Power, Freedom, and Grace

by Deepak Chopra

  In silence and solitude, you never feel lonely, because loneliness is an alienation from everything. In silence and solitude, you experience a connectedness with everything. And this connectedness, this living from the source, is the key to power.

  Pay Attention to the Qualities of Pure Consciousness

  Another thing I would suggest is to look at the qualities of pure consciousness, and on a given day hold one of them in your awareness. What are the qualities of pure consciousness? They are the qualities that structure the infinite diversity of the universe. In your simplest state of awareness, they are your qualities as well. Some of the qualities of pure consciousness are pure potentiality, infinite possibilities, infinite silence, pure knowledge, freedom, flexibility, unboundedness, self-sufficiency, self-referring, fully awake within itself, infinite dynamism, infinite creativity, infinite correlation, infinite organizing power, perfect balance, evolutionary, nourishing, harmonizing, simple, blissful, and invincible.

  On one given day, for example, you could hold the quality of freedom in your awareness. What does it mean to hold freedom in your awareness? It means you don’t try to analyze or interpret the notion of freedom. You just put your attention on the quality of freedom, that’s all. Just keep freedom alive in your awareness, and watch how things change in your life. Be a silent witness to freedom, and that alone will spontaneously give you insight into the mechanics of freedom. Slowly, over a period of time, this practice will spontaneously give you the experience of freedom.

  Then, on another day, select another quality and hold it in your awareness. As you put your attention on the qualities of pure consciousness, they will spontaneously cause changes in your physiology and manifest as your reality.

  Never Stop Asking Questions

  If you want a simple prescription for accessing the field of intelligence, then every morning before you enter into a period of silence or meditation, put your attention on your heart and ask yourself, Who am I? What do I want? Ask yourself these questions, and then listen. The universe is a field of possibilities that is compelled to make choices when you ask questions of it. There’s no need to go looking for the answers. The moment you ask these questions, the answers start to appear. In asking these two questions, you invite the field of infinite possibilities to make the choices for you. Just ask, and something will happen. Some clue will start to appear in your life that answers these questions. The answers may come to you in the form of an insight, an inspiration, a chance encounter, a sudden creative impulse. The answers may come through synchronicity and coincidence, a relationship, a situation, a circumstance, or an event.

  Some other questions you can ask yourself are: What is my purpose in life? What contribution can I make to my family, to my society, to my world? What are my unique talents, and how can I express them in the service of humanity? What brings me peak experiences and joy? What are the qualities that I look for in a friend? What qualities do I want to express in my relationships?

  Keep asking questions, and then allow the answers to incubate. This period of incubation allows the cosmic computer, the essence of infinite consciousness and infinite correlation, to compute the infinity of details in the complexity of the situation and give you the right answer.

  By asking questions, you begin to explore the many domains of your existence. And to whom do you address these questions? Your own inner self. The poet Rumi says, “The whole universe exists inside you; ask all from yourself.” All fulfillment comes from the creativity of your soul; there is nothing that cannot be solved by allowing your soul to find a creative solution to it.

  Never stop asking questions. Don’t look for answers but ask questions. Ask, and you shall receive. The power asleep in all of us doesn’t awaken until we call it.

  KEY POINTS

  To experience and practice power:

  Spend time in silent communion with your soul.

  Pay attention to the qualities of pure consciousness.

  Never stop asking questions.

  10

  What is freedom and how do I experience it?

  Freedom: The power to think or act without restraint; the capacity to exercise choice.

  One of the most crucial aspects of life is the notion of freedom and the notion of bondage. Ultimately, our goal is to experience freedom, but to understand what freedom is we first have to understand what bondage is. What does it mean to be free and what does it mean to be in bondage?

  To be in bondage is to be stuck in this or that possibility, having lost the ability to choose from an infinite range of responses. What is the bondage to? The bondage is always to our own boundaries, to our own beliefs and conditioned responses. Boundaries and beliefs are nothing more than ideas or concepts that we have committed to and accepted as truth. And when they are as rigid and inflexible as concrete, we cannot see past them. They become the prison walls that we inadvertently construct around ourselves.

  You wrap yourself in thoughts the way a spider wraps flies in gossamer. You are both the spider and the fly, entangling yourself in your own web. Your entire lifetime and other lifetimes are packaged inside you as imprints or energy patterns that are triggered by words, encounters, and relationships. You have been conditioned to interpret your experiences in a certain way, and this determines how you react to them. So any bondage that you experience is really the prison of your own conditioning.

  Most people live their entire lives in bondage. They are a bundle of nerves and conditioned responses, which are constantly being triggered by other people and circumstances into totally predictable outcomes. To be free of bondage, we have to break down conditioned responses; we have to go beyond boundaries and experience the boundless.

