Experiment of freedom

There was a dream and then there wasn’t. As soon as I woke up, I forgot all of it. Still, I grabbed my notebook and wrote down three sentences: 

The concept of free will is a factor of the ego.
Any act of freedom leads to pain.
Love will set us free.

The what? I stared at these sentences, trying to make sense of it. 

Freedom to make choices is causing us pain? 
Love will set us free from what? Freedom?

I was shocked. The concept of having a free will and free choice has been the cornerstone of my individual existence. The flag I could have easily died under. Every single individual should have full sovereignty to do whatever they want. Equal rights for all. All lives matter. All choices are right for the ones who make them etc.

Naturally, I knew that each choice has consequences and those will be distributed equally as well. Some will happen to the person exercising freedom and some will spill over everything connected to that person. And yes…those consequences often end up in pain and harm for all parties. But I turned a blind eye on that, because personally for me, the sense of freedom has been the most essential human right. I would rather feel free than have access to internet.

But to think of acts of freedom. It is an act of free will to judge someone, hurt someone, control someone, rape someone, kill someone, leave someone, eat someone, help someone, begin something, stop something and the list goes on. Build a wall or tear it down, either way sucks.

Yay for … freedom? Control? What do we want?

Fast forward 24 hours.

I opened my eyes and it happened again. My dream vanished like smoke in the winter sky. The notebook was open before I knew it. I wrote:

Any act of free will is an act of violence. This is how the world is set up.

‘Do no harm.’ is an impossible ideal. Whenever you exert your power and your freedom of choice on something, you will perform harm.

We live in an experiment of harm and the one of pain.

Doing harm, feeling harm is essentially written into this world. It’s part of the catalytic process of choice where most choices will distribute layers of pain.

When a mother eagle sits down on an egg to hatch, she condemns hundreds of mice to painful death. We call it the circle of life.

In that circle, we glorify the cleverness of greed and consumption in the name of freedom and prosperity. For the holy GDP.

Use and abuse of nature is always painful to a degree. When one walks through a deforested area, one can feel the stunned silence of the tree-stumps and the trees that remain mourn the loss of their brethren. Cabbages and carrots can not speak and we don’t understand them beyond their nutritional value. Does this mean they can not feel the hand or the knife? What do we really know…or want to know?

We say that accidents happen, that we are humans. It’s part of our human nature to feel hurt and to cause hurt. Natural to harm others, to harm ourselves and be harmed in return.

Violence is our birthright. If our deep souls weep and rebel against it, it only means that they have forgotten the purpose of the experiment.

Why? I asked the voice that was writing these words off my forgotten dream-state.
What’s the point of this when we all need to learn to love?

How does love set us free?

And… if we all hold hands and sing kumbaya’s to the God above. If we pledge ourselves to do as little harm as possible. If we long to make right and serve the greater good. If we surrender our ego’s need of protection and survival to the love and the light of the Universe… What happens to our free will?

When love becomes the only choice in the sea of choices, are we free anymore?

Cartoonish images of heaven and hell arrived in my mindscape with a realisation that this probably was the point of Lucifer. By legend, he broke away from the heavens to create his own special kind of hell. He was the original innovator, cunningly developing an experimental pocket of freedom into the ocean of infinite love. 

The freedom to do harm. To experience pain and violence.

In the grand love and light, where everything boils down to one creative force forming matter out of one substance, can anything akin to that ever be experienced?

That’s why the sages says that this planet is one-of-a-kind. That’s why we – I mean me – have been glorifying the concept of free will. Why the angels hold their proverbial breaths whenever people make decisions on this planet. Fingers crossed that we don’t fuck it up too much… again.

The experiment itself is invaluable. The experiences we can create and gather on this planet are precious beyond measure. The universe is blooming with life, but there is only one Earth.

I finished my writing with a question – to what end? 

What’s the point of the experiment? Why do we need to grow through the karmic cycles or harm and violence? What are we going to do with all this experience?

The answer was fast and simple: We’re going to have it. 

My mind filled with images of various hiking trails, scuba-diving, skydiving, skinny-dipping in bog lakes, all topped off with one oddly specific sexual encounter in the woods of Sweden. 

I got it. No other point to any of those experiences except the feelings, the memories lived. Yet each of those are treasured moments, special experiences that I felt privileged to have lived through.

Time passing makes such memories more valuable, and similarly, the value of pain and pleasure will become more evident once we’ve grown beyond the fun of it. By the time our spirits grow weary and yearn to return to oneness with the infinite love and light of whatever stardust that we’re all made of, all this pain and suffering will be blessed for what it is. Special.

Each of us has own own game of violent death-matches to play with. We don’t have to… or maybe get to leave until we’re ready, but isn’t it nice to know that the option is always there?

We only need to choose love.

Welcome to the experiment of freedom. What will you choose today?