Бесплатный фрагмент - The way of a free man

Introduction

Human society is a world of ideas. We live in the reality that we create for ourselves when we decide how we will live. The most valuable ideas best reflect our needs, desires, and dreams. The better the idea, the closer it is to people’s real life, what they need and what they want. Good ideas make our lives better by helping us stick to the right values, get along well with each other, and strive for really important goals. One such good and even great idea is the idea of freedom. It, if properly presented and perceived, allows us not only to satisfy the human need for the very freedom that all people have, after all, we are all born with a free soul, but also many of our other needs, both lower and higher, with its help we can satisfy by creating such a society for ourselves a life in which we will unleash all our inner potential while achieving our goals. I believe that freedom is the foundation for all the other values that are important to us. All of them grow on the soil of freedom. Therefore, the pursuit of freedom, the cultivation of freedom, the establishment of a free life and the dissemination of this idea is, in my opinion, the true path to happiness. Freedom acts as the main rod on which all other important things for life are impaled. The purpose of this book is to make people happy with the idea of freedom, which I will convey to the reader in the form in which I myself perceive it.

Much has been written and said about freedom. But you can write and talk about it indefinitely. Because this value itself may be one, but it can be understood in different ways and this beautiful, one might even say, divine idea can be conveyed to people in different ways. The point here is not in the amount of words said and written, but in the selection of words and thoughts that will allow you to convey the idea of the value of freedom to as many people as possible. I will be able to do something with the help of this book, and other writers and speakers who also spread this idea in society will be able to do something. The main thing for all of us is that the idea of freedom is actively spread and as many people as possible live it, develop and protect it. After all, the opposite ideas are also very strong and at the same time cruel, they call for restrictions, prohibitions, enslavement, exploitation, violence and other similar things that lead to suffering and pain. In this world, there is a constant struggle between different ideas, both harmful to most people and useful. And it depends on each of us on which side we will stand, which ideas to protect and spread-harmful in our understanding or useful. I think the idea of freedom is very useful and valuable, allowing you to make many people happy. Therefore, I am ready to extol and spread it, and if necessary defend it.

I want to help you, dear readers, tune in to a special wave of life, permeated by the eternal idea of the value of freedom, the realization of which allows a person to plunge into a state of peace and serenity, when life is lived in joy and love, without any suffering and pain. After all, thanks to freedom, you will always have a choice of how to live, how to relate to life, how to perceive certain things, freedom will help you manage your life through managing your inner state. This book is not strong in logic and reasoning, but in the feelings that will arise in the reader when the idea of freedom is perceived. It will help someone to start leading an active lifestyle, and someone will learn to just enjoy what they have. Good ideas, if properly formulated, become a good energy source for readers, motivating them to take action or calming them down, helping them find a sense of peace. This book will help you decide for yourself what is right for you and how you need to live, because it tells about freedom, and freedom does not require anything from anyone, it, on the contrary, saves a person from all unnecessary requirements. You do not need to strain yourself while reading this book, it can be read easily and calmly, because it does not oblige you to anything and does not argue with any of your beliefs, it simply invites you to look at life from a certain angle, so that you feel good about it, so that you feel happy. Something you will understand, something, perhaps, no, it’s not terrible. What your conscious mind won’t do through understanding what you’ve written, your subconscious mind will do through believing in this great idea. The idea of freedom doesn’t threaten you, absolutely. If you accept it completely, your life won’t get any worse. It can get better, it should get better, and for this I will share with you a lot of useful thoughts. But you will definitely not lose anything if you accept some of my thoughts, even if not all of them, but only some of them.

This book can be a salvation for lost souls, that is, for those people who have not found themselves in this life, who are hurt and hard in the existing reality, who suffer and do not know how and for what they live, what to strive for, what to love. With special love and care, she will help each of you to find your own meaning in life, so that you will be interested in living, so that you will do what your heart is set on. It will tell you how to find your place in the world so that you don’t feel out of place at this celebration of life. Thanks to it, you will determine your purpose, your mission, you will be able to understand the values of life in order to understand which of them can make you truly happy, and which are not worth spending your time and effort on them. To do this, I wrote this book based on my experience working with people, in which I freed them from all the negativity that they suffered from. It is enough for us to understand that this idea — the idea of freedom-is as strong as any other, because it is absolutely true, there is no admixture of human egoism, no inventions and ambiguities, because freedom is an objective eternal value, expressed in its subjective perception by each individual person. You can feel free in any way you want, you do not need to adapt to other people in this matter, you do not need to adhere to any strict rules that contradict common sense. Your own freedom is the absolute truth! All you need to do is just get into this Great Idea, everything else will happen by itself, you will understand everything that needs to be understood and you will feel everything that needs to be felt. And most importantly, you will not be indifferent to everything related to freedom, which means you will open up to all possible ideas that reflect it in different ways.

Believe it or not, there are always miracles in free life that are sometimes difficult to explain in scientific terms. If a person starts moving towards freedom, they will simply happen, these miracles, because he will tune in to a new wave of perception of reality, which will give him such opportunities that he did not have before. After all, everything starts in our head, everything starts in our thoughts, through them we look at life from one angle or another, with their help we make various decisions that lead us to certain results. That is why it is so important that our thoughts are based on high-quality, true, creative ideas that lead to joy and stable pleasure, and therefore to happiness, and not to suffering. In this book, we will look at just such an idea, which is very high-quality and absolutely true.

With the idea of freedom, you will enter a completely different world, in which your soul will find peace, because nothing will limit it, no thoughts of yours. You will be able to start living a new life, much more beautiful and happy, in which only you can decide how to treat certain things. Happiness is necessary for all of us, but it is difficult to come to it, because we do not understand what we need to be happy. We constantly lack something for happiness, all the time something does not suit us, something forces us to suffer, worry, get angry, envy, we can not calm down. And all this is because we don’t know how to become happy first of all in our head, we don’t understand where our happiness should come from, where it should start. And the beginning is within us. We are unhappy because we are prisoners of our own restless thoughts, from which we do not know how to free ourselves. Many people do not have the necessary knowledge for this release. Now they will have them. A good idea creates useful thoughts, which in turn form good feelings, positive feelings, including feelings of happiness. It is not the external world that makes us happy or unhappy, but we make ourselves who we are through our thoughts and actions. The outside world depends on us more than we do on it. No matter where a person lives, no matter how well he is provided for, he can be dissatisfied with his life and suffer greatly because of this. This is a known problem, an eternal problem. There is always something that spoils our mood, which makes us dissatisfied and therefore unhappy. And if a person does not have a reliable ideological support, he can break down under the influence of many negative factors. This book should be the very ideological support that you can rely on always and everywhere. It, like the same holy scriptures, teaches a person to live correctly, so that everything is good for him. Only she has a different idea, not about faith in God, but about freedom — the great gift that we all have. You need a strong idea so that you have something to lean on during a difficult time for you, so that you know how to live better. I really hope that my idea of freedom will give you this power and understanding.

Any idea can be used by a person as a reference point in this world. But not every idea will be useful always and everywhere. Thanks to the idea of freedom, you can begin to enjoy everything that is in this world, and not just something specific. And there are many joys in it, but we can not always fully enjoy them, because we are not free in our head, even if our body is free. We do not use our opportunities to become happy, this is our main problem. Negative thoughts, eternal dissatisfaction, prevent us from enjoying what we have. And most importantly, this damned fear that shackles our actions and makes us passive. It is most harmful to us, preventing us from becoming happy. And if a person does not know what to do with all these internal problems, he does not live, he lives his life. Therefore, it is important for all of us to know what can be so valuable in this world, besides life itself, for which it is worth waking up every day, getting on our feet and going to do something, achieve something and strive for something. We need to know what we need to fight for, and life is impossible without a fight, and this must be done every day. A person often has to suffer for something, sacrifice something, endure something or someone and put up with something. Life is not all sugar, and there is a lot of salt in it. And when it is hard and painful for us, we need to know why to continue doing something, for what great value to fight, suffer and generally live. People don’t just need to believe in something pure, bright and meaningful, they need to feel this value with all their being in order to feel it and fall in love with it. Only then will this value become a part of their lives and themselves, and they will understand what they live for. When this happens, they will be incredibly happy. I, my friends, will teach you to love freedom, so that it will help you to love life and yourself. You will be free in your soul and you will have everything else.

