OYA'S MARKETPLACE - Oya N'Soro

OYA'S MARKETPLACE PAGE 18
Ask yourself, “What do I want, right
here, now?” Take inventory. Pause and
look straight into yourself. What issues
are on your mind? What are you seeking
right at that moment? Maybe nothing.
Maybe rest. Maybe food, sex, a shower.
Maybe truth. Maybe sleep. Write it all
down. You may have many wants at
the same time -- list them all. There are
no right or wrong, worthy or unworthy,
sacred or profane answers. There are
no scores, no prizes. This is only to help
find a little of the truth you deserve to
have about yourself.
An interesting phenomenon to notice at
this time is one’s own reaction to the
suggestion just made, the suggestion to
try to see what you want. Reactions
generally fall into two categories: those
who resist the suggestion immediately
and those who accept and embrace it
just as quickly. Some of you will never
do what has been suggested here. Some
will do it, but only after many months
or even years have passed. Some will do
it right away, starting with today (the
day you are reading this) and will do it
with great enthusiasm and efficiency, as
if it were an exercise from your
childhood days in elementary school.
Well, it is an elementary exercise from
a school. But in the giving of an exercise
we need to explain that no exercise of
any kind creates freedom. Seeing the
truth as it is creates freedom, is freedom.
The value, importance, limitations, and
risks of exercises is knowledge one gains
with experience. There’s no use in
creating needless theory on the subject.
Chapter Two: The Magnitude of
Change
There are only two states of existence
possible for a human being: freedom
and slavery. However, it is not easy to
describe the difference in words. The
problem is a problem of scale, scope,
dimension. Freedom cannot be described
in terms of slavery. The mind
which is enslaved attempts to conceive
of freedom but will always only repli-
cate its own slavery with every thought.
There are not degrees of freedom.
Freedom is not a progression of states.
One is either free or not. One cannot
be partially free, or a little free. However,
a person can and does change
states -- to and from freedom, in and
out of slavery. The changes go unnoticed
for the most part, mainly because
the time spent by most people in freedom
is very, very brief, perhaps only
fractions of a second at any one time.
How then does one who exists most of
the time in psychological enslavement
bring himself or herself into a state of
inner freedom?
If one is really interested in this question,
it is necessary to verify, as fact,
whether or not one exists in psychological
slavery. Are you or are you not a
machine, existing as a machine does,
driven entirely by principles of mechanics?
This is a very old idea, that man is
There are not
degrees of
freedom...One
is either free or
not.
asleep. That man is psychologically,
spiritually dead. That he lives in the
illusion of freedom but actually has no
freedom. That he is in prison, and
worse, does not know that he is in
prison. That he sees only shadows and
thinks they are all there is to reality.
But is any of that true? Can I find out?
What difference does it make for me, in
my own private life?
The student of this question has to
begin with why this question exists for
him or her in the first place. As a
student one can at least look inward,
and without making any presumptions
of certainty, can at least say tentatively,
yes...there is the state I always seem to
be in, I will call that “slavery” just for
the sake of study. And, yes, there is
another state, which I have sometimes
experienced, or which I at least sense
must exist, and I will tentatively call
that “freedom,” also just for the sake of
this study. Here we are giving names to
things only for ease of conversation,
not to define them.
Now, within the conditions of this little
experiment, we are saying that a free
person would know for a fact that he or
she is free, and a slave would not even
know that he or she is a slave. Further,
we are saying that I, the student,
presume myself to be enslaved and
therefore am incapable of even knowing
that much, and that any thoughts or
ideas I have on the subject must be a
product or my own mental slavery and
therefore could not of themselves lead
to freedom. Very good paradox indeed!
Within the terms of this paradox, that
is, of a machine incapable of anything
but machine-like behavior, is there any
way out? Let’s look at this from a very
practical, totally real point of view. For
the sake of the hope of freedom, I will
tentatively agree that I might be a slave.
And now I remember my question about
this...how can I verify, test, find out for
sure? Certainly it would be worthwhile,
for certainly, if this and that are true,
then there is genuine hope for me. And
that, after all, is what I want.
The most practical, and most possible,
tactic to use with oneself at this time is
to attempt an action that could only be
done by a free person, some action
impossible for a slave. This would be to
consent to imitate freedom while knowing
that one is not free.
To go forward with this, we need to
establish a few tentative generalities
about what we slaves think might be
the difference between freedom and