Freedom is a state of mind. This state of mind cannot be brought about by thought because thought is conditioned. Thought springs from needs, desires, fears. Ego is thought and is driven by fear. It is not self, you are not your thoughts, or even your thinking mind as you may suppose. Though thought is a wonderful tool, that is all it is. Freedom does not require the cessation of thought, we only need to realise thought is not self.

All thoughts is limited by the conditioning. The idea of finding freedom is a thought and with it will come a thousand thoughts about how to proceed, deny this or that, stop this behaviour, become disciplined in this. Often meditation is undertaken in just this way, as a means to an end to achieve freedom. But the desire for freedom itself is a hindrance to finding it. All this comes from thought, and this brings only confusion or frustration.

It can’t be a doing. Freedom is in being. Thought brings strife to the internal world, not freedom. For example someone says “If I had a better job and better income I would be free” so they get a better job, and have a better income, but then find they have no time to spend in pursuits they enjoy, and they are tyrannised by the thought of losing the job or the income. They have become a slave to the ideal of more.

Freedom is available to everyone in every moment, it is not contingent on circumstances. Your reaction to circumstances is never freedom, only ever a reaction. In seeing that what we do and have, the things we build a self from, that these are not freedom, or a means to freedom; Realising this, means we begin to glimpse the opposite. We begin to understand that freedom is peace uninfluenced by thought, by circumstance, by having and doing. Yet so few people really want that kind of peace, or that kind of freedom, always we are chasing ideals and thinking about freedom, never realising the true nature of freedom is in the exact opposite.