You know, religion helps someone in life, people find their salvation in it when they are hard, painful, lonely. And that’s great, too. Whatever helps a person, the main thing is that there is a result, the main thing is that a person lives and enjoys life. Only here, religion can greatly limit a person’s life, driving him into a certain framework of prohibitions and taboos. It has its own rules, which are not always appropriate and even not always reasonable. Because of them, religion is not suitable for everyone. Some people like some kind of political ideology that people are willing to devote their entire lives to. Also not bad. After all, politics determines life in society, and there is no way to do without it. But political ideologies are not always sufficiently promising and well-thought-out to connect one’s life with them, to rely on them in everything. So you can fight for a long time and so come to nothing, get nothing, achieve nothing. And someone finds in constant and unrestrained consumption the only joy in their life. Well, this, I think, is a very simple way to get pleasure from it, it is too limited to reduce all the joys of life to it. There are also people who devote themselves to their work and career, and this allows them to feel comfortable when they are successful. Not a bad option. Only this, you know, is like becoming a robot, a money-making machine. But why do you earn them so persistently, why do you make a career for yourself, if such people do not even always have children, it is not always clear. Working for the sake of work, in my opinion, is somehow strange. But people like it, so be it. In general, it turns out that every idea that reflects certain values has its positive aspects, but not every value, or rather, not every way of life, can make a person truly happy, so that nothing else bothers him and he is completely satisfied with everything. It is clear that there are eternal values such as love, family, children, truth, justice, and many others, including the one we will discuss in this book, which is freedom. But there is always something that defines all other values, some basic value. It is the key link on which everything depends and around which everything revolves. And this value, which will be discussed in this book, is the very key link that determines all other values. This is freedom, my friends, freedom, true freedom! I believe it is the foundation of everything.

This value, which you and I will fully absorb here, gives this world life and happiness. It is as great as love, but unlike love, it is easier to control and shape it in your mind. After all, freedom is a completely controlled feeling, moreover, it is completely dependent on us. It is we who decide whether we will be free or not. Many people have always aspired to freedom. This has happened throughout human history. People know the value of freedom. Or they just feel it. And if you, dear readers, have not yet decided for yourself what values are most important to you in your life, then this eternal value will definitely fill your life with meaning and help you come to full-fledged happiness. And it, just imagine, is completely dependent on you, and you can control it. You decide whether you will have this great value in life or not. That’s great! This is why freedom is unique.

The idea of freedom itself is not new. But what is new here is our approach and attitude to it, our view of it and understanding of it, as well as the very desire for freedom that I want to awaken in you. Here we will formulate this value in such a way that it will be ingrained in your consciousness forever and never leave it again. After all, it is not so easy to find it, it is not so easy to feel it, no matter what life you live. Being free and feeling free, believe me, is not the same thing. The feeling is more important, much more important. And it needs to be developed, because everything great requires special treatment. We will embrace freedom with you in such a way that it simply cannot fail to enter the life of each of you. This book presents a teaching about freedom that will allow anyone to thoroughly rethink their entire life, so that, regardless of how it develops, they can make it even better, even happier, thanks to the acquisition of freedom, first internal, and then external. This book will become for you the beacon in life that you will always be guided by, so as not to stray from the true path and not succumb to the sly temptations of all sorts of villains who seduce their victims with harmful things, because of which people often get into difficult situations, and sometimes lose their very lives. Freedom will lead you to pure and bright love, which needs to be built, nurtured in yourself, and not just received. And this can only be done by free people who create their own destiny, and do not rely on circumstances.

We all want to be happy, but each of us understands happiness differently, depending on what he values most and what he needs. Someone is made happy by the money that he can earn, someone by the love that he feels, and someone by freedom, which in fact is not opposed to any other values, but only complements and even defines them, if it is correctly understood and properly disposed of. Is the same love possible if a person is not free? And money, is there so much happiness in it if a person feels unfree, regardless of where and how he lives? Without freedom, nothing else is valuable! You can take any value and see how it depends on freedom, on the feeling of freedom. And we will see that without a sense of freedom, nothing will help us feel completely satisfied, without this great value, no golden cage will give us true happiness.

In this book, you will find answers to many questions about freedom, including those that you have not yet asked yourself or others. You are fully aware of this value. Let’s start our dive into this Great Idea! Remember: if you set out on the path of a free man, you will never be able to leave it again. Because once you fall in love with freedom, you can’t stop loving it. Freedom is life itself, which can only be given up by giving up life itself.

Chapter 1. What is freedom?

Before you think about something, you need to define the concepts. This is the golden rule of reasoning. Since there can be a great many opinions about something. As they say, as many people, so many opinions. These opinions need to be agreed upon in order to start speaking the same language and understand each other better. Let’s do this for freedom.

Freedom is not only understood differently by people, but also felt differently by them, depending on what experience in their life a particular person has experienced. For some, for example, to live according to someone’s rules, according to some schedule, is quite a normal phenomenon. They like to be bossed around, make decisions for them, and take responsibility for them. Such people feel comfortable, for example, in the same army. These are driven people who do not really like to make decisions themselves, and even more so to bear responsibility for them. But other people just physically can not stand this life, when they constantly have to do something against their wishes and their opinion. They see their subordination to someone as a blatant lack of freedom and try their best to avoid it, because it depresses them. Therefore, different people may feel free and unfree in the same situation, may feel comfortable or suffer. The point is not in objective conditions, but in the attitude of a particular person to them. We’ll come back to this idea, but for now, let’s see what different people think about freedom most often.

Quite a large number of people understand freedom as nothing more than freedom of choice. If there is a choice, then there is freedom, that is their opinion. Perhaps this is the most common definition of freedom. And it’s very good. It makes sense. In this book, we will accept this understanding of freedom, but only partially. We accept it because on the one hand, it is true that when you can choose what to do in a particular situation, no matter how difficult it is, and despite the limitations of your choice, you can consider yourself a free person, because you influence the situation, your own fate or the fate of other people by making this choice. You are not indifferent, you are not passive, you are not just an observer who does not decide anything, you are a living person who can use his will to influence circumstances. By making a choice — you are acting in a way that only a free person can afford, even if not absolutely free, but also not absolutely limited in everything. And if we talk about the freedom to choose our attitude to a particular situation, then it does allow us to feel free as much as we want. After all, you can treat the same event in different ways, this is a process under our control.

But, on the other hand, it is not always clear which choice can be considered an expression of freedom, and which is just an illusion of it. For example, if you come to the store and choose between several varieties of sausage, instead of one, is this freedom? It is unlikely that such a choice is too significant for life to experience this sublime feeling that fills us with strength and allows us to feel happy. You can live without sausage and many other material values at all, but at the same time be free, doing what you want, and not what you are ordered to do. So in this example, choice does not lead to freedom. Although it is good when it is there. But not so good as to experience the bliss of a sense of freedom.

Or here’s another example. If you participate in elections and choose between several candidates, can you say that you are free to make such a choice? I don’t think so. After all, you choose from among those who have already been selected for you. And it turns out that everything is already chosen for you, you just have to choose the person’s face that you like best, because otherwise these people can be exactly the same, even if they adhere to different ideologies. You do not express your will through such a choice, you simply participate in someone else’s game, sincerely believing in the significance of your opinion or consciously deceiving yourself about this, but not attaching any importance to it.

In addition, some children were asked to choose what kind of belt they would be flogged with, thus showing that they choose their own punishment. Ostensibly, this is more humane. I know a lot of such stories. So think about it, does all this choice speak about some kind of human freedom? As for me, it turns out that there is a choice, but there is no freedom. So it’s not easy here. The ability to choose is not freedom in itself. Although having a choice is certainly better than not having one at all.

