True freedom is one that allows you to be at peace regardless of the circumstances or to be well where you are. If happiness depended on the right place and the right person and if nothing we wanted was missing, our moments of happiness would be what they really are: few and very fleeting. Being free means not needing anything specific to be happy, a free person enjoys alone or accompanied, with or without money; your peace of mind does not depend on the love of a person, the company of someone, or that every minute of your life is covered by some productive activity.
We become attached to our loved ones, achievements, belongings, and social or professional position because we think that without this we could not be happy. An attachment can be any person, thing, or situation that we need in order to be okay. Freedom and happiness are internal attitudes and come from within and not from outside; it depends on our way of seeing life and not on what it takes from us or gives us. We will be able to experience them when we need less to be accepted, recognized and successful, when we do not depend on circumstances and feel the same peace in the middle of a traffic jam (car dam at rush hour) or in the most attractive situation imaginable.
The first step to being free is self-knowledge, realizing how and why we react the way we do. We live as if we were on autopilot without being aware of all the reactions and attitudes that are caused by our way of thinking. We have to start observing the comings and goings of our mind because that is where the restlessness in which we live originates and they are the source of all our unhappiness.
From the moment we are born we are conditioned to think in a certain way. Depending on our culture, socioeconomic environment, religion or family, the programming varies. That is why not all of us react in the same way to the same circumstances. Everything I like or dislike, all my judgments that arise in any situation, about myself or about others, obey our way of being programmed. Just as our attachments depend on what, according to the program, is important to be happy.
The only thing that prevents me from being in harmony with what life presents me moment by moment are my ideas about it, which are opposed. That is why it is necessary to start observing our mental processes to realize that we are slaves to them. And the way to free them is to contemplate them without judging them; watch, as if it were a movie, the thoughts and reactions that constantly pass through the mind. To be impartial witnesses of everything that happens within us. As we get to know each other and develop the ability to observe without making judgments, little by little our mental structures lose their strength, recognizing them without attacking them softens them, giving rise to the internal light manifesting itself in the form of peace and harmony.
“When you feel your heart sad and you have lost your way, look inside yourself. When the heart tells you its truths, there will be no possible failure”