pandemic as a catalyst for discovering deep acceptance and freedom

It is quite a challenge to balance our external plans and ambitions with acceptance and letting go. This interplay is coming up for a lot of us with special intensity during Corona times. The pandemic has a pronounced effect on our everyday choices. But can it have any effect on genuine freedom? The one that escapes any lockdowns? Yes, lockdowns can reduce our sense of liberty that is dependent on the external circumstances. But they have no power over our personal freedom that is dependent on the individual. It is based on our internal capacity to choose how we react to the external. Perhaps no one voiced it in a more telling way than Holocaust survivor Victor Franklin. He wrote in his Man's Search for Meaning:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

― Victor Franklin

One of the basic freedoms that we have been widely enjoying is freedom of movement. This has been now drastically curtailed. Do we have any compelling alternatives to hopping on a plane and rambling around in Thailand to enjoy ourselves? Or just for having a walk? Another quote can provide an answer:

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

- Franz Kafka

What a testimony to the power of stillness!  

And it’s a close neighbour of this one:

When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.

― Rumi

When we exchange going after “what we think we want” for stillness, patience, and being centred, we might receive much more than we would ever hope for:

The most exquisite paradox: as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

― Ram Dass

This applies to ourselves as well:

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

― Carl R. Rogers  

On the surface, these ideas might seem like inviting inaction and letting go of ambitions. But really, what they talk about is this curious behavioural paradox, i.e. the more we obsess on something (values or resources), the more it escapes from us or just backfires on us.

For instance, if we obsess on security, we put lenses that make us very sensitive to the slightest breach of security. This can easily make us exaggerate perceived safety problems and throw us into even more insecurity and fear (catch – 22 can definitely apply here since our childhood insecurities can fuel our constant seeking for security in adult life). The same goes with being a control freak, and I am a good example of this.

This principle is masterfully captured in David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech This is Water which has become a mini-bible for many (including myself). David says that we all worship something, there is no escape from it. And some things that we worship can eat us alive:

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough … Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

― David Foster Wallace

So what can we do to choose wisely in life? How can we experience real freedom? How can we learn to constantly give and, at the same time, let go? Here’s one idea of where to look for answers:

Be wide open to the manifestation of existence through your being, living in a state of “beginner’s mind”. You don’t say, “I don’t know, so I will go to Bali and play.” You say, “I don’t know, so I will sit upright as open awareness until I know.” You don’t distract yourself with beaches, playmates, and oceans, searching for things that are merely delicious.  All of those things are why most men don’t know their mission.

― David Deida

Are we really constrained in these times? Or might we be living in a time of unique opportunity, offering us permission and means to take a deep dive into ourselves and the whole of existence.