Other people understand freedom as permissiveness and the absence of any restrictions, when a person has complete freedom of action, when you can do whatever you want, and no one can stop you, punish you if you do something wrong and interfere with someone. Perhaps this definition of freedom has its own grain of truth. In this case, we can say that the person is not afraid of anything, the fear of punishment does not limit him, because he does not expect the punishment itself, and therefore he has more choice about how to act in different situations. He does what he wants. But permissiveness turns many people into real monsters, who become obsessed with their crazy and boundless desires and go beyond all reasonable limits in their implementation. Such people do not enjoy freedom, but look for its limits, or rather the limit of their capabilities, after which they will be given a slap on the wrist, not allowing them to get too impudent. And they get very impudent from permissiveness, they become aggressive, greedy, restless, until they run into some force that will stop them. And for every force, as you know, there is always another force. Therefore, there is no person in this world who is so powerful that he can do whatever he wants, absolutely everything. There are always certain limitations for each of us. Therefore, such madness as permissiveness can hardly be considered the highest value to which we refer freedom. This is not freedom, it is only one of its aspects and far from the best.

Some people also understand freedom as complete irresponsibility and independence from the will of other people. They like it when someone does something for them, but they do not like to do anything for others. They live for themselves, believing that others owe them a lot, and they do not owe anyone and nothing. You can also partially agree with this, because you never want to do something for someone and make excuses or report to someone for something. This is a life in which you can only take, but give nothing in return. You’re kind of free of obligations, but you don’t want to be free of people. But, as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once said, though in a different context: «It is impossible to live in society and be free from society.» You can free yourself from all sorts of obligations to other people, either by gaining unlimited and absolute power over them, although in this case you will still have to perform some duties to people in order to take care of them at least minimally as the source of your power, or by going to the forest, mountains, desert, etc. where there are no people, where you can do whatever you want, and no one will tell you anything. This latter method will help you avoid any obligations to anyone, but it will also free other people from obligations to you, which means that all responsibility for your life will fall entirely on you. Therefore, it is difficult to combine irresponsibility and independence with each other, because people come together to do something for each other, for the sake of simplifying their lives. To do this, they have to limit themselves in some way, for example, in their crazy and selfish desires. Who needs someone who thinks only of himself and spits on others? So this whole definition of freedom is also not suitable for us.

What else can be considered and what do people consider a manifestation of freedom? I have met such an opinion, quite real, coming from the most ordinary people, and not some theorists, according to which freedom is when no violence is used against you, forcing you to obey and do what you do not want to do. Good definition, I really like it. When, for example, a person is in captivity and is forced to do what he is forced to do through physical violence against him or through the threat of its use, he is, of course, not free. This is how classical slavery manifests itself. A person can be chained up, hurt, or intimidated into doing what is right for someone who has power over them. And by restricting his physical movement, for example, to the same prison, you can stifle his spirit of freedom, making it impossible for him to believe in its value and hope for it. We will also use this definition as a basis for our understanding of freedom.

Thus, selectively synthesizing all of the above, we can say that real freedom is primarily freedom in our head. This is what we think about it and how we understand it. You have to make your mind free to feel free. After that, you can start to strive for it in the outside world. When your mind can move in different directions, find different answers to the same question, find different solutions to the same problem, and help you manage your inner state even when you are completely dependent on external factors, you are truly free. The body can be restricted in its freedom, but the mind can never be restricted unless the master himself restricts it. You decide whether you are a free person or not. And no one else. And then it remains only to adhere to the appropriate behavior in the real world, in order to gain freedom in everything in which it can be found.

The mind also frees our soul, if we understand by the soul all our feelings, experiences, intuitions, in a word, everything that defies rational understanding. Our mind creates an image of freedom or unfreedom within us, and it evokes feelings corresponding to that image. A person can be in any place and with anyone, and all his feelings will depend only on his thoughts, on whether he considers himself free or not. The soul of a free man always remains so, if he thinks that he is free.

The trouble is that such freedom is very difficult to achieve. This is an inner freedom that you need to create with your power of thought. However, it is very difficult for a person to get rid of dependence on external factors. Therefore, most of us strive for external freedom when we try to get rid of unnecessary obligations, various annoying restrictions, demands from other people, violent interference in our lives, and similar things that affect our internal state from the outside. This is also useful, it is one of the ways to true freedom. By changing the external world, you can change the internal one. The outer sense of freedom leads to inner freedom. And the problem is not that people go this way, the problem is that going along it, they often do not reach the end. And they do not reach the end because they do not believe in the existence of inner freedom. Having achieved external freedom, and even then very relative, they stop at this achievement, believing that further movement is meaningless, because they have already come to what they wanted. They are not subject to anyone or almost anyone, they are not restricted by anyone and nothing, apart from the reasonable restrictions that exist in any society, they are free to choose what decision to make in this or that situation, and they are satisfied with it. This is a great state, but quite vulnerable. As soon as external circumstances change for the worse, a person feels unfree again, having lost something of what he saw as his freedom. Someone in such cases prefers to accept the partial or complete loss of their freedom, someone fights to regain it, and someone simply suffers, not seeing the opportunity to change anything. It is as if you were put in a prison, and in this prison was not only your body, but also your mind. But the mind can always be free, even when the body is not free. This is what you need to learn in order to feel happy always and everywhere.

A free mind is not necessarily a mind that has come to terms with reality, that has chosen to change its attitude to the situation rather than the situation itself. It is a mind that loves freedom and values it always, even when a person is physically unfree, even when he is forced to limit himself. The belief that freedom is achievable and worth fighting for allows the mind to remain free forever. And the love of freedom always pushes a person to fight for it. By freeing your mind from its limitations, you open it up to the possibility of finding ways to freedom, no matter what situation you are in. A free mind will never accept unfreedom. A person will always fight for it, seeing the meaning in it. Of course, such a passionate desire for freedom is also in some sense a limitation, because until you find it, this freedom that you strive for, you will be dependent on this desire. But this is a cost of a free mind that I think a person can accept. After all, there is no such thing as absolute and unlimited freedom.

But the most important thing in all this is that it is not so important what freedom really is. From an objective and subjective point of view, it can be anything. Whatever you want, understand it. Even the definition given to it in this book doesn’t really matter. This is only the author’s point of view, expressed in a logical understanding of this feeling. What really matters is the sense of freedom that each individual feels. Whatever you do and whatever you think, if you think that you are free, and it makes you happy, then so it is. The main thing is to strive for this feeling of freedom and find it. And you can think about freedom in any way you want and understand it in any way you want. Someone will feel free and in prison, and someone who is not limited by anyone and nothing will suffer, because his thoughts will tell him that he is not free, that his life is terrible. Your freedom is your subjective sense of freedom, no more and no less. Whatever you want, just think about it, as long as it makes you a happy person.

So to understand freedom, focus on your own feelings, not on someone else’s words. This is how freedom should manifest itself, if it is real. If I don’t feel comfortable with a certain person, in a certain place, if I don’t like doing something, then I have to get rid of it in order to feel free. It is me, not you or anyone else, but me, because these are my subjective feelings. Other people may think and feel differently. And I go to the freedom that I need. Whether I change my attitude to how I feel or try to change the situation so that I feel differently, it doesn’t matter. I must become free inside, my soul demands it. And my mind is already solving this problem as best it can, looking for opportunities to come to this state.

