The Art of Freedom 👑
Why the Art of Freedom? And Who is 🟣 xōē 🟡?
Dear Friend 🟣✨🟡,
Today, I would like us to explore the name The Art of Freedom, discuss its meaning and tell you who exactly is 🟣 xōē 🟡.
What Makes Art?
Most of us walk, talk and write our way through life, but few of us would call our steps a dance, our speech a song or our words poetry.
What is it that turns steps from walking to dancing? That turns speech from talking to singing? That turns words from writing to poetry?
Among many considerations, we generally walk to get somewhere. In dancing, there is no question of getting anywhere. On the contrary, we might want to elongate and articulate each step. Our bodies become a means for expressing how the music moves through us. Each gesture and step expresses what is happening within our being as we experience the music.
Each step is a graceful brushstroke on a canvas of time, step after step, we make up for the whole time painting called the dance. We do not take each step to cause a dance, we take each step for the sheer delight of the movement itself. And yet, by the end of the song; a dance has been performed nonetheless. Not as a caused calculated result, but as an emergent expression of our meaning.
In a dance we may become sensitive to subtle, nuanced, refined and often elusive inner revelations that we express into tangible forms with our bodies.
Those forms can be experienced by others. However, even if the dance has a tangible form, it points us beyond, to the stirrings of our soul. It becomes the bridge by which the inner revelations of another start reverberating in our own being.
Herein lies the appreciation of art, in the movements of our inner being provoked by the art form contemplated.
The more sensitive we become to the beauty and truth in those inner revelations, the more we have to express through our technique.
The more we master the technique, the more expressive, refined and moving our dancing becomes. We become more capable of expressing ever more refined and nuanced meaning; and within this lies an increasing freedom of expression.
A beginner dancer may lack awareness of certain parts of their body, and those parts may not reflect the meaning expressed in the forms and movements of the rest of the body.
The body of an advanced dancer, on the other hand, is far more articulate, it embodies fully their inner meaning in all its nuance. Each movement is deliberate and precise; reflecting a coherent inner meaning that is present in each step like a brushstroke and that is gradually revealed through the dance as a complete and unified painting.
Creating Inner and Outer Palaces
So creating art is a twofold endeavor, we have to equally cultivate:
🟣 Our technique as the means by which we create and express in the outer world.
🟡 Our inner life as the muse that allows us to hear and understand the whispers of Life revealing herself to us in all her majesty.
Cultivating our art comes from the intertwining dance of these two pillars; technique and meaning. Each time we raise one of the pillars, we create the support to complete the turn of the spiral and raise the other pillar equally, and in turn, the whole structure upwards. Each ascent refining our expression as well as our meaning soaring higher and higher.
The technique is what allows us to express our meaning; through it, our inner life takes form in the outer world as our art. Now made visible, we are able to inspect it, live with it, and reflect upon it. In this reflection, we come face to face with both the limitations of our technique and the distortions within our meaning.
If we speak pictorially about this, we could say:
We can only build magical elegant majestic palaces if we:
first, have it within ourselves to be able to conceive of and design such a palace inwardly.
equally, if we have the technique, to be able to create it as a reality.
In our dreams, palaces can materialize themselves out of thin air. We want them, so we dream them.
Fortunately, that is not the case in reality. In reality we have to live through a series of logical sequential steps to materialize our palaces.
Reality always demands that we honor its logic and the effort appropriate in the achievement our feats. In every art form, there are structures we must respect in order to give form to our meaning.
Dreams tend to bypass structure, discard the effort and continuity required by reality. They would have us live in fairytales where anything we desire can be experienced without regard for the cost or the illogical inconsistent nature of realizing them.
In building a palace, we must regard the laws of structure. No matter how grand our vision is, if we ignore the distribution of weight in an arch, the structure will collapse.
Equally important, without sensitivity to beauty and truth, we might inadvertently build technically impressive prisons rather than palaces.
The more majestic and refined our vision, the more respect and mastery we must have over the physical principles that allow it to take form.
Freedom of expression in architecture emerges not from defying the laws of reality, but from collaborating with them; mastering them so well that we can make stone come to life.
