Agency Or Slavery | Freedom To Vs Freedom From

Understanding this concept is the key that unlocks all the prisons of our own making; prisons that keep us stuck and in pain, slaves to our own unconscious will and our addiction to victimization.

🎄 A RARE HOLIDAY BREAK 🎄
I will be taking a two week break from writing on Substack, so you won’t hear from me again until January. When you do hear from me, I will have some new projects to reveal and I am very excited to share them with you!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dear friends,

Have you ever given in to your cravings for pizza, coffee ice cream, or chocolate?

Pick your poison.

We all have our vices.

(Coffee ice cream is particularly heavenly!)

Have you ever impulsively lashed out at someone you love, only to regret it later? Or talked yourself out of doing something that you knew would be good for you but would take some measure of gumption or courage - like jumping into an ice cold lake for 30 seconds, putting your writing or art out into the world, or sending someone a flirtatious first text?

Of course you have.

We are all slaves to our lower impulses - until we develop mastery over our whole organism - body, soul and spirit.

Today, in just about every sector of society, there is so much talk about freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, freedom from government interference; medical freedom, health freedom, bodily autonomy and the freedom to decide your own gender; freedom from war and tyranny and poverty…it’s a long list.

In some circles there is talk about sovereignty, the abolition of governments, and economic freedom (particularly in the bitcoin world).

One of the reasons I decided to create The Human Freedom Project (this Substack and the soon to launch podcast, with other projects in the works) is because I believe we need a unified vision of what human freedom actually means; what it entails - practically; and a clear path towards its development, within individuals and society.

Rudolf Steiner is the spiritual mentor informing my work with the body, the development of Kinetix as a methodology, and everything I write about. His book The Philosophy Of Freedom contains the framework for my working definition of what freedom is, and isn’t. I will share, again, his maxim of freedom at the end of today’s article.

One thing we must not do is confuse real freedom with the notion that it means we get to do whatever we want, consequences be damned. If we merely give in to our impulses, instincts and selfish desires, then we are nothing more than slaves to our vices.

True freedom contains within its essential nature those qualities that are the most difficult for human beings to embody: integrity, humility, responsibility, equanimity, discipline, courage, love…

These virtues necessitate that we sacrifice our lower nature on the path to becoming something higher. We do this by struggling through the constraints present in our own organism - via pain and injury; illness and disease; via our cravings and desires; our fears, greed and laziness; and our tendency to judge others through our own subjective projections, to name only a few - and those that modern society presents us through the social, political and economic realms.

Though we constantly try to escape reality - or “what is” - through fantasy, delusion, denial and addictions, reality insists on its continual unfolding.

Everyone wants freedom, but few are willing to want the struggles required to earn and maintain it.

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”
Frederick Douglass

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Freedom From

Starting at a very young age I experienced my body as a torture chamber and prison. Pain gripped every nerve ending while the tension in my soft tissues strangled me as if I were wearing a straightjacket that someone was tightening a little bit more with every passing day.

Gut pain was the primary reason I became antisocial through my late teens and all through my twenties. My belly would distend so far outward I looked pregnant, while inside it felt like someone was stabbing me with a thousand dull knives. Extremely self conscious, I would suck my belly in, and, barely able to breathe, dread every social interaction (especially the ones that mattered to me emotionally).

What if they discover the truth? No one would ever love me if they knew…

Not wanting to expose myself to unwanted attention, I mostly hid at home; while there, I dreamt about one day being out in the world, taking an active role in life.

Meanwhile, my thoughts were a minefield of fear, self criticism, self loathing and self hatred.

I couldn’t escape myself.

And for a very long time, I pursued freedom from suffering with all of my might because I longed - with relentless desperation - to be “normal.”

And so…

I did every cleanse.

Tried every diet.

Swallowed all the supplements.

Went to chiropractors, naturopaths, massage therapists, hypnotists, talk therapists and somatic practitioners.

