The Meaning of Your Life Is Freedom (a Postcard from Ulysses to Telemachus)
The meaning of your life is freedom. It is what you are, what you must become. Freedom is the thing you do in your non-doing. Everything else happens from the freedom. But what is freedom?
When Achilles was trying to decide whether or not to come back to the fight, he was not free. Many think that here Achilles was free to choose. We cannot be free to choose, only free to die. When he went back into battle, there he was most free. He was free to die in battle.
When my men were captured by Circe, Eurylochus was so afraid he could barely speak. He begged me to leave. He was unfree. I had no choice in the matter. I had to go and rescue my men, not from some sense of convention, but from the flow of my own freedom. At that moment I was free, beyond fear, beyond hope. I was free to die saving my men, free to die in the work of the journey Home. When I was bound to the mast of my ship, sailing past the Sirens with ears open, I was free. To be open to the song of Life, to hear everything without distraction, to take it all in and let it take you while you remain where you are, that is freedom. To be where you are is freedom.
In the future they lose the heart-mind, and lose the meaning of freedom. Not conscious choice, but consciousness while choosing! We do not choose, we do not do . . . choosing happens, doing happens, like a fall. Just stay awake while you fall.
When Achilles was trying to decide whether or not to come back to the fight, he was not free. Many think that here Achilles was free to choose. We cannot be free to choose, only free to die. When he went back into battle, there he was most free. He was free to die in battle.
When my men were captured by Circe, Eurylochus was so afraid he could barely speak. He begged me to leave. He was unfree. I had no choice in the matter. I had to go and rescue my men, not from some sense of convention, but from the flow of my own freedom. At that moment I was free, beyond fear, beyond hope. I was free to die saving my men, free to die in the work of the journey Home. When I was bound to the mast of my ship, sailing past the Sirens with ears open, I was free. To be open to the song of Life, to hear everything without distraction, to take it all in and let it take you while you remain where you are, that is freedom. To be where you are is freedom.
In the future they lose the heart-mind, and lose the meaning of freedom. Not conscious choice, but consciousness while choosing! We do not choose, we do not do . . . choosing happens, doing happens, like a fall. Just stay awake while you fall.