A free mind is constantly looking for an opportunity to free a person from all unnecessary things that complicate their life and make them dependent on something or someone. Such a mind, for example, helps to understand that unnecessary things for life, obligations, relationships do not improve, but complicate it and make a person unhappy rather than happy and satisfied. To some extent, the free mind professes the idea of minimalism, because it teaches a person to be content only with the most necessary things and not to waste time and effort on achieving something completely unnecessary, while making himself dependent on different things and people. If you can, for example, do without a loan that will limit you if you take it out, then why do it, why limit your freedom with additional obligations to the bank. Or, if you can not have a relationship with a person who forbids you something, again, limiting your freedom with their unreasonable demands on you, then why should you put up with him. There should be obligations and restrictions, of course, but not when a person suffers too much because everything is forbidden to him. There must be a measure in everything. So it is necessary to get rid of meaningless restrictions, and not of restrictions in general. A free mind makes our life easier, helps us enjoy it, and not always chase after something more, following along with our boundless desires. Because these desires make us their hostages or, if you prefer, slaves.

A free life is a life without unnecessary obligations, without additional, meaningless responsibilities, without unnecessary things and useless people. All this can bind you to yourself and limit your opportunities, and with them your freedom. A free person is not an ascetic who does not need anything, he is just extremely practical, so he does not spend the precious time of his life on everything that does not bring any benefit and joy. He doesn’t need ideas that tell him how to live, what to strive for, or what to want. He or she strives for anything that can reduce his or her dependence on other people, and therefore expand his or her opportunities, so that he or she will have more choice in what to do in life, and, consequently, freedom. Therefore, free people earn money and strive for power not just to live beautifully, but in order not to do what they do not want to do. In their life, first consciousness determines being, and then being determines consciousness.

Do not forget that freedom is always a responsibility. This is not only the responsibility for your own life, but also for the freedom of others. By valuing, protecting and increasing your freedom, you should not encroach on the freedom of others. Be free and do not do, do not wish people what you do not want yourself. Because any restriction of someone else’s freedom will be the beginning of the spread of evil, which can eventually return to you according to the laws of cause and effect and hit your own freedom. Here the boomerang principle works, everything that a person does to the detriment of others may well return to him and also harm him. People should respect each other’s freedom for the sake of preserving and increasing it, so that the idea of freedom itself is viable. Otherwise, by killing the freedom of one person or many people, you can kill your sense of freedom in this way, because the person who created the evil becomes dependent on it, fearing evil in return. And what kind of freedom can there be if a person experiences fear? The feeling of fear suppresses the feeling of freedom. Therefore, we must value and respect not only our own freedom, but also the freedom of other people and not encroach on it, so that there is harmony in the world.

This is how we can understand freedom in order to appreciate it. The pursuit of freedom is the pursuit of happiness. If a person does not feel inner freedom, then this person does not feel real happiness. Any discomfort in the soul arises from lack of freedom. Keep your freedom, and at the same time do not infringe on the freedom of others, and then everyone will be happy. It seems to sound simple, but how often people impose restrictions on each other because of their selfishness, believing that they have the right to decide for others how to live. This is how evil appears in society, when one person suppresses and restricts another, which is then transmitted from one person to another. We humans lack the wisdom to respect each other’s freedom, and because of this, we often suffer.

A good example of the definition of freedom given here is the freedom of a person from any destructive thoughts and beliefs that poison his life. For example, it can be freedom from evil, when we do not accept evil as something that we cannot cope with, but look for solutions to any problems that we face in order to overcome this evil. For example, if a person is sure that there are no unsolvable, hopeless situations in life, he will never give up and submit to evil, will not become its prisoner. He will remain free in his head, and therefore in the outside world will try to do everything to get rid of any shackles. A person who is free from evil is truly happy, because he is not afraid and does not create it. When a person is happy, then evil is powerless over him, especially when he knows and is sure how to live his whole life in happiness. Such a person cannot be broken, it is pointless to suggest to him that something is wrong with him, that he is bad in something, and so on, which usually causes people to have bad feelings, because of which they then suffer, fall into depression and cannot fully enjoy life. A free person decides for himself how to react to certain actions and words of other people, to certain circumstances. He does not depend on them, he depends on his own decisions, on his own, and not on someone else’s opinion.

Happiness is the meaning of our life. We all know that. And to be happy, you have to be free. Including being free from evil, from the mistakes that we all make, from the addiction that can take hold of us if we don’t curb it, from our reckless desires, which are sometimes just crazy. You need to be confident in the direction of your life’s journey. And this confidence appears when you decide for yourself what is right for you in this life, and what is not, what is valuable, and what does not make sense, what to love, and what to treat indifferently. Everything happens in our head, freedom and happiness are in it.

Now that we understand what freedom is, it is reasonable to think about why we need it, what its value is, what exactly it can give us to make us feel happy. This will be discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter 2. The value of Freedom

To begin to strive for freedom, it is necessary to realize all the value that it gives. And this value lies not only in the spiritual comfort that a person experiences when he is free, but also in all other aspects of his life. Everything that a person needs to enjoy life, he can get with the help of freedom. After all, a free person is an independent person who thinks with his own head, makes his own decisions and bears full responsibility for them. He relies primarily on himself for everything, so his opportunities are limited only by his own desires and abilities. For an untrained person, this may seem a little scary, but how is it possible to not depend on anyone, it’s impossible. After all, we are taught from childhood to be dependent on someone, in certain matters. Teachers should teach us, doctors should treat us, policemen should protect us, and so on.

There is always a division of labor in society, and therefore we all depend on each other to some extent. This is partly correct, because we cannot do everything for ourselves, but it is extremely harmful when a person learns and gets used to relying only on others for everything and always. This is what it restricts itself to, this dependence is already not free. After all, relying on others, a person becomes dependent on their decisions, which may not always meet his interests. After all, people are selfish by nature, no matter what role they play in society, in most cases they will think first of themselves and their interests, and only then of others.

Freedom helps us to count on ourselves even when we turn to others for help, leaving ourselves the last word. No matter what it is, the final decision is made by the person himself, if he is free, because everything that relates to his fate is primarily his business, and not other people’s.

Let’s look at how a sense of freedom allows people to meet their various needs by making the right decisions. After all, you can’t get enough of freedom alone.

Material well-being

The material issue is one of the most pressing for most people. We all have to somehow earn our own bread, dress and shoe ourselves, and even someone else, for example, our children, who we have to take care of. We need to pay for a roof over our heads, fulfill other obligations, and for all this we need money that, as you know, no one will give us for nothing. Only here, some people solve this problem with ease and interest, while others are forced to suffer, working in some hated job solely for the sake of money. How can the feeling of freedom, the desire for freedom, and the thinking of a free person help us in this matter? How can freedom feed us?

To answer this question, we need to ask another question: who can best take care of us — ourselves or someone else? Definitely, for most cases, the first option will be correct. No one needs us as much as we do ourselves. This means that taking care of our loved ones is primarily our task. You can’t feed yourself — no one will feed you! And if he does, it won’t be as much as we’d like. A person must be able to take care of himself in order to be completely satisfied with his life. And that’s where freedom helps us better than anything else. For only a free man can do everything that is necessary for his material well-being. A non-free person relies on other people in this matter, starting with his parents, who must support him, and ending with the state, which must take care of him. Non-free thinking always expects something from others, not from itself. And others don’t always give us what we need and want.

A free man is a wolf who hunts, and does not feed by hand, he determines his own fate in a constant struggle for existence. How he eats and what will happen to him in the future depends only on himself, on his skills, experience, knowledge, character and similar things. And a person who is not free is a dog on a chain, which largely depends on its owner, no matter in whose person it is. The owner decides whether to throw him a bone or not, let him walk around the yard or leave him sitting on a chain, he almost completely determines his fate. Therefore, if a person sells freedom for material well-being, he will largely depend on who he sold himself to. And being subordinate to other people is not the best idea, it is depressing and depressing. At a minimum, this can be done under compulsion, but not voluntarily. You can become truly unfree only when you have given up your freedom, and not when someone else has deprived you of it. So feeding from your hand, you will always be deprived of something, because the owner’s hand, even if it is very «shaggy» and generous, will never feed someone to the detriment of itself. In this sense, the unfree person will have to live according to the residual principle.

