Quotes about Freedom

Just as we care for our bodies with good food and rest, so we must also care for our spiritual selves, that part of us that is connected to God. If we are spiritually ill, our bodies and minds also become sick. This is why regular prayer and times of silent contemplation are necessary parts of our daily lives. Periodically, we must also take extra measures of self-examination and learning, that we might be ever-perfected in the grace of the infinite and perfect God.

Search your hearts and minds for the spiritual wounds of unforgiveness and fear, which are atheistic and unchristian, and repent of them so that you might be healed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPHhttp://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

"At the beginning of the call to the spiritual life,the Lord visits a person with His grace and various consolations,but afterwards He withdraws them and casts him into the fire of diverse temptations and sorrows,so that our self-loving and glory-loving disposition would be commpletely reduced to ashes by the fire of temptation,and would not trust in itself and its works but in the mercy and love of God.Humility is a great blessing."

From Living without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Council from the  Elders of Optina http://www.skete.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1483

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
by Saint Philo of Alexandria

If we are unwilling to admit the specific sins in our lives, those that bring us suffering and turmoil, we cannot be freed from them by God's mercy. It is easy for us to admit in a general way that we are sinners, but are we ready to admit every situation where we have done wrong? This is hard work, and we must overcome a great deal of fear by trusting in our Lord.

We sometimes hear people say, 'I'm only human.' We hear it in songs, in conversation, perhaps in confession. It sounds like an excuse in our fallen condition not to change. Therefore, let us challenge ourselves and others to be 'truly human' rather than 'only human.' To be truly human we must commit ourselves to rise above the bodiless powers with the Theotokos { The Virgin Mary } who is more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim in pursuit of the likeness of God.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPH
http://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character.

We commonly think of freedom as the ability to define alternatives and choose between them. The creative mind exceeds this liberty in being able to redefine itself and reality at large, generating whole new sets of alternatives.

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

"Boast not of tomorrow, for you know not what any day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1).

Brethren, let us not boast of that which is not in our power. The Lord has placed the times and the years under His power and He disposes of them. Only God Himself alone knows whether tomorrow's day will number us among the living or the dead. Some have died on the eve of their marriage; again, others have descended into the grave on the eve of their coronation with a royal diadem. Therefore, let no one say that tomorrow will be for me the happiest day of my life; tomorrow, I enter into marriage! Or, tomorrow I will be crowned with a royal diadem! Or, tomorrow I am going to a great feast! Or, tomorrow a great gain is coming to me! O, let no one speak of the happiness of tomorrow's day. Behold, yet this night your soul may depart your body and tomorrow you will find yourself surrounded by black demons in the tollhouses [Mitarstvo]! And yet, even this night, a man can be separated from his relatives and friends, from wealth and honor, from the sun and the stars and find himself in a totally unknown company, in an unseen place and at an unexpected judgment.

Instead of boasting of tomorrow's day, it would be better to pray to God to "Give us this day our daily bread." Perhaps today's day may be our last day on earth. That is why it is better to spend this day in repentance for all our past days on earth rather than vainly fantasizing about tomorrow's day, about the day which perhaps will not dawn for us. Vain fantasizing about tomorrow's day cannot bring us any good, but repentance for one day with tears can save us from eternal fire.

O righteous Lord, burn up the insane vanity that is in us.

+To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.+

From Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nicolai Vilimirovich

Beware of despair.  You do not serve a tyrant, but your service is to a kind Lord, Who, taking nothing from you, He has given you all.  And when you did not exist at all, He fashioned you so that you would be in that [ state ] in which you now are.  Who is sufficient to render Him thanks for the fact that He has brought us into existence?  O the immeasurable grace!  Who can sufficiently honor Him with hymns?  For He has given us knowledge of all things.  And not only those which are manifest, but also of the hidden things.  For we know that if there is anything we do not know, it is necessary for us only to ask this [ knowledge ] from Him.

"When a man begins to perceive the love of God in all its richness, he begins also to love his neighbor with spiritual perception.  This is the love of which all the scriptures speak.  Friendship after the flesh is very easily destroyed on some slight pretext, since it is not held firm by spiritual perception.  But when a person is spiritually awakened, even if something irritates him, the bond of love is not dissolved; rekindling himself with warmth of the love of God, he quickly recovers himself and with great joy seeks his neighbor's love, even though he has been gravely wronged or insulted by him.  For sweetness of God completely consumes the bitterness of the quarrel."

