening to us. Deafening and frightening. Government and our immediate ‘spiritual’ and social community had said nothing! I remember actually feeling a butterfly of fear flit across my stomach that the government’s silence indicated that it had marked me, and by proximity, the delightful and intelligent Yoshiko, as members who no longer deserved the community’s respect. ‘Our’ community’s silence supported that governmental assignment of an undeserving status. What tends to happen to any deemed undeserving by their community? In one form or another, it involves shunning, isolation in various ways including incarceration and often concludes with those ‘dirty’ undeserving earning some kind of deserved death.
That silence shook us up and collapsed our planned plans within just a few months of their formulation. And so, another aimed for target fell to dust in front of us. And with that another change in plans that I hadn’t seen coming.
Plans? What Plans? And God laughed, the World’s Green Laughter
What were those dashed plans? In late summer of 2021, after having been ‘exposed’ to my sister’s knowledge and my having confirmed much of it with my own synchronicity-guided research, Yoshiko and I had begun to stock pile (organic) food for the coming bad times. And, OMG, the alt-media was as full of fear-mongering as the plandemians (plandemons?😆). At that time I had resolved to be the hero and fight the good fight and Yoshiko went along with that. Again we had missed the mark by having aimed for a target with inappropriate, because inauthentic, action.
And after the wack-a-mole shock and heaviness of silence we weren’t sure what to do. However as many wise voices have said in different ways, confusion is the beginning of wisdom and direction. And so, how to attend the discomfort of the bubbling anxiety comprised significantly yet superficially of my future which had become an abyss of the wageless unknown while shouldering a pile of monetary obligations up the yin-yang. It began to look like Yoshiko and I would be hitting the road, Jack. Where to go?
Hit the Road, Jack, to Nicaragua? I Hadn’t See that Coming
Some of my co-workers tried in various ways to get me to relent my choice. For example a good friend to me suggested that I am guilty of being a potential baby/grandparent killer. Another by suggesting that even though we were currently living in a tyranny — my noun, not his as he suggested that this was a form of normal government yin-yang fluctuation — he knows by historical observation that it would pass, and so why not submit to the ’safe’ injection? I acknowledged that perhaps he was correct. I don’t remember telling him that history is equally blunt about the blood that is often associated with these kinds of fluctuations. So my decision remained firm: I would leave the job rather than submit to the tyranny. I would honour my body as my spiritual expression and guide in the somatic world. This body is, with some thought, the only thing we have that is absolutely present in the moment and cannot be fooled except by a mind full of any and all forms of egoistic mindfulness and its delightful and engaging mara-rich rationalisations be-they ‘spiritual’, ‘scientism(tm)’, ‘ethical’, etc.
Not surprisingly, under the circumstances, my friend’s good intentioned efforts were mostly facile and superficially reasonably and therefore did not add to my anxiety of the future freedom.
At the most fundamental level was that I was honouring my body. I was trusting the manifestation of my Self — whatever that is — as expressed in my body rather than acquiesce to logic, reason and convenience, all manifestations of the malleable mind a tool, perhaps the biggest one, of Mara. That somatic trust is a huge step towards the removal of fear.
And synchronicities provided a direction we were to go via a somatic healer and a shamanic native sweat and the chance encounter with a couple in the anti-tyranny protests, protests that ostensibly threatened the lives of the masked people with injected bodies driving past us inside their cars.
We were to leave for Nicaragua. We were both stunned at the direction. Really? For both Yoshiko and myself our Psyche-Somatic Resonance Awareness Process (PS-RAP) confirmed Nicaragua. I Ching confirmed Nicaragua. Okay, even though my vague perception of it was troubled, at best. We began to prepare for evacuation to Nicaragua. Didn’t see that coming!
I Met the Elephant in the (Bed)Room at 3am; It Was Sitting on My Chest
So we began the process of sumo-on-steroids aparigraha (removing from our selves those things that no longer serve). Initially and, as it turns out superficially, it was about figuring out travel logistics to Nicaragua without injection while reducing our stuff before getting there. The aparigraha of stuff! How to and how much to downsize our stuff? How to get onto a jetplane in order to fly the coop Canada had become?
All worked itself out with smoothness, overall, and some amazing minor synchronicities and connections. For example, the photographer we used for our ID photos was wide awake and stocked with two years of safe food. We met a relative of Franz Kafka and his wife shortly before we left who shared their passion for twenty hour intermittent fasting and were open to Wim Hoff cold water showers with breath-of-fire. In Whitehorse many of Yoshiko’s diverse spiritual books were purchased at give-away-prices to a young Japanese man from an amazing family and fully awake. It was a remarkable encounter, truly 不思議 fushigi (magic, wonder, synchronicity).
Pill-less I began to wake up at 3am with an elephant of fear on my chest.
The elephant was invisible and real and heavy. My eyes were open wide and I would very consciously begin to exercise-embody all the yogic and somatic practices I had been studying in my sadhana and svadhyaya. In particular, I would like to extend my deep gratitude especially to Heather Monroe and Tommy Rosen who shared Heather with us in his sincere deep healing group, Recovery 2.0.
Following my body of knowledge I stayed in the bed instead of doing what the terrified me wanted to do, which was to jump up and to move around doing something, anything to mind-numb me and my fear. Instead I oriented myself to the room with my eyes and skin and confirmed that Yoshiko was sleeping comfortably beside me. I confirmed that the room was warm despite the frost on the inside of the windows and the cold outside. I assured myself of the good, healthy and plentiful food in the kitchen. I was safe and the fear-elephant was a mere chimera of the mind.