For example, you work for a certain person [employer], who pays you a salary and determines the time of your work, as well as the plan of this work itself. In this sense, your financial well-being depends almost entirely on him, as well as the time you devote to work. You can work for him a lot or a little, for a good or small salary. But he sets the rules of the game, and you obey them. Even if you are a great specialist who is a pity to lose, if you are not free at heart, you will be afraid of the boss and live in fear that you may be fired, demoted or not promoted, your salary will be reduced, and so on. You are not free in your decisions, actions, your earnings depend on the decisions of your employer, the work itself and the time spent on it depends on his will, on his desires, and not on yours. They can fire you at any time if they become dissatisfied with something or find someone better to replace you. Because of this, you will experience a fear of uncertainty, because you are not in control of the situation. This means that you will make concessions, for example, in the issue of salary or work outside of working hours, just so as not to lose your job.

And it’s pretty clear that if your employer has to choose who to take care of first, you or himself, they will choose themselves. He’d rather lower your salary if he’s doing worse than lower his standard of living. Of course, you can be a great professional that he will think highly of, so he will not allow himself to treat you too badly. But as life shows, in most cases employers are in a better position than their employees. They have more opportunities to replace employees than those who find a new job. What makes people dependent on their employer? It is the lack of freedom in the head that does not allow them to be more independent in the matter of earning money. Even if a free person is forced to work for someone, his sense of freedom at least pushes him to self-development, in order to increase his value, and, consequently, competitiveness. He understands that almost everything in this world depends on him. The thirst for freedom makes it develop. After all, a developed person has more opportunities than an undeveloped one. These opportunities will determine the degree of freedom. This is how the thirst for freedom allows us to expand it.

You should always understand that trusting other people about your own well-being means putting yourself at unreasonable risk. A person who has power over other people always allows himself too much, if he is not limited. You put your destiny in the hands of others, relying entirely on them, in this case, for your own material well-being. Therefore, when talking about work, people are sometimes cut, their salary is delayed, demoted, and simply thrown out of work on the street when the employer-owner needs it. He does this for his own benefit, without thinking about how it will affect people. This is the harsh truth of life, in which no one is obliged to take care of someone contrary to their interests.

A person should understand that he is not so much needed in this world to take care of him. So you have to learn to take care of yourself. After all, a dependent life, in which you are always afraid of other people’s decisions that may reflect badly on you, cannot fully satisfy a person, even if he is used to it. As a result, the fear of being unnecessary or unclaimed reduces its activity. For example, the fear of being left without the same job sometimes eats a person from the inside out. All he can think about is what he can’t do to avoid getting fired from his job. Well, what kind of labor productivity in this case can we talk about, what kind of creative approach to work. Fear kills all enthusiasm and creativity. And only freedom, first internal, when a person finds the determination necessary to take responsibility for his life on himself, and then external, when he begins to make decisions on what and how to do, can save him from this fear. It is much easier for a brave and confident person to endure any shocks, as he knows that he can get out of any situation. He is working on himself, he is looking for opportunities to improve his life and working conditions, he is seeking higher wages, he is striving to grow in positions, because he knows that without fighting for their interests, they cannot be defended. He does not wait for someone’s handout, he takes what he needs. The main thing is to understand that you manage the situation, and not someone else, because dependence on people, on the same employer, kills any courage and determination. You can’t think about what others will do for you, you have to think about what you will do for yourself. Unfreedom causes fear, and fear even more strongly forces a person to hold on to their chains. And a person does not develop, because he thinks that it is important not to improve himself, but to believe in his master, on whose good will his well-being depends.

But if you work for yourself, you are much freer in making decisions and can earn many times more than in a paid job, well, as a rule, because no one will limit you in this, everything will depend on you, on your abilities, your mind, hard work, perseverance. Taking responsibility for his life on himself, deciding to feed himself, a person significantly increases his resilience, many difficulties become on his shoulder, because he begins to actively develop, because he knows that the more he will be able to do everything, the easier it will be to cope with various difficulties. Such a life can only come from the love of freedom, when a person physically cannot bear any submission to others. He loves freedom, so he doesn’t allow anyone to boss him around but himself. And when he commands himself, he tries precisely for his own sake, and not for the sake of someone else, to whom he is forced to report, and therefore feels much better and more confident in material terms. Of course, there is a good, profitable, high-paying job where you can earn much more than doing your own business, unless it is a very successful business. But understand, being the same entrepreneur and employee are two completely different states of mind. After «free bread», it is very difficult for someone to start obeying for money, to obey someone. A person falls in love with freedom quickly, but it is very difficult to get used to it.

This is how freedom leads to material well-being. After all, the more a person’s life depends on him, the more he can achieve, because other people will necessarily limit him in something, for the sake of their interests. Freedom breeds winners, and unfreedom breeds cowards. The first get all the best, the second are content with crumbs.

Freedom of action makes it possible to get material well-being faster. A person’s hands and feet are untied. He is not constrained by circumstances and vows that prevent him from moving towards important goals for him. For material well-being, it is important to act as you see fit, because no one needs us to feed us and fulfill our desires, so you need to forge your own happiness yourself, with your own hands, which for this must be free from shackles. Maybe you will make some mistakes when making your own decisions, because it is inevitable. But these will be your mistakes, for which you will be responsible and which you will need to correct. This is when other people first force you to do something, and then, when you make a mistake, they blame you for this, without admitting their guilt, they can break you, depriving you of the strength to solve problems. And when everything depends on you, you are always full of energy to cope with any problems. Your own problems are always easier to solve than other people’s problems, which are the fault of someone else, to whom you are forced to obey. A free mind will find a way out of any situation, and a non-free mind will look for excuses for its failures and suffer from its own powerlessness in situations where you will get into trouble because of someone else.

You will appreciate freedom and focus on it as the main value in life, you will never be left without a piece of bread, you can be sure of that.

Communicating with people

In communicating with people, the state of freedom also plays a huge role. First of all, it affects a person’s self-confidence when he communicates with someone. A free person knows that in dealing with others, almost everything depends only on him. He does not shift responsibility for this communication and its development to anyone, and therefore is not afraid of unforeseen situations. All the same, he has to deal with all this, any misunderstandings that he may have with other people, correct him, so he must be confident in himself and constantly monitor the course of communication. His intelligence, attention to the interlocutor, insight, determine his success in this important matter, he expects the right behavior first of all from himself, and not from the person with whom he communicates. Therefore, it is difficult to break such people morally, it is difficult to confuse them, it is difficult to intimidate and suppress them. They are not susceptible to external influence, because they are free from it. Their behavior is determined by the inner world, which is imbued with the idea of freedom, and not by external factors. No matter what other people say, they will decide how to respond to it.

A free person is relaxed in establishing contacts with people and is easy to communicate with them. A sense of freedom frees him, including from all complexes and makes communication with others a pleasant pleasure, and in some cases a game. He finds a common language, if not with everyone, then with many with whom fate brings him together. Communication is one of the most important human needs. From its satisfaction, you need to get pleasure, joy. And freedom allows you to do this when a person feels it inside himself.

Free people are much calmer in communication, because they do not react painfully to the offensive words of their interlocutors, as they are free from their influence on themselves. They are independent of the opinion of others, although they treat it with understanding, and if it is reasonable, then they listen to it. Freedom allows you to experience peace, which greatly simplifies the communication process. After all, when a person has a free soul and a free mind, he understands that no one is obliged to meet his desires and dreams, no one is obliged to be what he wants to see him, and he, in turn, is not obliged to meet the expectations of other people. We live the way we want to live, if we can afford it, so what’s the point of demanding special actions from people, what’s the point of discussing their shortcomings with them, imposing your desires and ideas on them? One should take advantage of what is, and not seek perfection in the imperfect. A free person accepts people as they are, so he feels comfortable with many of them. And no one, I repeat, no one can offend or offend him, because he decides for himself what to take offense at and why to feel offended. You see, this is the freedom of his choice. That’s how he wants, and will react to other people’s words, his feelings are completely at his mercy.