Bags of cute clothes I had purchased with tentative hope sat in my closet for years, awaiting the day I would finally be “normal” enough to wear them.

It wasn’t until 2008, when I stopped seeking freedom from and began to pursue the freedom to that everything changed. And I mean everything - my body, my personality, my nervous system; my energy; my physical and mental abilities; even my voice changed.

When we seek freedom from (anything) we position ourselves as victims; we make someone or something else into a perpetrator that becomes the source of our powerlessness and/or pain. From this orientation, we justify our anger and our inertia because, after all, it’s not our fault.

And it’s not!

That’s the riddle and the paradox that life presents to all of us: whatever happens to us may not be our fault; but it is our responsibility to courageously confront, bear and/or transform whatever pain life visits upon us.

The freedom from mindset makes us into victims.

And all of us can find reason enough to justify our self victimization.

I grew up in an emotionally and financially unstable household. While some aspects of my childhood were truly magical (and I love my parents deeply), it’s also true that I was abandoned and neglected; and at age thirteen I became the target of an adult male predator who violated my body and mind for years, permanently altering my psychology, physiology, and life trajectory. Like you, I have every reason to paint myself the victim and await some form of external justice to deliver me from the pain of my own existence.

Pain put me on a path that has led to knowledge and life experience I wouldn’t possess otherwise.

I am who I am because of these experiences. And as strange as it may sound to some, I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything; not a single one. I can only say this, however, as one who stands on the other side of having chosen the freedom to.

A freedom from mindset corrodes our own power and agency.

Whether we’re talking about freedom from government coercion and political tyranny or freedom from pain, trauma and illness, the energy and mindset is the same; and there is no true freedom to be found on such a path. Which presents us with quite a few paradoxes.

How do we create a society based in real freedom, without succumbing to the many temptations of our time: to blame the governments of the world; to point the finger at certain institutions (or our parents) with anger; to name public figures in our search for scapegoats?

When is righteous anger appropriate, and how can we direct it constructively?

I don’t have all the answers.

My aim is to live into the questions with you.

Last week I shared an article written by Rudolf Steiner in 1920 that demonstrates how impractical our thinking is about such matters.

For example, when we experience economic pain, we tend to demand economic solutions from the government - the very same entity that caused our pain. And even though every solution implemented causes yet more economic pain, we repeat this pattern again and again and again.

Throughout my twenties and thirties, I tried to remedy the social pain I felt within my family of origin, within the family structure - and it brought all of us nothing but more pain. Some of those ruptures are still not healed.

When we experience physical pain we tend to reach for physical cures - not realizing that the true root cause lies elsewhere: in the nervous system and subconscious psyche; in social life; in unhealed traumas; in self protective beliefs and meanings; in economic despair and being in perpetual survival mode…

Only when we learn to “think with” reality will we be able to implement truly practical solutions for the painful experiences of our lives. One path to such knowledge is to pursue the freedom to.

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Freedom To

To give in to our hedonistic whims and impulses is to be a slave to our own untamed organism. Lacking spiritual maturity, or agency, it is all too easy to give in to our animal body’s base nature.

When I talk about the freedom to, I do not mean the freedom to do whatever you fancy at any moment. I’m talking about:

The freedom to speak your authentic truth.

The freedom to dance.

The freedom to pursue a meaningful calling.

The freedom to have children.

The freedom to sing.

The freedom to love.

The freedom to run.

In 2008 I embarked on the adventure of a lifetime when I pursued the freedom to trail run after 8 years of debilitating knee pain.

I imagined myself running down mountain trails like a wild wolf, free and fearless; I saw my hair blowing in the wind and felt my feet pushing off rocks to get a little air on the descent. Back then, freedom was synonymous with trail running; trail running equalled freedom.

The only problem was, every time I tried to run I experienced knife like stabbing pain in both knees that took me to the ground.

When we pursue the freedom to, we are not seeking from from anything; it means we have seen a positive vision of the future and every part of our being is united toward its manifestation.