  What is freedom? Freedom comes from the experiential knowledge of our true nature, which is already free. It comes from finding out that our real essence is the joyful field of infinite consciousness that animates all of creation. To have the experience of that silent witness is just to be. Then we are free. In this state of freedom, we understand that life is the meaningful coexistence of all opposite values. We may experience happiness or we may experience pain and suffering, but we do not get attached to pleasure and we do not recoil in fear of pain. In freedom, we even lose our fear of death, because the belief in mortality is just a spell that we have cast upon ourselves.

  Behind the mask of mortality is the field of immortality. The real you is immortal; it is beyond birth and death. The real you is not your ego, which is time-bound; it is your spirit, which is timeless. When you know that, when you identify with your spirit, you are free of every limitation, including the limitation that you are a person trapped inside a body for the span of a lifetime. You are the source of both body and mind, and you are not touched by this world of change because you know that you are the unchanging essence of pure consciousness itself.

  The time-bound comes and goes; the timeless always is. The time-bound is the known; the timeless is the fresh unknown. In our addiction to the time-bound, we have projected a reality of separation and suffering. We live in a collective nightmare, a collective hallucination where we are bound and imprisoned by our own projections. Past and future are in the imagination; reality is in this moment. Suffering is in the imagination; freedom is in this moment. Beyond all of the obstacles to freedom is a world that is free of all projection; it is the world of infinite consciousness. And that world abides in the eternal moment.

  There never was a time when your life was not this moment. There never will be a time when your life is not this moment. It is impossible to deal with that which does not exist in this moment. Therefore, live in this moment by keeping your attention in this moment. Abide in this moment, and you will abide in that which is eternal, timeless, ageless, and fresh.

  The universe is experiencing itself from an infinity of perspectives, this moment. One of these perspectives is you, in this moment. You are infinite, unbounded — nowhere in particular but everywhere at the same time. Nowhere is also now here
. When you live in the now and the here, you recognize that the real you dwells in the timeless, eternal moment. You no longer want to live in the memories of the past or the imaginings of the future. You want to live in the present moment, where you can exercise the power and freedom of choice.

  The whole purpose of living in freedom is to enjoy the choices that you make in every successive moment of the present. People have asked me, “Is the world one of free will, or is it deterministic?” The world is both deterministic and one of free will. If you are aware and beyond conditioning, then you have free will and you live in freedom. But if you are unaware and conditioned, then you do not have free will and your world is deterministic.

  The present is the moment of choice and interpretation. Your choices, this moment, are creating the external events you are experiencing in this moment. Your interpretations, this moment, are creating the internal events you are experiencing in this moment. And because the “outer” world is a mirror of your “inner” world, your choices and interpretations co-create and perpetuate one another. Remember, you are neither the choice nor the interpretation but the source of both. The key ingredient is, therefore, silent witnessing. Become aware of your choices and interpretations, and you will begin to experience freedom of choice.

  The silent witness is awareness itself. Awareness, aware of itself, is presence, profound wisdom, and peace. Therefore, the key to freedom is to live in self-referred consciousness, which means to identify with your inner self instead of your self-image. Within this freedom lies the ability to spontaneously put your attention on those choices that bring joy to you, and also joy to others.

  THE EXPERIENCE AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM

  Practice Life-Centered, Present-Moment Awareness

  Come out of the prison of time-bound awareness and enter the world of the timeless and free. The prison of time-bound awareness is the world of separation and suffering. The world of the timeless is the world of pure consciousness, where every moment is free. This moment is free because all your troubles live in the past or in the future, which means they live in your imagination.

  When a situation is troubling you, then ask yourself, What’s wrong right now? If you do this, then you realize that in this moment there are no problems. Separate the situation from the moment, because the situation will pass, while the moment will remain. The situation always transforms, but every moment remains perfect and unchanged.

  Keep your attention on this moment. This moment is the only moment you have the power to act. You cannot take action in the past or in the future, so if you dwell on the past or on the future, you feel powerless. Life is in this moment. Therefore, live in this moment. Act in this moment. Intend in this moment. Detach from worry in this moment. Stay in this moment. This is life-centered, present-moment awareness.

  You can make this moment an act of beauty and perfection by practicing life-centered, present-moment awareness. Now is the door to eternity, and when you live in the moment, you live from the source. In every moment, the door is open to the source. The source has never left you, but you can overlook it with your memories of the past and your imaginings of the future. If your attention is in the moment, if you pay attention to what is, then you see the fullness in every moment. This is within your power right now, because the only time you have is now.

  Now is the moment that never ends. When the past happened, it happened now. When the future happens, it happens now. The present is the only moment that never ends, because the present is timeless and immeasurable. The present is infinite consciousness being all that was, all that is, and all that will be.

