Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected Freedomill because it’s so unsettling. When you see people who areclearly suffering from some psychological disorder, it can beso disturbing that we choose to avoid it. As a result we’renot familiar with that fear in ourselves. Then when the fearcomes up, ‘Maybe I am going to go crazy,’ it can appeargenuinely threatening. We may ordinarily like to think ofourselves as a fairly decent and normal sort of person, butwhen you go on retreat you may start thinking instead, ‘Oh,my goodness. I’m not any of these things. In fact I am notsure I will leave this place sane.’Wanting to know who we are is a very old habit. It hasbeen there ever since as a child we developed a self-imageand fell for the mistaken impression that this image wassubstantial and dependable. Well, if we don’t want to look atthese assumptions about ourselves, that’s where our practicestops. We don’t get past that point. However, if we arecommitted to getting to the bottom of all this confusion andsorrow we don’t have to believe that we’re going crazy. Wedon’t have to believe that we are actually under threat. Wedon’t have to worry about losing all our friends. And wedon’t have to dismiss the possibility of these things beingtrue either.The way things appear to be is just the way they appear.With mindfulness we can allow them to be, including thefeeling of loneliness when it comes up. The way lonelinessappears to be is that ‘I’m always going to feel like this. I’mgoing to feel lonely, unloved and unwanted for the rest ofmy life. If I stay as a monk and put up with this miserablefeeling of loneliness maybe I will be reborn in my next lifeand become another miserable lonely monk. Then perhapsfor another life and another life. Perhaps for all eternity.’When we get lost in a state of fear, it feels like an eternity.That’s why people talk of hell being eternal. Of course, no178