On Being Free - Mind The Process By Weise Christian

On Being Free—Mind the Process

The idea of liberation automatically inhibits the simple realization that we are free.
Wu Wei

There was a seeker who wanted to be ‘enlightened’.
He kept asking the sages, prophets and gurus,
and they told him this and that,
often disagreeing with each other.

Then one day he went for a walk.
It was a beautiful day in a magnificent park.
He contemplated how being enlightened
may just be like taking a stroll in the park.

Suddenly he stopped, admiring a beautiful flower.
He smelt its perfume, and at that blessed moment
realized that reaching ‘there’ is a Fata Morgana.
He finally found the ‘here’ and ‘now’.

Doing away with the final illusion,
the quest for the elusive enlightenment.
Who is seeking; the fears, restlessness or status?
With nothing to aim for, we are here now!


I concluded my first book, ‘The Magnificent Experiment’ with the story of the man who goes through the park; he stops for a moment and smells the flowers and suddenly realizes that he is free. That’s it, the famous power of Now, but as such it is meaningless for your quest for enlightenment. Sure, you can get up right now, especially if it is a spring day, if you are sitting in a park reading this. You can walk over to the next flower; you can be mindful of the steps that you are taking; you can be mindful of your surroundings, the background noises, even the voice in your head. Getting there, you can smell the flower but it doesn’t get you any closer to freedom than the moment before you started reading this note.

The problems are the fears, the restlessness, the drives, the desire to be free of that lingering unhappiness. The search for enlightenment is a Catch 22 as Wu Wei rightly concluded. The moment you search for enlightenment you already implicitly admit that you are in bondage. A curious and happy girl will not look for enlightenment. She is way too busy frolicking in the park, smelling the flowers and picking a few for her dad.

So when we catch ourselves daydreaming about enlightenment, we are probably trying to rid ourself of these fears and this unhappiness, and we may also eye the prestige, magic and power that comes with it. So that is really what is behind it, the understanding of our ego, the interference between us and our God realization. Each of us are having a story in mind of who we are. We can literally Awaken to the Story of ‘Me:

Awakening can happen in a flash,
and in a flash we are changed forever.

When we enjoy the ‘here’ and ‘now’,
we are blessed with the divine God connection.

Alas, when we get lost in our thoughts,
or our emotional pain body gets the better of us,

what a priceless opportunity to understand
that we merely tell ourselves a story.

We can Awaken to the Story of ‘Me’
and suddenly we are Home already.

Awake to the Story of ‘Me’ is very similar to the story of the man who smells the roses. It is the same sudden realization that we were fooling ourselves before. In the story of the man who smells the roses the realization is that this experience is the powerful that the thoughts stand still and peace engulfs his being. In Awake to the Story of ‘Me’, the sudden realization is that the head is just an alien storyteller. Again, peace engulfs his being. It is as if something shifts inside after this realization.

Awake to the Story of ‘Me’ is hardly new. This insight that our ego is something alien to what we are all about is as old as spirituality itself, and has recently been nicely developed in Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’. You have likely read it, or heard about it, yet, has it brought you any closer to the state of enlightenment? Probably not, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this note.

This inner shift, this peace of mind, this inner curiosity and openness to life will come when you are ready for it. It is a process to get to this stage. The fears, the drives, the inner restlessness, and the desire to be someone, these are prior conditioning and pain bodies that need to be released. It is a process and requires time and guidance. Some cravings and fears are so embedded in our life journey that we call them soul longings. No matter what we do, these themes will come back to us until we have faced them, stood up to them, expressed them, and left them behind. No spiritual insight can help us with this, only wrestling with life can help us to leave them behind.

How come that no one ever talks about the fact that setting ourselves free is a process? Yes, one day the blessed stroll in the park will take place; the final step across the bridge when we Awaken to the story we have told ourselves for so long, but until then there is work to do. That’s the meaning of a spiritual path, a day to day instruction on how to break feee. It takes a little effort, there are a few ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ episodes, but mostly this last stretch in our breaking free journey is supposed to be a stroll in the park. Just a few more steps, a little dancing, and you are free!