  What is, is the activity of the total universe, this moment. For anything to happen, the whole universe has to be happening the way it’s happening. Every event in life is a conspiracy of the entire universe, so if you resist this moment, you resist the entire universe. Remember that difficult situations don’t create suffering; resistance to what is creates suffering. When you experience resistance, your unconscious mind is perceiving a situation as intolerable. Your resistance, however, only perpetuates the situation because your attention is on the problem.

  Even if a situation is unpleasant, separate the situation from this moment, and surrender to the moment. To surrender is to join the flow of life. The situation that surrounds this moment may be intolerable, but this moment is still perfect. By surrendering to this moment and doing whatever the situation demands, you are established in Being while performing action. This is to be in the world and not of it.

  When you surrender to this moment, you act from the level of your soul. And when you act from the level of your soul, you take the appropriate action in this moment. You act without being compulsively driven by a memory of resentment or being wronged. When you act from the level of your soul, you act like a true spiritual warrior — without anger, self-righteousness, resentment, or grievances.

  Learn to act moment by moment as the detached silent witness, and you will act with spontaneous right action, and with timing and finesse. This action is free from bondage, and it doesn’t entail suffering. The situation will change, moment by moment; that is the will of the one Being. But if you flow with the moment, your will becomes aligned with the will of the one Being. If you surrender to the moment, you act without expectations, but certainly with an intended outcome. An intended outcome without expectations or attachment orchestrates its own fulfillment. This is because the power of the whole universe is behind the intention, this moment. The universe only operates in the eternal now. So when you execute this moment with full awareness, then you move with the evolutionary impulse of the universe. You do what needs to be done in this moment with impeccability, and leave the results to the unknown.

  Whenever you feel resistance, just observe the resistance; then surrender to what is. If you find yourself unable to surrender to a difficult situation, then surrender to your pain and suffering. Witness your pain and suffering. Do not think about the pain; feel the pain. The source is wholeness. It wants to heal you and lift your pain, not by abolishing painful memories but by putting you totally in the present, where the past does not exist. If you can be totally life-centered in this moment, then you are free.

  One technique that will help you to live in each moment with awareness, with lightness, with ease, is observing your breath. Your breath is neither in the past nor in the future; it is only in this moment. With every breath that you breathe in, the infinite consciousness comes to you. With every breath that you breathe out, you go to the infinite consciousness. And in the space between the in-breath and the out-breath, you abide in the infinite consciousness. In reality, there is no going nor coming; you are eternally in the flow.

  Just witness your breath, and practice life-centered, present-moment awareness. If you can do this, you move into a domain of consciousness where you have your attention on what is, where you feel the presence of spirit and see the fullness of every moment.

  The entire universe is spinning out of nothingness, now. Behind all the noise and activity of your life is silence and stillness, now. The power of pure consciousness is present, now. The freedom of the boundless, timeless spirit is present, now. The grace of the simple, unaffected beauty of life is present, now. The poet Rumi says, “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with the fire of presence.” God’s presence is in this moment, and time is the only obstacle to God.

  Observe Your Addictive Behaviors Without Judgment

  Most human behavior is nothing other than the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. Whenever we experience an event, whether it’s a visit to the dentist or going on a joyride at the carnival, our consciousness registers that experience internally on a spectrum with great pain at one end and extreme pleasure at the other. Once completed, the memory of that experience is tagged to either pain or pleasure, and it continues to exist in our body-mind.

  Memory is useful because it gives us a sense of continuity. But memory is also imprisoning because
it conditions us in predictable ways. The great yogi Lord Shiva said, “I use memories, but I do not allow memories to use me.” We have to use memories; otherwise we wouldn’t find our way home. When we use memories, we are creators. But when our memories use us, we become victims.

  Your spirit is inviting you to step out of the prison of memory and conditioned responses into the experience of freedom. And the next step in the flight to freedom is to observe your addictive behaviors without judgment. Addiction is the number-one disease of civilization, and it’s directly and indirectly related to all other diseases. Besides physical addictions, such as the addiction to food, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, there are psychological addictions, such as the addiction to work, to sex, to television, to shopping, to appearing young, to control, to suffering, to anxiety, to melodrama, to perfection.

  Why are we addicted to all these things? We are addicted because we are not living from our source; we have lost our connection to our soul. The use of food, alcohol, or drugs is essentially a material response to a need that is not really physical at its foundation. Drunkenness, for example, is really a forgetting of personal memory so we can experience the joy of the nonpersonal, the universal. What we are looking for is pure joy rather than mere sensation, or even oblivion of sensation. Self-destructive behavior is unrecognized spiritual craving. All addictions are really a search for the exultation of spirit, and this search has to do with the expansion of consciousness, the intoxication of love, which is pure consciousness.