Most people believe that the path to liberation lies in escape. "If I might just be free of the boredom and oppression of this job . . . ;" "if I could just win the lottery . . . ;" "if only I were free of him . . . ;" "if we could move away from here, from all this violence and vulgarity, to a small fishing village on a Greek island where life is simple and we could be happy . . . ;" if only . . . ." The more we seek to escape -- the more we populate our life with "if onlys" -- the more we become ensnared.
Paradoxically we become free in life by entering into it. The knack lies not in "not letting it get to us" but precisely in the opposite.
The mountain is the image we are looking for. The clouds come and the clouds go and little things crawl across its great surface. But its roots are deep in the earth and its face looks up at the stars. It brushes aside the "if onlys" because, simply, it is.
The superior person "escapes" by reconnecting to integrity. "When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage" writes Nikos Kazantzakis in Zorba the Greek. "Each time that within ourselves we are the conquerors, although externally utterly defeated, we human beings feel an indescribable pride and joy. Outward calamity is transformed into a supreme and unshakable felicity." This sense of universal connection is true deliverance.
"In times of standstill," the I Ching tells us, "it will happen that inferior people attach themselves to a superior man, and through the force of daily habit they may grow very close to him and become indispensable, just as the big toe is indispensable to the foot because it makes it walk easier. But when the time of deliverance draws near, with its call to deeds, a man must free himself from such chance acquaintances with whom he has no inner connection . . . if one desires to be rid of them, he must first break completely with them in his own mind; they will see for themselves he is in ernest and will withdraw." (See the example).
We tend to think of "deliverance" and "liberation" or "victory" and "defeat" as if these were of a steady state. But in this world nothing is permanent and everything changes and what appears freedom at one moment can become bondage in the next. The way out lies in the practice of presence, steady curious attention to where we are each moment in our life. It is an imperfect practice and it goes on and on. This is why the I Ching ends with a book called "Before Completion."
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