Liberate Liberating Liberation

Being able to take risks, not be afraid of illness and death in a paralysing way. It suggests going beyond the boundaries of one’s own limitations, concepts, present experience. It represents the enormous personal potential lying beyond already formed conceptions and experience. It is the aspect of human consciousness existing beyond the opposites such as good and bad, right and wrong. Access to this gives tremendous liberation to the dreamer, freeing them from restricting rigid concepts or habits of thinking, responding and relating.

But when liberation or liberate is shown in a dream it is wise to ask yourself, liberation from what? For example, you might encounter tremendous unleashing of aggression if you are liberated from constraints. You would confront destructive and self-destructive tendencies within yourself if you have an inner experience. There is also liberation of repressed sexuality.

An insight into the impermanence of the ego, and the experience of liberation arising from it. Going beyond paradox. If this state of consciousness is reached where all the opposites of life are resolved, where everything is true and untrue at the same time, it is a tremendous liberation, and in fact is the base of enlightenment. It is what Buddhists call the Void, in which there is no form, no ego, no certainty, no past, no future, no beginning to move from and no goal to reach. Although it can be a disturbing experience when first met, it has the possibility of bringing enormous liberation. This is because our ego and our usual values are usually embedded in concepts that can only ever be either this or that; only ever be partially true; only ever be a fragment of reality. One might for instance develop ones identity out of being male or female, out of being honest or a villain. The Void strips all that away.

Sometimes people say ‘I have never expressed myself like this before, and I wonder if I am bizarre’. The answer is that only whole human beings are capable of a wide range of expression which they can choose to end at any moment. It is the unhealthy person who is locked into compulsive and limited patterns of behaviour. Liberation is a sign of health.

We can understand how ordinary men and women can be liberated from their personal miserable life and find instead they have almost superhuman powers. Such a feeling will sustain them for a long time and give a certain extra quality to their life. A remarkable instance of this can be found in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were unfortunately suppressed by the Christian era. They expressed, together with the Delphic oracle, the essence and spirit of ancient Greece. Christian ideas have their roots in the archetypal Osiris Horus myth of ancient Egypt.

 Example: The pain of divorce? Well, I had never loved my first wife in the way people mean when they use that word – love. There was agony, but it was about my children. But the agony led to realisation and finding of the life beyond – liberation. Unconditional life. Freedom. I am not perfectly in that liberation as it is a strange place. However, I am not sure I can ever love again in a way that leads to pain. Emotional dependence melts away. I love people but it doesn’t seem to matter if they come or go. Death is the same. I have not felt grief or loss at the death of my parents. Whether that applies to my children I don’t know, as I have not been tested. My best friend died a few years ago and I never experienced grief or loss. At his funeral though I wept with great feeling because I could feel the heartbreak of some of the people there.

Example: With this dream in which there were no real images, just a feeling sense going on and on, which I was experiencing and trying to understand and clarify. I never quite arrived at putting the feeling into clear imagery, but as far as I can describe it, it was about having been in a relationship in a particular way, and now this had radically changed. As I think about this I realise that for what felt like hours, I was trying to find clear dream imagery in which to express or personally realise this change, but never quite got there. The point about the change in relationship was that in the first state I felt restricted and bound in some way. The nearest image I could get to this was prison, but that wasn’t right and so it never flowed fully into that image. The second state was felt as a state of liberation, of being able to move and be released from the first state. So the nearest image, but not fitting, was coming out of prison.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Was I struggling to get or find liberation?

Can I describe any liberation I found?

How was the liberation created?

See Enlightenment – Methods of Awakening – Interview with Jill Bolte Taylor – Avoid Being Victims