The most important thing is that free people have no fear of communicating with others. For they, as we already know, are free from fear, they do not accept it if they do not want to, it is their own decision. What is the point of being afraid of people if they are just like you, only with their own beliefs? By accepting their life values, you can understand each of them. And understanding a person, you can choose the right words for him, with the help of which to establish a normal relationship with him. Fear is mostly an illusion. Fear is useful, but only when a person understands what it is warning them about. Then he can correctly respond to the threat and after that there will be no need for fear. When fear is not understood, it causes harm, limiting a person’s freedom of action. Therefore, you should not attach too much importance to it when it torments the soul, so as not to be constrained in your actions. Realizing this, a person is freed from senseless fear and behaves confidently and boldly, which is very useful for successful communication.

Self-esteem is also very important when communicating. A free man knows that if he loves and respects himself, if he instills in others the correctness of his own views on life, and does not succumb to the influence of others, then people, most of them, will sooner or later accept his point of view and will respect him for having it. People love those who are firm in their beliefs and at the same time open to new things, because such people look strong, and the strong are always respected. It is not the world that decides what we will be, but we decide what the world will be. All beliefs about ourselves and others are in our heads. And if we are free to change them and adapt them to our goals and desires, then the world will never disappoint us. And along with it, other people with whom we have to or with whom we like to communicate. They will always be interesting to us, as a part of this world, and we will be interesting to them, as people who respect everyone with whom they encounter life.

Thanks to the state of freedom, a person, if necessary, can always adapt to other people, for example, to more high-status, domineering, aggressive ones, for the sake of their own convenience and the goals that they pursue. After all, he is practical in his decisions, because he is not subject to excessive emotions and other weaknesses that other people can play on. Freedom gives him such independence and strength. Therefore, in communicating with people, he can play any role to please them and influence them in the right way.

When communicating with people, it is important to feel free and allow others to feel free with you. The calmer and more relaxed a person feels with you, the easier it will be for them to open up to you and share their secrets. It brings you closer. People will trust you if they are comfortable with you. And trust is a great blessing in communication, because it helps people understand each other. To gain such trust, to allow a person to open up, it is important not to judge, not to criticize, not to suppress, not to intimidate him, so that the person does not see you as an enemy and does not close himself from you. And you can not allow yourself to do this, it is better to interrupt communication if you are treated with hostility, because it will not be productive anyway. A free person knows that he is always free to choose with whom, when and how to communicate. And even if he is deprived of such a choice, he can easily change his attitude to the words of the interlocutor, thus preserving inner comfort and mental balance.

Relationships

In relationships with the opposite sex, the success and stability of these relationships largely depends on the state of freedom. First of all, this is due to the fact that a free person knows who and why he needs it. He evaluates the partner by how much he respects his personality, and not only by external qualities, and certainly not by public opinion. This respect is understood as accepting the values and interests of a free person, their personal qualities, as well as providing them with the personal space that every mentally healthy person needs. With such respect, even without strong love, people can get along well with each other. After all, they will be comfortable in a relationship. Love, if it wasn’t there in the first place, is bound to ripen later. Actually, true love just matures over time, and does not immediately appear. Serious feelings need time to strengthen, then they will be long and stable.

So it all starts with respect. And people can come to such respect for each other only through the love of freedom. Not only to your own, but also to the freedom of your partner. It simply can’t and shouldn’t happen that one partner tries to change the other, make them fit themselves, or force them to do something against their will. A person who respects and values freedom simply will not allow himself to be treated like this, he will immediately break off such relations and regardless of other advantages of his partner, for example, his appearance, fame, material security. He will replace him with a more worthy and suitable person, so as not to become a slave to the relationship, but to enjoy it.

The problem with many relationships is that people choose the wrong partners who just aren’t right for them. This happens mostly unconsciously, on an instinctive level. People want to have the most, in their opinion, the best partners, quite rich, beautiful, popular and in demand with others, and so on. Women dream of princes, and men dream of princesses. This is too infantile an approach to life. People don’t think about who exactly is right for them, taking into account their interests, desires, and abilities, because they don’t even think about it. Such a person’s body decides who to be with, not their mind and soul. And a free person has a clear and clear reference point in the form of his basic value — freedom, so it is not so easy to seduce him with insignificant human virtues, because of which he can sit on a chain just to be close to someone he likes. No prince or princess can make a free man give up his freedom. Therefore, his choice of partner is quite reasonable, and he does not run from one person to another, in search of a better option, because he has what he needs in the right person and highly appreciates it. And everything else is built by him together with this person. After all, happiness must be built, not just found.

The relationships themselves are quite stable and reliable for people who value freedom and therefore respect each other’s personalities. I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me, and we coordinate all our obligations to each other on the basis of our main value. Intelligent people do not need to be controlled, they have enough self-control to avoid causing each other pain and suffering. For them, a free relationship is not an irresponsible relationship without any obligations, but a union for which they consciously go to the necessary self-restrictions for the common good. You can’t demand anything from your partner that violates their freedom, unless they are willing to take on additional obligations themselves. This is what intelligence is needed for, and a person must understand what they can do in a relationship, and what they can’t do, and why they can’t. Such a mind matures only in a state of freedom, when a person learns to be responsible for himself, to control and teach himself.

In this life, everything can always be agreed upon if people are able to negotiate. For example, if a couple decides to have a child, they decide it together, discussing their willingness to take on this responsibility. No one deceives anyone, not a woman who secretly tries to get pregnant by him in order, for example, to marry him to herself, because he is rich or just likes her, nor a man who wants to make her dependent on himself in this way. This is unacceptable for a normal relationship. A man in such a relationship does not deceive a woman by promising to take care of her and their child together, and then does not renege on his promises, leaving the woman to fend for herself. And no one tries to parasitize each other, because the love of freedom and the feeling of freedom exclude such a desire.

In general, in order to feel comfortable in a relationship with a partner, it is necessary to have a sense of freedom not in a pinched state. A partner should not infringe on our freedom with their demands, claims, or desires. A free man is not a goldfish who satisfies all the desires of his wife or husband, all her or his whims. Therefore, no pressure in relations between free people is unacceptable, otherwise someone betrays freedom, and therefore the relations based on it. Of course, we should not allow our partner to infringe on our freedom in a mirror way, and we should not infringe on their sense of freedom by our selfishness and excessive demands. We value our partner’s interests as much as our own, for the sake of our common well-being, for the sake of peace and happiness. In such a relationship, there will always be love and friendship between partners. People will remember the main thing that unites them — the freedom of each other, which they must respect. In such freedom, love also blooms, bright, strong and lasting.

Any relationship is always a labor through which a person gets to know his partner and himself better, and constantly learns to live with what he and his partner have. Free people do not break each other in marriage, they get to know each other and work on their own shortcomings in order to become better for themselves and for their partner, and for their union. Each partner must have a rule: be free yourself and don’t infringe on your partner’s freedom. Where freedom is violated, love and friendship end, and enmity begins.

If you look at most problems in relationships between people, you can always see that they are based on an attempt by one of the partners on the freedom and interests of the other. The wife nags her husband, demanding more and more from him. Sometimes these requirements are so absurd that they are completely impossible to fulfill, even if you really want to. She wants both material well-being, and attention, and romance, and adventure, and loyalty, and personal growth of a man, so that he raises his status, and she could be proud of him and brag to her friends. As a result, a man can only tear up to meet such crazy requirements. But since he cannot do this, and in some cases does not want to go out of his way for the sake of a capricious and insatiable wife, a conflict arises, which in some cases ends in a breakup of the relationship. And in a new relationship, everything repeats itself again if no one has learned a lesson from the previous ones. So you can run from one person to another as much as you want and never find your happiness.

