Spiritual Health Learning Community Center Exploring Life's Horizons   »   Streams Menu If someone wishes for freedom, let that person attain servanthood. - Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj Freedom Having choice and being free are not necessarily the same thing. Many of the tragedies of our lives are based on the assumption that being free to choose necessarily means we have freedom. There are, at least, three issues which must be considered when thinking about the relationship between choice and freedom. (1) Who is the one doing the choosing? (2) What is the nature of the process through which choice arises? (3) What is the character of that which is being chosen? Let us begin with the following example. Suppose someone is a drug addict. Let us further suppose this person is hooked on a wide variety of uppers and downers. If this individual has money and contacts, a fairly wide assortment of choices are available to the person. There are all different manner of uppers and downers to be bought and consumed, either individually or in imaginative combinations. Despite the presence of many choices, all of which are realizable, this individual hardly is free. The person's whole life in driven, in one way or another, by drugs. What one does, with whom one does it, and why one does it, are, for the most part, drug related. How one feels, what one thinks about, the problems one has, and so on, are all heavily influenced by the seeking of drugs, the taking of drugs, and the aftermath which is left in the wake of the drug consumption. In order to have choice in one area of life, the addict has surrendered freedom in virtually all other parts of his or her life. On balance, the exercise of choice has entailed very little freedom. The foregoing scenario can be complicated considerably by changing one of the assumptions. More specifically, let us now assume the individual in question does not have the money with which to purchase the desired drugs. There are still a wide variety of choices available to such an individual. This person can work extra hours at, say, a part-time job. The individual could borrow money. The individual could pawn or sell various possessions. The person could turn to prostitution of one sort or another. The individual could try to sell some of his or her blood. The person could steal items and convert them into cash through a fence or the black market. The individual could break into pharmacies or try to work some sort of prescription scam. Once again, there are may avenues of possibility for choice. However, all of these avenues are dictated by one's need for drugs. Most people, including drug addicts, would prefer not to have the sort of "freedom" entailed by such choices. One is degraded and humiliated as a human being to feel compelled to make these choices. In fact, in a very real sense, the more choices of this kind one has, the more curtailed is one's opportunity to be a fully functioning human being. One has sacrificed freedom for choices of a limiting nature. All choice, of course, places constraints on freedom. One cannot do everything. One only has a finite amount of time, energy, and resources available to one. Consequently, doing one thing precludes doing other things. Nevertheless, there are choices, and there are choices. Some choices are liberating, and some choices close one off to possibility. Many discussions of freedom take place in a vacuum, as if freedom were something which could be studied independently of the nature of human beings and the character of reality. In fact, one's choices concerning whom, in essence, one believes a human being to be, will affect one's ideas about freedom. Different theories of freedom follow from different conceptions about the nature of humanity. From the perspective of Sufi masters, an individual only can be free in a fundamental sense when one realizes ones's essential capacity and true identity. All other possibilities, whatever choices they may entail, will impinge, ultimately, on the individual in ways which sacrifice essential freedom on the altar of choice. Eventually, when one embraces these kinds of choice, one becomes entangled in constraints and does not experience liberation. One becomes something other than whom one really is. If one has musical talent, if one can write and play music, if one has the heart and temperament of a musician, and if one derives joy, meaning, purpose and value from music, but one is forced to become something else, then no matter how many choices may be associated with this other occupation, one will not feel, or be, free. One will only feel free, if one can be what one is: a musician. Practitioners of the Sufi path maintain that we are, in essence, spiritual beings. We have spiritual talent. We have the heart and temperament of spiritual beings. For us, the source of our greatest joy, purpose, meaning and value lies with spirituality. The Sufi masters indicate we were born for spirituality. We were created for spirituality. We will not know ourselves until we realize our spiritual identities. We will not fully understand our relationship with reality without the unfolding and maturation of our spiritual dimension. Our uniqueness will be given fullest and richest expression only through spirituality. When, through choice, we impose on ourselves conditions which thwart or undermine our spiritual potential, we interfere with our freedom to be who, in essence, we really are. When other people, through their choice, place obstacles in our way which create problems with respect to the realization of essential, spiritual identity, then freedom is being curtailed, although one may be permitted any number of choices in the trade-off. Many people get caught up in discussions about freedom of choice. However, the real issue ought to be a matter of the way in which choice either constrains one or liberates one in relation to essential freedom. To the extent one places emphasis on the importance of extending the range of choice available to an individual, independently of considerations of essential spiritual identity, one will lose sight of what real freedom involves. Extending the range of choices to which a person has access, just for the sake of having more and more choice, is primarily of interest to the ego. This is so because the ego has no wish to realize essential identity or to place constraints on choices which permit the individual to be liberated from the ego. Choice means continued life for the ego, whereas real freedom means the demise of the ego. The ego has a vested interest in expanding the scope of choice and narrowing the opportunities for real freedom to gain prominence as an issue with which choice ought to struggle. Who is the one doing the choosing? Are our choices an expression of the ego or the true self? What is the nature of the process through which choices arise? Do spiritual or non-spiritual processes predominate in the coloring, shaping and orienting of the choice? What is the character of that which is being chosen? Is one opting for choice as an end in itself, or is one using choice as a means of establishing an end of essential freedom? Are we painting ourselves into an existential corner through our choices? Or, are we liberating ourselves through our choices? Are we committing ourselves to choices which will impose burdens on us? Or, are we committing ourselves to choices which will free us from ourselves? Is choice, in and of itself, the basis of the utility function which should govern our lives? Or, should the basis of that utility function be rooted in an essential identity which transcends the idea of choice considered in isolation? The drug addict scenario outlined earlier is merely a prototype for an issue at the heart of the potential conflict between choice and freedom. More specifically, many of the choices we make in life involve addictions of one sort or another. We can become addicted to: career, fashions, food, sex, fame, power, status, money, possessions, hobbies leisure past-times, television, music, violence, and so on. All of these addictive life-styles can have many, many choices associated with them. However, these choices are paid for in the currency of our freedom. When we are addicted to anything, we are not free to be who we really are. The choices of addiction are, ultimately, always about the constraints which, in time, come to be imposed on us by our desires and passions, or by others, or by the situation. The choices of addiction are never liberating, although, initially, we are deceived to suppose otherwise by the way choice masquerades in the form of freedom. The choices of addiction are always about enslavement to things, processes, circumstances, events and people which compel us and drive us. Therefore, these choices will not, and cannot, lead us to our true identity where real freedom awaits us. | Return to Streams Menu | Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Institute. All Rights Reserved.