How free are you?

On the eve of 65th year of independence, just ask yourself, are you free? What is freedom? Is it hoisting the tricolor at the red-fort? Or is it calling yourself an Indian?

Yes...that was freedom, 65 years back, for those who put their lives at stake to drive the oppressor out. As for you, you are still being ruled, only the getup of ruler has changed. The ruler is not the people, but power. The one who is in power, exercises it to promote his interests. And the one who succumbs to power, does so to safeguard his personal interest. Just think, if Ashfaqullah Khan, Bhagat Singh or Rani Lakshmibai chose the comforts of their house over the comfort of the nation, would they have been free?

Freedom is being one with the creation. As soon as you become two, you are bound. Today, you are not just two or three, you range in billions. There are atleast five thousand different communities in the world and within those communities also, the interest of each member is different and at loggerheads with that of the other. Today, you close your door when the neighbours house is being robbed. You turn a deaf ear to the cry of an animal in pain. You turn a blind eye to the pain that mother earth is going through. You do not even love the people or things that you think you are close to. You only love yourself. You merely want to possess others and then rule over them, for your pleasure and satisfaction. You live under constant fear that if you do something for someone, you might have to forego your own self-interest. It is this fear that does not let you exercise your freedom. And the reason for fear is that you have isolated your interest from that of creation. You have created boundary walls for yourself. You are not free, you are limited to these boundaries.

It is the dharma of man to love the creation. Every faith in the world emphasises upon service and charity not for a particular person, organisation or community, but for creation. Dharma is not dressing up a specific way or observing certain rituals. All of that you do, not because you are dharmic, but because you are scared and you want to reassure yourself by putting up a front. You are only fooling yourself, because you cannot fool the Divine. All that you are collecting, all that you want to rule over, is temporary. It will leave you sooner or later. Even your body will not last you, that too will perish. When the time comes to leave your body, this fear will not let you be free, it will tie you to another birth, another body, and another lifetime of captivity.

The only way to overcome fear and to be free is to follow the path of dharma. All faiths talk of one formless divine. When there is just one, how can the interest of that one be any different? How can your interest be different from your neighbour, or that of the dog on the street? Love the creation, set no boundaries for yourself. This independence day, take out time, to free yourself from your own thinking.

What are we independent of? The moghuls? Allaudin Khilji? Tughlaks? French? Dutch? Portugese? Afghans? Turks?...We are busy getting independence from one and then becoming a slave of someone else...

-Yogi Ashwini

http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/masters/science-of-spirituality/how-free-are-you