Something
That Brings an Opportunity of Blessing to All
from
Approach To Truth
Uranda
July 30, 1953
What is freedom? Some people seem to imagine
that it is freedom to do as they please with their own lives, without regard to
the lives of others. Some people seem to assume that it means that there will
be a state wherein they can have what they want, when they want it, the way
they want it. But if we stop to consider the matter we must realize that if
some of us are going to have what we want, when we want it, the way we want it,
then others are not going to be in position to have what they want, when they
want it. That kind of a pattern means that some of us must be slaves so that
some of us can have what we want, when we want it, the way we want it. And if
we are all human beings, all a part of one human family, regardless of race or
color or creed, then the answer should be something that brings an opportunity
of blessing to all—not just freedom for some but freedom for all who will
accept it, all who will share it.
So, what is freedom? Freedom from what?
Freedom for what? We may say that we would like to have freedom from our aches
and pain. Yes. We would like to have freedom from various limitations. We would
like to have freedom to live successfully. But if we all have an individual
interpretation of what that successful pattern of life is, without regard to
others, we are going to run into the same difficulties we have known before.
That pattern of life which gives us
greatest joy should be a pattern which gives the greatest possible enjoyment to
others. If the true pattern of freedom makes it possible for us to have
happiness, it should not be at the expense of happiness in others.
And so, freedom from what? Freedom to do
what? Let us start with the freedom to live. Freedom to live does not mean
merely freedom to die. Freedom to live does not merely mean freedom to exist
for three-score-years-and-ten. Freedom to live means something more than being
a slave to circumstance. So, this pattern of freedom must be something which
provides the opportunity for dominion over circumstance. And yet human beings
have so far been puppets of circumstance. They have been pushed about by
circumstance. Rich and poor, high and low, it makes no difference. All have been
pushed about by circumstance.
So, this freedom must mean that there is
a process of restoring dominion. And dominion means control, and control means
that we should be able to begin to live our own lives on a basis that does not
leave us subject to the seeming whims and fancies of circumstance. Freedom to
live victoriously, effectively, means an opportunity to begin to control
circumstance. But if there is to be control, that control must be present in
ourselves. All too often human beings try to develop an iron will. They are
going to force their own wills upon others and upon circumstance, to try to
have that freedom from circumstance or the controls of chance. But that iron
pattern of will sooner or later comes to the point of a dictatorship, a dictatorship
which begins to ignore the rights and privileges of others. It begins to ignore
the fact that others have a right to freedom from subjection to the whims of
circumstance.
The only way by which we can begin to find an
answer to these perplexing questions which face all human beings everywhere is
to begin to find the fundamental principles and laws of being which
establish a pattern of relationship between us and Deity, something that can
have meaning while we live on earth.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