So we let reality shape our dreams. With practice we start having reality as part of the constitution of our inner lives. We learn more and more to respect its structures when trying to impress our meaning upon the world with ever increasing freedom, ease and fluidity. In this relationship between reality and our meaning, our art becomes the meeting point; the tender and warm reunion of two long-lost lovers.
So art is about balancing two beautiful equally essential pillars:
Technique and meaning
Outer and Inner
Form and formless
Reality and dreams
Past and Future
Matter and Spirit
And I can go on and on, but I am sure you see my point.
We often think of art as wild creativity, free of rules. However, it is a strong expansive structure that lets the fire of creativity grow without turning the whole structure into ashes 🔥. What is the use of an intense creative fire if we cannot get ourselves to sit and create our art. Not one time exceptionally, but consistently. Because it is this consistency that allows for the structure to grow which in turn allows for the fire to have the space to grow even bigger.
The stronger and the more flexible the structure, the more movement it can contain without collapse.
The tallest skyscrapers have to allow for the strongest movements caused by the winds and earthquakes; because without flexibility, even the most solid structures can break under fierce movement.
To summarize:
Art not only cultivates our sensitivity to make our inner world beautiful, delightful, golden cozy palaces; art also gives us the way to make those palaces an outer reality we live in.
How is Freedom an Art?
When I first started exploring the nature of freedom, I might have thought it is something along the lines of doing whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, wherever we want with whoever we want.
Essentially, that freedom is completely doing away with any structure and form. After all, structure and form always constrict and limit the possibilities of movement. And if movement is limited, how could there be any freedom?
It did not occur to me at that time that structure is what equally allows for any movement at all.
I really only started considering the nature of freedom, after having heard of Spiritual Liberation. It sounded like the perfect summary of what I was looking for in life:
Freeing individuals from the cycle of suffering bound by time, which is often associated with worldly existence and the illusion of separation from the divine and others. And awakening a direct knowing of the source of existence, not as theory but as living experience.
This sounded perfect.
Not only as the perfect escape plan from the unbearable delight of existence; but equally as the opportunity to finally fulfill my lifelong dream to peak behind the scenes of existence and have the meaning behind it all revealed. If there is such a thing.
Not to spoil the ending of the post, like I wanted to do with my life… it turns out I was confusing the word liberation with another word.
Luckily, my naive understanding at that point was enough for me to go all in and not just all in, all out and around.
I organized all of my life toward this goal. If it did not contribute to liberation as I understood it, I did not do it. I studied the sacred texts and practiced every day morning and evening for hours a whole lot of austerities and even more superstitions, the details of which I will spare you here.
I thought, or more precisely; I bargained: you just have to endure this for a few years and get an eternity of freedom.
What a sweet deal 🫱🏽🫲🏻.
The freedom I imagined was of course transcendental, beyond and outside this life. Exactly as my conception of freedom was at the moment: a formless existence. I was hoping I could skip the plot, the characters development, their backstories and just have the meaning revealed in a glorious ending scene.
It turns out you only get meaning, and liberation for that matter; by sitting through the whole movie.
What happened next I can only describe as mercy or grace. I had read that the path to liberation may take as many life times as a tree has leaves. Notice not years, but life times. I thought with extreme dedication and commitment and perhaps a bit of luck I can bargain it down to just one life. So I was naturally ready to spend the rest of my life pursuing this.
Luckily, or perhaps due to a divine oversight, the petals of a flower were counted in years instead of the leaves of a tree in life times, and I got what I was seeking.
To my surprise (probably not to yours 🤭) it was not a liberation in any real meaning of the word. It was however a seed of understanding and freedom.
Taking Flight
If I speak symbolically about what happened; I could use the following predicament from earlier in my life starting my skydiving journey.
In the week after my first skydive; I witnessed the death of one of the skydivers during a high-speed landing not properly executed that lead to an impact.
I was in the same predicament all over again.
Do I prefer to stay safely on the ground, free from impact, but also free from flying? Or do I prefer the sky, free to fall but also free to fly?