The husband can also be so selfish and demanding that he almost turns his wife into a servant, who owes him a lot of everything, while he absolutely does not want to give her anything in return. A poor woman can become so wrapped up in it that she completely loses all her dignity and becomes an impersonal entity. And only the high-quality help of a good specialist can save her from such slavish dependence. A selfish and domineering man can kill everything in a woman that makes her a woman and a person. But the first thing that dies is the love of freedom, which helps us to realize our own Self, without which we simply have nothing to rely on inside ourselves.

But there is a common cure for all these problems in relationships, equally well suited for both men and women — this is the acceptance of freedom as one of the basic values of life. The love of freedom appears in a person’s head, in the form of an idea, concept, meaning of life, and then he transfers it to everything else in the world around him, including relationships with a partner, and refuses everything that takes away this freedom from him, including a partner. It’s always easy to get away from a person when they don’t give you the most important thing you need, but first you need to identify and understand its importance.

When a person has a basic value that determines all his plans for life, it is much easier for him to navigate in various matters, including finding a life partner who will share this value with him.

Self-realization

At a certain stage of life, a person has such an important need as the need for self-realization. Self-actualization means living a full, meaningful life, from which a person will receive absolute satisfaction. But to realize yourself, you need to unlock your inner potential by trying different activities, talking to different people, and learning as much about life as possible through constant training. This can only be done by being a free person who loves and appreciates freedom, which opens up different paths in life for each of us. A person does not become attached to one thing, but tries everything he can to choose the best thing that he could devote his life to and that best suits his capabilities. To devote your life to your favorite cause is a great happiness. But a favorite business can only be if a person chooses it for himself, comparing different options. If something is imposed on him, then it is likely that he will suffer all his life, doing something that he does not have a soul for.

We don’t always know what we’re capable of, what we want, what’s important to us, and what’s not. And this is natural, the world is devilishly complex, so it’s not easy to navigate, especially at a young age. And there are always enough people who want to impose their own values and goals on us. So many people can’t find themselves in life because they have to listen to others about what they should do, what they should want, and what they should strive for. Because of this, they can get completely confused in life. Therefore, you need to listen first of all to yourself, and only listen to others. A free person can, for example, fall in love with some art, they can show interest in music or drawing. But people around him can inspire him and even demand from him, if they are, for example, parents, that he study, say, as an economist, in order to then find a high-paying job or some other prestigious profession. They forbid him to do what he wants, ostensibly for his own good. They force him to go against his own wishes, breaking his psyche. Maybe they are right in their own way, but the person suffers because of this. He’s unhappy about it. And what can life be like when you’re unhappy? This is not life, but continuous suffering.

There are such examples when people meddle in each other’s lives and teach each other to live in life fully. But if a person does not want to live the way he is forced to live, if he does not need to earn a lot of money in the business that he does not love, but he wants to devote himself to art, wants to enjoy life, and not serve it, he must go against everyone, so as not to kill the love of freedom, of freedom to choose how to live his life. This is just his desire, he wants to do what he has a soul for. Sometimes you have to fight for the right to live your own life. But if a person is broken and forced to act contrary to his wishes, then he will feel unfree and stop loving life. So it is very easy to darken a person’s life in this way, but it is not easy to return him to it later and teach him to rejoice.

This is how many people get depressed or become very aggressive, because they do not live, but suffer and often torment others. When people don’t have something that pleases them, when they are bound by obligations imposed on them, they can’t reveal themselves, they turn into robots that do something just because it needs to be done. Freedom can be a breath of fresh air for them if they fall in love with it. The principle of freedom frees a person from depression and aggressiveness, it opens his eyes to all the opportunities that he can use to live life with interest, showing himself in all his glory to the world and especially to himself. Freed from depression, a person comes out of hell and flourishes. His inner world begins to manifest itself in his affairs, a person becomes more calm, balanced, cheerful, he is ready to give in order to please others and enjoy himself.

Freedom itself can be expressed precisely in self-realization, when a person does what he wants, without interfering with the life of other people. He does not suffer from having to do something because he is forced to, otherwise he will not be able to love life and create for it. A person should not just value freedom, but strengthen himself in it, making it a reference point for himself in his affairs, so as not to engage in activities that limit him in some way and prevent him from realizing his potential. Also, a person should be able to protect freedom, both from other people and from himself, from his reckless desires, for the sake of which some people sell themselves to others. We’ll talk about this later. The main thing to remember is that by giving up your freedom, you are betraying yourself. For example, such a betrayal can be an unloved job or an unhappy marriage, which a person suffers for the sake of some benefits, while refusing such an important good as a free life in which he can fully reveal himself as a person.

Self-realization lies in these requirements, and therefore it is very important to teach people to love freedom, to love life, to love what is most important in it, for example, their children, relatives, acquaintances, and anyone who is interested in living a bright and rich life in which a person is his own master. It is impossible not to love interesting and kind people. And it is easy for a free person to love, because freedom allows him to love himself and life, so he is overflowing with love. Cultivating freedom as one of the most significant values in life is also a good self-realization of a person. Why not dedicate your life to it? Be free yourself and teach others to be free, well, tell me, what is not the way to live a beautiful and meaningful life? Good, useful ideas are always pleasant to spread in society, making many people happy.

Happiness

Finally, a common need for all people is the need for happiness. Everyone wants to be happy. But not everyone really understands what happiness is and how to come to it. It is difficult to give any comprehensive explanation of happiness, because it can be felt in different ways, depending on the situation a person is in, what kind of life experience and intelligence they have. For one person, to be happy for a moment, it is enough to drink a glass of water and quench his thirst, and for another, the whole world is not enough to feel satisfaction and joy, because he is fed up with everything. This, perhaps, can be called happiness, when a person is satisfied, peaceful, calm and feels joy from what he has. However, decide for yourself what happiness is for you. Since we are talking about freedom and cultivating it, then be free to define this concept for yourself.

Now let’s think about how freedom can make a person happy. We have already shown that the feeling of freedom allows a person to satisfy all their basic needs in the best possible way, including the need for freedom itself. And this is already enough to experience all the feelings that make us happy. Take, for example, such a great feeling as love. It is obvious that a loving and beloved person will feel happy, even if some of their other needs are not fully met. Love is a very strong feeling, and it is enough to turn a person’s life into a fairy tale that they will enjoy. And can true love exist outside of freedom, is it possible to make a person fall in love with someone? Obviously not. Love is an absolutely voluntary feeling that even the lover himself sometimes cannot control, even if he wants to. But a person can create conditions for this feeling in which love can arise. And one of the main conditions is freedom. Because freedom eliminates the emergence of negative feelings, freeing up space for positive ones. We make sure that people are happy with us, that they don’t feel stressed, that they don’t feel stressed around us. And they might love us for it. And we can love those who create the same conditions for us. Thus, freedom helps us to love and be loved, and this love makes us happy.

Freedom in itself is also enough for happiness, because thanks to it, a person feels like the master of his life, and this is a special state of mind, thanks to which a person confidently moves forward, towards his goals, develops, wins, conquers, self-fulfills, satisfies his desires. This is not at all like living on a leash and following someone’s commands, for the sake of some insignificant benefits.

Things don’t always go smoothly in life, we can’t always succeed in everything, and we can’t always win when we get what we want. Therefore, we do not constantly experience joy. Life is a striped thing, in which a black stripe replaces a white one, and a white one replaces a black one. Therefore, happiness is not permanent. But no matter how a person’s life develops, no matter what stage he lives at the moment, one thing is for sure: there is no real happiness without freedom and a sense of freedom. If a person is not free, there is no sense of freedom in him, he feels the infringement of freedom, then, definitely, he does not feel happiness. It may not have any white stripes at all, just black ones. Some temporary joys may appear in his life from time to time, he may experience pleasant sensations from some of his successes, from satisfying certain needs, but there can be no happiness in his true light if there is no sense of freedom. You always feel some kind of tightness, stiffness, limitation, dissatisfaction, fear. The shackles of unfreedom torment our soul.

