The following is a guest post for OR318 by Leyla Haidarian, a Baha’i film maker based in South Africa and co-founder of Double Take TV.
In my son’s children’s prayer book, there is a sentence that has always baffled me: “…bestow Thou freedom while in a state of childhood…”
What is meant with this phrase and what is “freedom”? The freedom to get naked and play in the dirt? The freedom to eat rice with your hands and then throw half of it on the floor? The freedom to roll around in the grass without a worry?
In an incredibly inspiring and unlikely speech at Harvard University, author JK Rowling recently shed some light on the subject for me, as she spoke about the value of crisis or the “fringe benefits of failure” as she put it. She described, that when she hit rock bottom in her life; when all her fears of poverty and failure had come true, there was nowhere else for her to hide. It was in her absolute outer poverty that she discovered the true nobility of who she really was. There were no more material or worldly possessions, titles or “hype” to hide behind. She was “free” to be who she really was and rock bottom provided a solid foundation for her to build and meet her highest destiny.
So on one level freedom is a state of mind and means to be free from “earthly things”. It can mean detachment from societal or cultural expectations, from material belongings, ego and idle fancy. And curiously, it is often in a state of outer “poverty” and “restriction” that we can find our true inner freedom.
In the “West” we often think of ourselves as already being free. We look at places such as Iran and think because freedom of speech is restricted, basic human rights are abused, the internet is censored and satellite programs are intercepted, we can call ourselves free and that this freedom is something worth “bringing” to places like Iran. Sure it is. But in the process of pushing these valuable societal freedoms, we often forget to humble ourselves before the “inner freedoms” that so many people in places like Iran have already achieved.
It isn’t our societal freedoms, but what we do with our societal freedoms that often points to our deep, underlying enslavement to self and ego. Those whose voices are silenced and who perish in the prisons of the Middle-East and elsewhere are often far more “liberated” than we are!
Inner freedom can be absolute, societal freedom can only ever be relative. Because if I infringe on your freedom by expressing my own, I am hurting not only you, but the greater organism of life that encompasses me. Indulge me for a second and visualize this organism as a piano: In parts of the Middle East, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are so bad that there are only three of four notes that are allowed to be played. The rest are silenced and muted for life. The tunes that emerge from this piano are dull and depressing. The piano as a whole is deprived.
In the “West”, every note is “free”; free to play and bang and sound whenever it wants. As a result it sounds like my one-year old, when he bangs on his keyboard. It’s a cacophony of brutal notes, each trying to sound louder than the other and each trying to win ascendancy over the other. It is equally dull and depressing – and equally deprived of meeting its highest potential.
What we need for our own limitless spiritual freedom to be realized is a situation where each note can find its own best expression and sound at precisely the right time, without infringing on another’s turn and without sacrificing its own beauty. None of us can ever be heard unless we find that balance of a beautiful symphony and come together in a dance of notes. That is true unity and freedom. It is only when we find that balance, that each of us will find his or her best expression and that diversity will reach its highest expression.
So as we strive for greater societal freedoms in the “East” and for a greater understanding of our spiritual freedoms and responsibilities in the “West”, let us embrace that we need to learn from each other to realize ultimate freedom for our ever-advancing human civilization.