Free in Spirit, Chained in Life || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: “I have no firm name or identity. I become what the other wants me to become.” The car manufacturer wants me to be buyer. So I look at his car and turn into a prospective buyer. The woman, consciously or subconsciously, wants me to be an attending man. And I turn into an attending man as per her dictate.
If you can realize and come to this utter helplessness, you will revolt against yourself. You will say, “No more of this.” You will then realize that all these inputs are actually assaults and invasions. And had you really been nobody, you wouldn’t have felt bad about it. A stone does not cry against slavery. Or does it?
If the fact of your enslavement curdles your blood, it means there is free-spirit in you. But that free-spirit gets invoked, only when presented with the fact of slavery.
If you do not know that you are enslaved, your free-spirit remains dormant. Or if you keep presenting slavery itself as the free spirit, even then the free-spirit remains just asleep, peacefully. For the free-spirit to rise, and act, and rebel, you have to first acknowledge to yourself that you are neck deep in slavery. And then there is a contradiction between – the freedom of your spirit, and the fact of your slavery. Now there is a conflict. You need this conflict to arise. You need an inner war.
Peace is great, but false peace is deadly. The seeker of peace must be present, and ready to forego false peace, and experience disquiet and turbulence.
Questioner: That’s tough.
Acharya Prashant: Awakening begins with suffering. Obviously, it is not going to be pretty, when moment after moment you are bombarded with the fact of your impotency and helplessness. Is it going to be pleasant? Not at all.
You would want to resist the fact, deny the fact. You would squirm and cringe. But the fact is for real, and therefore must not be denied. And when you admit and acknowledge that fact, there is bound to be an inner strife. By spirit, you are free. And in life, you are in bondage. These two cannot go together. Let there be a war.
Full video article: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/without-an-inner-firmness-does-one-even-exist-1_32c54b3
