Raj's Ranch

Feel The Freedom

By Raj H.

  Have you ever asked yourself why you do certain things like: you roll up your sleeves when you get off work. And on your way back home from work, you roll down your windows even when the weather is cold and windy as hell, and you drive a few miles faster than the speed limit, or maybe some of you take that freeway just so you can do that quick zero to sixty on the ramp.

  Why do we do them?

To me, these are the expressions of freedom. Because freedom is the purest joy that one can experience. 

So, I tried, for years, to learn to be free and feel the freedom without interruption. Finally, after years of ups and downs in my experiments, I realized that you can’t learn to be free. You are free when you are learning, when you are doing activities that require your full attention.

Photo by Raj H.

Something amazing happens while you are learning a new skill or doing a task that require your full attention.

What is it?

You are not following your thoughts, you have forgotten about your story, your identity while you are learning. In other words: you have given a pause to your ego. This is the very reason why people take up extreme sports, such as sky diving, jet skiing, rock climbing, extreme motorsports, etc. Most of us might think that the joy or the thrill one might experience from doing such extreme activities is due to the adrenaline rush. But that’s not so. There are other ways to get the adrenaline rush where you don’t feel that joy of extreme sports. Complete, unwavering attention is the necessity for survival during such activities; it doesn’t leave a room for our mind’s chatter. For instance, you don’t dare to think about your workplace while rock climbing. One wrong move, and the game will be over.

Thought-free mind is the reason for the joy and freedom.  

Let’s see if this equation looks reasonable from what we have discussed so far.

Let go of your thoughts, your story (your ego) = Feel the freedom

“Caution: this article is not intended to suggest readers to participate in any form of extreme activity. Thought-free mind can be achieved even by quietly observing the nature.”