Where I went, so to speak, nothing could happen to me, and that was exactly the point. Nothing could happen!
I was free from heartache but equally free from love.
I was free from suffering but equally free from the delight of meaning, discernment, wisdom and understanding.
I was free from pain and disease but equally free from a body to dance.
I could hover over any experience I could imagine, but never truly land in it, no real experiencing, no involvement, no participation, no skin in the game.
Before my first skydive, I had to go through rigorous ground training and practicing security procedures that would make flying as safe as possible, though never entirely without risk.
My first skydive was the most raw, overwhelming terror I had ever felt. It was so overwhelming to the point of blanking out the whole experience. I could not remember myself or anything that had happened in life prior to that moment. I remember thinking: what did I just get myself into and why would I ever do this again to myself?
Had I not bought my full involvement by paying for the full course upfront, I might have tried to free myself from having to do it again. But now I had money in the game.
During the first jumps there was no flying. I could barely move my body in any coordinated manner to call what was happening flying. I was just falling and tumbling from a plane.
The more we practice on the ground and in the air, the better we become at involving ourselves safely and skillfully. Over time, we begin flying rather than falling and the fear we feel in each jump subsides gradually.
During the skydive we feel and revel in all of the sensations of flying, after the jump we often reflect by watching the video to debrief and understand what we can do better the next time, and we repeat this over and over.
The more skillful I became, the more I started flying only for the sheer delight of flying. No longer to follow up on a contractual commitment, not to get anything out of the situation later on, whether in this life or in a transcendent reality. Flying became my first taste of a truly free act, no ulterior motives, no bargains. Just flying for flying itself.
In those moments, it is very important to remember a saying often repeated:
Complacency is a skydiver’s worst enemy.
Not lack of skill but complacency. In fact, skydiving accidents involve more often experienced skydivers than beginners, because they grow too comfortable breaking the very rules that keep them safe, and that a beginner would still respect.
Another equally important reminder is that:
A skydiving accident is rarely a single oversight. They are the result of a chain of small oversights; each one insignificant on its own, but together forming a path to collapse.
So the more skillful and advanced one becomes, the more essential it is to continue honoring the fundamentals alongside the advanced moves.
The more a skydiving career progresses, the freer one becomes. But also the greater the potential for hurting oneself.
It is easy to imagine how skydiving could become a sheer delight. It might take a stretch of the imagination to regard all of life, with its ups and downs, in the same light.
This was a turning point, I could either stay safe where I was, or I could choose to go back, with no guarantees of safety, however with endless possibilities for flight and delight.
I had practiced those austerities as a way out of life, now I had a choice. I could either:
Redeem them as the ground exercises I had to practice for flying safely.
Or stay on the ground.
This structure became my way in, within and through life.
I did not stop most of my practices. Instead, I started doing them freely with meaning instead of as a bargain.
Just as we saw with dancing, each practice in itself became a meaningful brushstroke and, equally, contributed to a time painting called flight or life. Not as a caused calculated result, but as an emergent expression of meaning.
Those practices allowed me to go from carrying my body around life, so to speak, sometimes as a burden at best with indifference; to feeling the immense privilege of being in this body. It became coordinated, balanced, strong and flexible. Even when it falls sick, it eventually recovers or adapts.
My mind went from being a source of confusion, noise and anxiety to gradually becoming a source of clarity, expansiveness, discernment, reason and peace.
This allowed even greater appreciation for the privilege of study and creation. I could now sit for hours with focus and create and contemplate the questions I so dearly wanted to study.
I also learned to confront my emotions and sit with them. I had to learn that, there is nowhere to escape them when one is sitting still in a meditation for hours at a time.
This allowed me to gradually develop a certain sweetness of feeling, the inner warm knowing that:
all is well, this too shall pass ☺️
Whether pleasant or unpleasant, any emotion will pass just like all the rest of emotions that arose and passed during all of those of meditations.
Through the ascetic practices, we learn about the power of choice. We learn to walk away from misplaced value. There is no freedom if we are compelled to do the things we do. We have to learn to say no even to the things we value the most if they could be regarded as not beneficial to either ourselves in the future or to others now or in the future.