Saint Diadochos of Photiki

Freedom is a state of mind that each of us must discover for ourselves. In so doing, we will find that there is nothing that anyone in authority can do to make our world more peaceful orderly, or free. There are no institutional reforms, or ideologies, or more fashionable gurus to save us: such thinking only continues our sense of irresponsibility.

Because we are self-controlling beings, we are also responsible for our actions. This is not a moral or ethical proposition, but simply a causal one: I am responsible for what I do because I am the one who controls my actions. By the same token, to the degree we seek to control the lives and property of others, we help to foster, in their minds, the illusions that they are not responsible for what they do.

If it is our desire to live as free men and women, we must abandon our habits of looking outside ourselves for answers. It is to our own minds, our own fears, to which we must have resort. To be "free" is to live without division, and yet the state – as well as other proclaimed authorities – insist that we obey their mandates. To the extent that we must choose between pursuing our own interests and obeying others, we are internally divided into conflicting purposes.

How do we end such divisive thinking other than by confronting, and ending, the contradictory thinking that has produced it? Can we understand that trying to overthrow the state, or to reform it, or to select less-demanding leaders, will not end the thinking that has produced it? Neither is the answer to be found in science fiction or utopian/dystopian novels, in which efforts are made to deal with freedom in the setting of imaginary worlds, thus relieving the reader of the responsibility of doing so in reality.

It is the existential depths of our own beings that we need to explore if we are to discover the meaning of freedom. When we are prepared to do so, we will begin to discover some important truths about ourselves, one of the most important being that we are, by nature, self-controlling beings. I, alone, can energize my will and my body on behalf of purposes to which I must choose to act. The fact that political systems must resort to violence – and the threat of violence – to persuade us to obey their directives, is the clearest evidence that neither they, nor anyone else, can control our actions.

When politicians start speaking of "freedom," it means that greater restrictions are about to be imposed on our lives, just as stated intentions of "peace" mean that war is about to be declared. In much the same way, legislation designated as "fair" tells us that someone is going to have their liberties curtailed, or appeals to "justice" will generate a redistribution of violence.

Love really is the answer to human problems:  love of oneself, love of others, love of where one is, love of what one is doing, love of nature, love of life, love of the world, love of spirit in all its wonder and splendor. Love sets our energy free. It opens us and puts us in a flow with spirit and life on many levels.  Love is the true secret behind manifestation.

Do not fear, neither let your heart lose courage; our Christ invisibly helps you with a hidden hand; He tests you in order to give you His grace.  As much as the earth of the heart is cultivated, and as deep as the farmer pushes the plow, so much more will the field give fruit in its time.  Even so does the great Farmer, God, do with our souls.  He allows trials, afflictions, suffering and distress to come to us and enter deeply into the heart, and many times we find ourselves at an impass, not knowing how to manage this or that trial, and we suffer and feel great pain.  But for those who love God, He works together with them that these things turn out for the good.

Only if you see yourself as zero and being full of passions can you see God.  If you can not see that you are nothing, then you cannot see God.  God lives only in the humble person.

The happy individual is able to renew daily and with full consciousness all the basic expressions of human identity: work, love, communication, play, and rest.

Free men and women... can think across time, viewing their own lives, inclusive of past, present, and future, as architectural wholes, static in mental space. They can therefore see, as others cannot, the cracks and buttresses of repeated action, the points of stress, the established framework. They are not perfect; but they are less imperfect than we by a full dimension of being.

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" — and find that there is no death.

Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.

Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.

Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

So there's only transcendence in the moment. Nobody can be transcended forever. That's why I say, "Who cares if you're enlightened forever?"

A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on Earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher.

You’re the one.

Would you rather be right or free?

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. “If I feel peaceful,” they say, “why would I bother taking action at all?”
 
My answer is “Because that's what love does.”  To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day wiith drool running down her chin.

My experience is the opposite.

Love is action.

The basics teachings of Buddha are about understanding what we are, who we are, why we are. When we begin to realize what we are, who we are, why we are, then we begin to realize what we are not, who we are not, why we are not. We begin to realize that we don’t have basic, substantial, solid, fundamental ground that we can exert anymore. We begin to realize that our ideas of security and our concept of freedom have been purely phantom experiences.