There is no guarantee of success, and we have no idea what is going to happen.

All we know is that a vision of freedom has taken hold of our imaginative faculties, inspiring us through intuitive wisdom - body, soul and spirit - to act on behalf of that vision.

If we lack faith in the vision, then our steps will falter and doubt will creep in; so it is imperative that we choose our ‘freedom to’ goals based on a true feeling in our body that whatever it is we’ve imagined is an actual inevitability. In this case it is not a belief - it’s a knowing.

Only this level of inner certainty will give us the courage to step into the unknown, where all of the answers are. Only this level of knowing will help us confront every obstacle. And there will be obstacles - many; some will appear insurmountable. While there is always a way around, or through, most of the time the obstacles themselves are the way.

The person with a “freedom to” mindset does not seek freedom from any external or internal constraints, challenges or tyrants.

The person with a “freedom to” mindset sees every obstacle as an opportunity to gain new knowledge, learn new skills and transform into the next evolution of themselves. They do not look for scapegoats or succumb to victimization.

They are steadfast in their devotion to higher aims, and to the virtues necessary to see them realized. They are not infallible or immune to temptation. They are the ones who are honest with themselves; who have the humility to see themselves as they are, instead of as they’d prefer themselves to be; the ones who choose to see the beauty and pain of reality over living in fantasy, delusion and denial. They forgive themselves when they miss the mark, as they forgive others. They are compassionate reverence for human beings because they understand the unseen burdens we all bear.

The freedom to path is a spiritual one.

The freedom to path will test us; and it ought to.

With freedom comes great responsibility, which is why true freedom must be earned.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
Viktor E. Frankl

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Agency Or Slavery

After Moses freed the slaves, they entered the harsh reality of the desert - a metaphor for the great challenge of absolute freedom. Faced with so much uncertainty and hardship, many of them longed for slavery.

Who will clothe us?
Feed us?
Bring us water?
How will we shelter ourselves from the scorching sun and deadly dust storms?

It’s a lot easier to be an angry slave who bitterly demands freedom from an oppressive force, than it is to be truly free; to bear total responsibility for oneself.

We can be slaves to our own organism; slaves to a social system, such as that of a close knit family; slaves to a government and its laws; to an economic system, or an ideology. There is a certain measure of safety and certainty to be found in each of these.

It takes a great deal of spiritual maturity to wield real freedom, and speaking only for myself I know that I am still a spiritual child in many ways. There are areas of life in which I am choosing slavery over agency out of the self awareness that I’m not yet ready to go there; and I have a lot of work left to do (probably over many lifetimes) in order to become truly free.

There are ways to measure these things, and they will repel anyone not ready to see their true nature. For those that are ready, it will feel like sweet relief to peel off the many layers of delusion and begin to see reality as it is - no matter how painful.

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The increasing pain in our world - in the social, political, economic and health realms - is actually a cause of great hope in me; because pain is the only thing that wakes us up, spiritually speaking.

If not for pain and hardship we would be far too content to remain as we are. So, one way to look at pain is as if it is a blessing from the spiritual world, inviting us to become more.

In his book The Philosophy Of Freedom Rudolf Steiner tells us:

A moral misunderstanding, a clash, is impossible between human beings who are morally free. Only the morally unfree, who follow their natural instincts or the accepted commands of duty, come into conflict with their neighbors if these do not obey the same commands as themselves.

To live, in love towards one’s actions, and to let live, in the understanding of the foreign will, is the fundamental maxim of free human beings.

Can we envision a world where moral misunderstandings and clashes are a thing of the past? Where every individual acts in accordance with their conscience, granting that same freedom to everyone else? Do we possess an inner knowing that this world is an inevitability - but only if we aim at it with everything we have?

That is the world I aim to realize with you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for being curious about freedom, and walking whatever path feels right and good and true for you - even if it looks different than mine.

With love,
Elisha