Happy people are satisfied people, they are people who were able to meet most of their needs. And the need for freedom is one of the most significant, so when a person satisfies it, he is already happy. And it is easier for him to deal with all other needs, that is, to satisfy them. After all, with a sense of freedom, you can move mountains, believing in yourself and your strength. And there is no happiness in a golden cage, it can only be an illusion of it. This is how these highest human values are interconnected. Now let’s talk about what a person needs to do, no matter who they are or what kind of life they live, to become free.

Chapter 3. How to become Free

If the reader has mastered the previous two chapters very well and is already eager to become a free man, then it is safe to say that the first steps on the way to this amazing state of mind and soul have already been taken. Then it will be easier, because when you know why you need what you are striving for, and the desire to achieve this is getting stronger and stronger every day, then nothing will stop you. Even intuitively, a person will come to freedom if he passionately longs for it with all his heart. First it will appear in his head as a great idea, and then it will reflect on everything that is in his life. But in order to find it faster, of course, it is better to know what to do. And in this chapter, you’ll learn more about it.

Most of us, without being restricted in our freedom of movement or confined to any one place, be it our place of residence or work, can already consider ourselves partly free people. But relative physical freedom is not exactly what a person needs. He will not experience complete happiness from such freedom. The reason for this we already know, it’s all about the state of our mind, not the capabilities of our body. Until the mind becomes free, the free body will not allow us to fully experience the taste of freedom. But with the mind, most of the problems arise. It is too complex to manage, so sometimes we become hostages of our own nature or someone else’s beliefs. You have to take control of your mind to teach it to be free, that’s where you start. Let’s now see what decisions and actions allow us to achieve this.

Responsibility

Perhaps this may sound too banal for some, but to become a free person in both body and soul, you need to take responsibility for your life on yourself. The phrase is rather hackneyed and many people like to repeat it, thus showing their worldly wisdom. Yes, but speaking and acting in accordance with what has been said are not the same thing. That is why many people do not take responsibility for their lives, preferring to shift it to others. It’s easier that way. And in this case, what kind of freedom can we talk about, if not you yourself, but another person decides what will happen in your life and how? The one to whom you have shifted responsibility is the one who controls your life. Whoever they are, whether it’s your parent, your employer, or your husband or wife, if you rely on them, much less blame them for what’s happening to you, then you’re giving them power over you. So that person has to change something or change themselves to make you feel better, right? And think about it, does he need it? Do people want to do something good for others, or are they more important to themselves? I believe that people are more interested in them than in someone else, even if it is a close person. It’s just our nature.

Everyone thinks first of all about themselves, their well-being, their problems and interests. And if you wait for something from him, and not from yourself, then most likely you will not get anything. Or wait, but very little. This happens in most cases. That is why it is important to be responsible for your own life in order to make yourself better. A free person always counts on himself, in everything and everywhere. He lets his decisions, his choices, determine his fate. That’s what responsibility is for.

What prevents people from taking responsibility, even for themselves? The answer is simple: fear. They’re just afraid of it. Responsibility implies that a person will have to deal with the consequences of their decisions and actions, and not blame someone else for something. There will be no one to make claims, only yourself, if something goes wrong, something does not work out. And the punishment for all the mistakes made by a person, as well as the reward for success, will concern only him. And if people usually have nothing against rewards, then they don’t want to receive punishments at all. Just like you don’t want to do something, make an effort to change something. It is easier for them to blame others for everything that does not suit them, and they do not need to be responsible for anything and do nothing. But simpler doesn’t mean better. Therefore, drastic measures may be needed to make a person responsible for everything they do. Which ones? And let’s take a look at how children become responsible if they are properly raised. After all, responsibility is an indicator of a person’s maturity and it is children who are the most vivid example of how a person, as he grows up, can, if properly educated, become a responsible, mature, serious person. And when children become more independent because of their responsibility, they also become much freer.

Parenting is not an easy process. On the one hand, the child should feel love, care, understanding on the part of parents, and on the other, it is impossible to spoil him, protect him from all difficulties and solve all problems for him. If a child is overprotected, protecting him from all or at least most of the problems that may arise in life, then there is a high probability that he will grow up completely unprepared for it, and one of the indicators of such unpreparedness will be his irresponsibility. It will be easier for him to run away from the problem than to solve it, he will prefer to give up his ambitions rather than overcome the difficulties that stand in his way in order to achieve his goals. It will be more convenient for him to blame circumstances or other people for something than to change something in himself and become better and stronger. He will grow up to be a weakling and a whiner. And weaklings most often become dependent on something or someone. Weaklings can’t be free. They constantly need someone to make decisions for them.

A person should be brought to responsibility gradually, if possible. After all, to do this, you need to tinker with it a lot, getting used to one thing, then another. Or you can simply force him to become responsible, depriving him of all the benefits. In the end, what is stronger, a person’s laziness or his instinct for self-preservation? It is clear that the second. Therefore, in order for a chick to fly out of the nest when the time comes, it needs to mature, and a person, in order to become independent, needs to overcome difficulties, and not avoid them. But if he does not do this, then it is necessary to force him out of his comfort zone, ceasing to patronize him. The same chick must be pushed out of the nest so that it learns to fly and becomes free from parental care and at the same time from its terrible thoughts about the complexity and cruelty of this world. You have to meet your fear at some point in order to become responsible and at the same time free from unnecessary shackles. It is clear that it is scary to make decisions yourself, especially when you are faced with it for the first time. But when you start to do it, when you start to face difficulties and struggle with them, they are not so terrible. Over time, you get used to it, become stronger, smarter, more confident, and your whole life comes under your control.

So the child, like the chick, needs to be pushed out of the comfort zone, if he stayed too long in it, it is necessary for his own good to show him rigidity and even cruelty in this matter, so that he no longer sits on the parent’s neck, but provides for himself and solves his own problems. This is relevant in cases where it is not possible to gradually bring the child to take responsibility for their life. There remains only such a radical, but effective method. That’s why they say that if parents really love their child [and not themselves], then sometimes they have to be cruel to them. True love will manifest itself in the fact that they will make him free from their guardianship, from their care for him, and therefore strong and responsible. And so, free in your soul, and in everything else!

Such a recipe for growing up is suitable for any person, regardless of their age and gender, it teaches you to take responsibility for yourself, for the sake of acquiring such a supreme value as freedom. We need to be hard on ourselves in order to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and become responsible for all the things that we now rely on other people for. For each person, this is an individual task, since each of us is in our own specific conditions. Some depend on their parents, some on their wife or husband, some on their employer, some on the state, and so on. That’s all you need to get rid of by burning bridges. Not from people, of course, but from dependence on them. A new life in which you are responsible for everything that happens to you should not and will not seem comfortable at first, because this is impossible if you are not used to such a life. You need to suffer for a while to grow up. You need to hurt yourself by giving up everything that limits you in life, but, at the same time, gives you some benefits. For example, from parental help, which is so convenient, so pleasant and so, perhaps, appropriate, but harmful to your movement to freedom.

In life, responsibility manifests itself in various forms of relationships between people. For example, it is clearly expressed in the relationship between spouses or between an employee and an employer. In both cases, the person either expects something from himself that can change his life, or from a partner or employer.

Here, in particular, in marriage, it often happens that a man or woman lives with his partner not because they have love and not because he or she feels like a free person with him or her, but because the partner is somehow profitable, his or her in some way like- then you can use it. And, of course, it is this choice that determines the fate of a person. A mercantile calculation can give a person one thing, but deprive him of another. Whoever you choose as your wife or husband, that’s what you get, with all his or her pros and cons. The responsibility for your choice lies with you. And then you don’t have to say that your husband or your wife has some unacceptable shortcomings for you, because you turned a blind eye to them for a certain benefit when you chose this person to live together. You have made yourself a hostage to his qualities. And now, to make a difference in your life, you need to take responsibility for this relationship on yourself. You need to decide what you are willing to do, not your partner, but you, so that the changes you need come to your relationship. Perhaps, in some cases, the relationship itself will need to be abandoned, as completely unsuitable for you.