Later I would understand that that was a blunt manifestation of Mara. After about 10 or 15 minutes of my practice the elephant would lighten then disappear. Soon thereafter I would fall asleep. I woke refreshed in the morning and with calm equanimity, as well as joy and even some excitement at times with the synchronicities. I did the best I could to complete the various ‘requirements’ of premature forced ‘retirement’ and relocation and all the while continued to learn the scope of the WEF’s/WHO’s and their masters’ program of world wide domination using fear and ‘medicine.’
It was in 2022 that I learned that staying with the elephant of fear on my chest without moving was a near perfect manifestation of Gautama Buddha’s instruction for dealing with the armies of Mara: continue with whatever activity you are doing, be it walking, sitting, doing the dishes, whatever and say to Mara ‘I see you,’ without resistance or any trace of hostility.
And this was the very same process I had used in 2014 when I began my first 40 day practice of asana (yoga postures) and pranayama (yogic breath). Every time I began the practice I would hear the ego-voice telling me how useless this was, silly, stupid, such a waste of time, that you have better things to do, etc. And I would very consciously, without rancour or hostility say back ‘You may be right. May be right. However, I committed myself to complete forty days and that is what I will do. After forty days then we’ll see if you are right.’ As it turned out, it was after only twenty-seven days that the ego-voice of Mara stopped and I’ve not really heard it since then castigating me for the practice of yoga and breath. Lots of other things, though, of course.
And so, with very rare exception, I have been daily with my practice since 2014 and now have the power to rest ‘comfortably’ with an elephant of fear and experience it dissipating like incense smoke in a breeze.
And I began my path towards freedom of movement. I began what I now call appropriate eccentric action.
Looking back on this I see that that elephant was the manifestation of my fear of freedom, the freedom to be me, the fear of taking appropriate eccentric action. There is much talk of the fear of death, of course. Yup, that is a real fear. Patañjali mentions it in The Yoga Sutras, for example, as happening to even the most ‘enlightened’. I have come to understand that the fear of death is less present and less debilitating in our lives than our fear to be free. And in a future essay I will explore my nascent idea that the fear of death is actually a distraction from what our real fear is, our fear of being fully free.
What is it about being truly free that is fearful? Personal responsibility and living up to the possibility of being powerful. I mentioned this to my friend Bejan and he added some colour to the idea: freedom is becoming able and willing to see the abyss. Yes, I added, to see it and know we have the freedom to address it with agency and power. To see it! Then to take appropriate eccentric action.
And so we have come full circle, a helical circle, back to Avidya. Avidya is, paraphrased from the First Fold in Gautama Buddha’s Fourfold Path, the willingness to have the courage to see that my experience of life is dukha, not that life is dukha. Dukha is usually translated as suffering, and the first Buddhist Noble Truth as ‘Life is Suffering’. Michael Stone elaborates that a translation that better catches the feeling-tone of dukha is the feeling of an unassuageable discontent with everything. I have come to see the First Fold, historically called ‘The First Noble Truth’, as a slightly inadequate translation (or definition) by being too narrow and by directing our eyes and attention outward. (For your broader understanding here is the ‘standard’ translation of the Buddhist concept of the Four Noble Truths. And with more elaboration and a modern updating of that, see “Basics of Buddhism Pt 2” by Michael Stone.)
And so time passed quickly, shrinking elephants sitting on my chest, expansive synchronicities in my experience, heartfully embracing aparigraha to enlighten our selves from stuff, and firmly disengaging expectation from the society that had rejected us.
It was nearing the time to physically leave Canada.
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Continued:
From the beginning:
Synchronicity Appendix
Four small synchronicities arose at about the same time that I was writing this fear of freedom exploration. Three in the form of overlapping email subject lines from completely disparate sources. One from a ‘random’ business card wallet purge from my friend Rick, who dumped an old California based business card. All within 24 hours of each other. It is particularly curious and funny that the facilitator of ‘Freedom Through Inquiry’ is A-mara, meaning not-mara, in line with elements of this essay.
Song of the Essay:
Nadine Shah - Evil
Lyrics
[Chorus] All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil himself All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil [Verse] Look, I'm standing right here before you I can only offer what I've been taught And you look on with eyes from another How can I compete with an ingrained thought And tell your followers that I'm crazy If it stops them questioning anymore Keep them tidy Keep them beside you And keep them coming back for more [Chorus] All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil himself All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil [Verse] Look, I'm standing right here before you I can only offer what I've been taught And you look on with eyes from another How can I compete with an ingrained thought And tell your followers that I'm crazy If it stops them questioning anymore Keep them tidy Keep them beside you And keep them coming back for more [Chorus] (x2) All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil himself All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil himself All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil himself All these folk, they think that I'm evil Like I am the living devil
Nice piece, yet again, this time concluding your "Covid" experience in Canada. I look forward to reading your more recent articles, Guy!
"And in a future essay I will explore my nascent idea that the fear of death is actually a distraction from what our real fear is, our fear of being fully free."
I will be looking forward to that, Guy.
"What is it about being truly free that is fearful? Personal responsibility and living up to the possibility of being powerful. I mentioned this to my friend Bejan and he added some colour to the idea: freedom is becoming able and willing to see the abyss. Yes, I added, to see it and know we have the freedom to address it with agency and power. "
This is what I wish for my grandmother as she begins her transition. Agency and power to know that all is well, and exactly as it should be. And when the time comes, she will do it absolutely perfectly.
Another exquisite essay, Guy. Thank you for your insight and guidance...🙏🏼