So implied in freedom, is equally important our capacity for restraint. Because the capacity for restraint is what makes a choice possible at all. If we cannot say no and are compelled to do something, then there is really no question of choice nor freedom.
So in freedom, there is a choice, but not only a choice. A choice made in full consciousness.
It does not take long to realize that simply doing as we please may feel like freedom now. But we might not be pleased with what we did tomorrow. Just as importantly, neither might others.
Additionally, a free action does not only assert our individual freedom. It has to equally uphold the freedom of others. If our freedom takes away from the freedom of another, it is only a question of time before the other takes away from our freedom.
So a free action not only asserts our freedom now, it equally has to ensure the freedom of others and the continuity and growth of freedom in the future.
Free Individuals
Freedom is not just an individual luxury, it is of collective benefit. It ensures the protection of reality against distortions. When we are not free, we become unconscious extensions of the will of another. We become agents of distortion.
We start living in a reality where things start to mean very little.
We are always ever so slightly manipulating reality to get something out of it. We do things to get things and not because things mean anything.
Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.
I am in Ubud, Bali 🇮🇩 as I write this post, where there are more yoga studios than days in my stay to try them all. So I chose a yoga studio to try based on Google Maps reviews.
As I arrived, everything was average, nothing unpleasant, but definitely not a 4.8 ⭐️ experience. It was clear there is a distortion between reality and the reviews.
Things became much clearer at the end of the class. After dropping some heart-opening wisdom, the teacher encouraged everyone to leave a review on Google maps in exchange for a free smoothie bowl. After bowing down to the divine in each and every one, comes bribing the divine in each and everyone.
My first thought was imagine giving up your freedom for a free smoothie bowl. Then I naturally thought: I will do it only if they have mango smoothie bowls 😋.
What a wonderful coincidence that the word free is used both for freedom and for things that are offered without any expected returns. It seems obvious conceptually but it is very hard to experience practically.
Expecting a smoothie bowl in exchange for our voice or, like I did, liberation in exchange for meditation is not freedom.
It is a transaction, it does not involve money, it involves us.
In such a reality, we hear and read words, however we never really know if the person is saying what they truly mean or if they are just trying to squeeze a smoothie bowl or liberation out of the situation.
If we can distort reality to such an extent with one smoothie bowl, imagine what we can do with two smoothie bowls, or even a salary?
No need to imagine, we can just ask the engineers at Volkswagen, or the yoga instructor probably doing as her manager asked.
The Capstone Π: 🟣 xōē 🟡
To put it all together.
Freedom of expression in art comes from the pursuit of mastery of both technique and meaning. It does not come from simply freeing ourselves from the responsibility of our art.
So it is in our personal lives, freedom comes from an increased understanding and mastery of the ways of nature as well as a conscious self-directed effort to birth meaning in our inner being.
In the same way that the result of the balancing of technique and meaning results in our art. The same balancing in our lives is what gives birth to the being I here call 🟣 xōē 🟡. She is the radiant princess of their union dancing on the capstone of their existence.
That is the essential premise of what we are going to be exploring together here on
.How to reconcile the immanent with the transcendent to explore how we can live in increasing freedom individually and collectively.
I might cover topics including but not limited to:
Reasonable explorations of esoteric topics, approached with curiosity, discernment and a grounded spirit. Approach occult teachings with practical insight.
Living interpretations of various sacred texts.
Freedom in cooperative games and relationships.
How to practically build structures for the blossoming of freedom.
Language and meaning.
Explore how to live freely in the marketplace in relationship with money, where nothing is free by definition.
Speech, gestures and its relationship with the body.
Different forms of bodily movement and how we can gain a deeper experiential understanding of our existence through our physical bodies.
What structures in your life can you redeem to turn your steps into a dance, your speech into songs and your words into poetry✨?
🫱🏽🫲🏻 After those formalities, lets get real:
Like, comment and share this post, to get a free mango smoothie bowl with extra peanut butter🥭.
And a printed version of this post to read it again more carefully.
Thank you for reading,
🟣✨🟡
Written in Ubud, Bali 🇮🇩