The State of Freedom
A journey of Truth into the mind’s sanctuary
with the destination of inner Freedom.
Β22. I admit the obesity of my spirit.
While the mind was pondering on the desolation of his ancestors, a very powerful image was generated inside him. He saw my thin body changed to obese, flabby and baggy, like the body of some of them used to be and like my own body also used to be until a few years ago, when I was still unconsciously imitating them, not having yet dared to emo-tionally detach myself from my genealogical tree.
He sensed their idleness permeating my body and fattening it more and more. Every old habit of mine, which was but the continuation of one of their own habits, affixed additional mass of fat, up to the point that I could not anymore fit in the room and my blubber overflowed from the doors and windows.
All my fears that I would lose material goods or prove to be inferior to my brothers ceaselessly accumulated in my body, thus adding abundant needless fat. “My spirit is obese, flabby, limp and cumbersome”, the mind realized then. He got started on recalling incidences of timidness, procrastination and indecisiveness and found that all these increased the volume of my flabby body. He also remembered many of my everyday anxieties about worldly things such as money, others’ esteem for me, others’ wronging or verbally belittling me and many more. He saw that also these affixed additional needless fat to my body.
My overly bulky and obese body could no more move due to its fat. This was a very picturesque form of confession and at the same time very redeeming, as usual. The mind re-undertook the role of the wise father and affectionately hugged the awful monster into which my body had been transformed. He formed a protecting and loving veil around my poor sop body and began to look at me with understanding and compassion.
He totally accepted the reality he saw. He realized that it is very probable that I will be in my whole life dragging with me all this redundant mass of thoughts which have taken the form of stomach saturation, emotional satiation, superfluous fat and flabbiness, due to the reason that the registrations of the past are indelibly engraved in the brain’s information storage, regardless if they stem from my ancestors or occurred in my own life.
However, the mind saw that he is simultaneously able, while I am dragging all this excessive weight, to give it up and leave it sprawling on the ground. He saw my body, slim, thrifty, fit and shapely, detach from the formless blubber and, by simply taking one step forward, abandon it and pass above it, but without that it ceased to exist, because it constitutes the precious history of my spirit. This blubber is my plenary self, whom I cannot and do not want to disown, firstly because I appreciate him and do not reject him and secondly because I need the many years’ experience and knowledge which is encapsulated in it.
In other words, the mind saw the possibility for the whole of my ancestors’ idle psychological burden to coexist with the joy and the participation in life. The reconciliation with the limpness and the obesity of my spirit allows him to exist in the world creatively and vivaciously, without ever ceasing to be surrounded by the encumbering relics of the total of the redundancy of my own whole life and the lives of all my ancestors.
Whatever the mind sees, hears, touches on myself and on my brothers in the present is but the natural result which developed out of the pain, joy and emotional getaways of the past of our whole genealogical trees, as well as out of our expectations and our fears of the unknown future. “So, this is what humans are”, thinks the mind now. “Thus, let me no longer be deceived by their current image, which is but the mask they wear deliberately or unwittingly. And let me from now on remember to view their total image, so as to be able to understand and sympathize with them and stop seeing them only in a utilitarian way and instead start seeing them as creatures who yearn for care and love in order to find the courage to liberate themselves from the yoke of their ancestors as well as of their own selves”.
That is to say, the mind understood that the key was once again the simple pacific knowledge of Truth and not the violent demand for immediate change. After accepting to visualize and sense my body stretching and becoming increasingly baggy without end and admitting the truth imprinted in this emblematic image, this truth was finally simplified to him, no matter how unpleasant it was, because it became concrete and stopped being a diffuse, partially unknown and therefore disconcerting situation.
The mind now remembers in every single moment that the joy he feels whenever he has a success is but an interval between the time periods of his caging within the boundaries of his flabby body, which has become baggy due to his old habits. By doing so, his goal becomes more specified: increasingly frequent giving up of his entire expectations and systematic inner relinquishment of all his demands, so that the joy intervals will become the main time and the intermediate brief periods of caging will turn to a mere interval of a smiling reminder for the miserable reality of the past.