To Get Freedom, You Must Give Freedom - 9 April 2015

Good. So I'm saying that if you want freedom, you must give freedom. So what all are we going to give freedom to? Let me start by helping you. You can give freedom to your relationships to be exactly as they are, exactly as they are going, exactly as they are meant to be. So one, I'm saying relationships. Now you have to see, if you truly want freedom, then you must then give. So what are the components of life? So one is relationship. What else needs your freedom? Thoughts. Give freedom to your thoughts. Body. Give freedom to the body to live or die or whatever it has to be. Yes, sense of control over the unfolding of the day, your life. This is freedom. This being now just is, letting all that arises in it. Its freedom is for the present moment to unfold exactly as life is unfolding.

Then what else? Are we including emotions? So let's start from the outward in: relationships, money, body. And we will keep the seeker identity to the end. The relationship with special relationships, money, body—these three we can drop from the seeming outer aspect. Then emotions. Let them be free. Let them come and go as they please. Then thoughts. Leave them. Then attention. Must attention also be given freedom? You give your freedom for your attention to go wherever it pleases. You give freedom for attention to go wherever it wants. And you leave your belief free. What does it mean to give your belief freedom? It is not what it means, what about the same as what you say for it? Because to control attention is work. To direct attention to a particular thing is work. In the same way, to give belief to something is work. So you leave it completely free. Don't give it any work to do. Then you're not giving up belief to anything.

If you give your freedom to all of this, and until it is to the last two—or just the last one also is actually enough—but to make the point, you must set the world, all the appearances, free, including the appearances of body, mind, emotion. All of the energies also. And then show me how you can be bound. If you say that 'I am bound,' it must mean that you are not giving your freedom, not giving freedom to one of these pulses or energies. Yes, but it's not freedom from, you see. Not freedom from. You give your fear also freedom. Somebody said, he said 'freedom from fear,' but freedom from fear can come when you have given freedom to your fear. So you are no longer fearing your fear. When you are no longer fearing your fear, then we set it free. Then sometimes it can come and dance about, be something, and then it goes. Don't hold on to anything at all. Leave it all completely free.

So to get freedom, you must give freedom. Now you said 'simplicity.' So it is not that. So your mind is saying that you want freedom from the world. Actually, it is the world that needs freedom from your ego. Are you willing to give this freedom to the world? Or you show me something that you're holding onto, and I will show you suffering. Just what I was saying earlier: the bird of paradise lands only in the hand that is not grasped. Don't grasp anything at all. Set everything free. That which you feel you cannot set free, this is still the April Fool's Day trick for you, which is working through this. It's a trick. It's nothing really. There is no reality to it. What can't you set free? What are you unwilling to set free that life is working out of you? It's just this. Whatever you are unwilling to set free, life is forcing your hand. If you are holding it, life is laughing at that. That's all. That is how you're not holding anything. Nothing will be where there is suffering or resistance.