Yesterday we’ve begun our ‘Wholly’ Week Special with a post entitled ‘Man’day, just in time for starting our Holy Monday right.

Here, we’ve talked about the beginning of man (where the blog title ‘Man’day originated) and discussed how our characteristics are a reflection of God’s image as we are created like Him. All that we have, our talents and abilities, our senses and faculties, our strengths and weaknesses comes from Him, and it is just but proper to use these gifts for His greater glory.

Now that we’ve set the stage of the beginning of man, it is now time to proceed with the next element that man is in possession of, something that could either make or break our relationship with our Creator – our freedom.

Human Freedom

The life of man is a series of paradoxes and none is perhaps as striking as the one behind the concept of freedom.

From the Bible we’ve known that God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions.

“God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”

It follows then that true freedom can only be attained through Him.

This is something easily understood. We’ve probably heard this from the Church, discussed it over a theological subject, or read it from a spiritual discourse. But oftentimes we still go about living our lives and wondering how we could be free. We ask ourselves why, despite knowing this truth, we still feel that we are enslaved by something beyond our control?

But where do these feelings of ‘unfreedom’ root from?

How Can We Be Ever Free?

Man, ignorant of his true nature, often mistakes the shadow for the substance and runs after an elusive freedom, merely external. However he must know that mere outward freedom does not liberate, but only strengthens man’s inner bondage. This is the reason why he goes from form to form until he learns to recognize that external freedom must be rooted in internal freedom, that no man is truly free who has not attained freedom within.

True freedom then is essentially an inner state of consciousness.

All spiritual traditions point to this central fact and call man to establish peace and harmony within himself. A man or a woman who is suffering discord and conflict within is bound to reflect these in his relationships with others and thereby to sow the seeds of misunderstanding and of dissent leading to strife and hostility.

This is where conflicts came from. Not because of the usual ‘them’ that our blaming nature selves point out, but it came from ‘us’; from our selfish desires and impure cravings, which rages continuously and must last until man, becoming aware of his larger SELF, gives supremacy to that SELF, making all other interests and desires subservient to It.

This means that not until we become aware of our spiritual nature, and surrenders our selfish human nature to it, can we be free.

Man is “the weaver of his freedom,” and the fabric of freedom can only be woven with the thread of unselfishness and dispassion.

Hopefully this Tuesday, we’ll take time to reflect on the conflicts within us, and see them in God’s perspective. May we learn to surrender our selfish human desires and let His goodness took over. So that by the end of the day, not only we are at peace within ourselves, but others may also be at peace because of our harmonious relationships with them.

Let us exercise our freedom well today. A happy ‘Choose’day and A Blessed Holy Tuesday!

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment.

    —Gandhiji

This is part of my first ever Wholly Week Special series of posts, with the aim of making your holy week a more meaningful one and that by the end you’ll be once again ‘whole’. Feel free to read through them, be inspired, and inspire others. Have a blessed Lenten Season! Wholly Week Special: ‘Man’day | Wholly Week Special: Choose-day | Wholly Week Special: Weeds-day | Wholly Week Special: ‘Tears’-day