In this third decade of the 21st Century, we find ourselves fighting for democracy and political freedom against a planet-wide authoritarian backlash. At such a time, the mystery of freedom comes up for review. Especially important for our religious thinking is this question: How does the essential freedom of the human spirit differ from political freedom?
Consider this formula: political freedom is something granted by a human government to its citizens. Essential freedom is something granted by an “Eternal Governance” to its human beings. This is a big difference, but the two are closely related in real life.
Political Freedom
Political freedom is created by human beings. Political freedoms are “rights” allocated by human governments to their citizens. Political freedom can include the rights outlined in the U.S. bill of rights. Political freedom can also include the proposals of Franklin D. Roosevelt: the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.
The degree and scope of our political freedoms depends on what we human beings struggle to achieve and institute in the form of laws and their enforcement by governments of our creation. In other words, we do not wait for our existing governments to become more benevolent. We build better forms of governing with our advocasies, protests, voting, and steady work of all sorts. We can and do build governments that grant, maintain, protect, and further improve our political freedoms.
Today we are adding to the older lists of political freedoms: the freedom from corporate wealth ruling our lives, the freedom to vote in a convenient way and have our vote counted, the freedom to have affordable healthcare, the freedom for women to have control over their own bodies, the freedom for everyone to have equality before the law, and the freedom to enjoy a fair share of our common economic wealth. These statements are currently aspirations that are yet to be achieved as the common practices of our society. These aspirations become political freedoms only when they exist as law—offerings articulated and enforced by the power of human government.
Most important of all, our aspirations for political freedom include the freedom of having a planetary climate that does not wreck the planet for the habitation of our species and many other life forms. Granting such freedom to the humans of this planet will require the establishment of structures of governing built by humans, who in support of this freedom insist on governments setting new rules for the behavior of the entire economy of the planet. Instituting this freedom will require nothing less than laws enforced by government in opposition to the tyranny of the status-quo practices of the fossil-fuel, nuclear-power, and tree-burning industries.
Instituting the political freedom of having a viable planet includes phasing out all the above energy sources and phasing in solar and wind sources for the energizing of a significantly reduced “need” for energy. These new energy sources require a whole new energy infrastructure that can conduct energy through electrical and hydrogen-gas means for the provision of every “needed” human use. This vast social change, and others like it, define some new meaning for the words “political freedom.”
Essential Freedom
“Essential freedom” is a much deeper truth about human existence than “political freedom.” Our essential freedom is not provided or taken away by a human government. It is an Eternal Governance that provides, maintains, and assists in the furtherance of our essential freedom that no human power can take away from us. Even our deaths can be freely given to our most important an challenging causes.
“Eternal Governance” is a symbol for what may also be called “Profound Reality.” Our essential freedom is provided by the Profound Reality that we confront in every event of our lives, whether we be aware of that confrontation or not. Every other “reality” that we might name is a form of impermanence. “Impermanence” is a colorful word for “temporal.” Temporal realities come into being, stay awhile, and the go out of being. This impermanence applies to stars, galaxies, our own bodies, and our own consciousness—indeed, to everything we can name. Every detail of every event and the names we use to describe those events are impermanent. The Profound Reality that grants our essential freedom is nameless, yet real to our consciousness. Profound Reality is that “Finality” that “Mystery” that “Namelessness” we may encounter in every event, if we are awake enough.
The names “Eternal” and “Profound Reality” are temporal entities, poetries of the human mind. Furthermore, when we name this very real Profound Reality “God” we are not exactly naming Profound Reality itself. Rather, we are giving the name “God” to our relation to this nameless Void and Fullness. The word “God” and the term “People of God” are corresponding concepts. With the name “God,” Profound Reality is named “God” by a people. When a “People of God” have for their “God” the mysterious, permanent, eternal, always present, never absent, encounter within whatever is happening to us, then that people are naming that namelessness “our God,” and in doing so, accepting the presence of essential freedom that such devotion releases.
As I was listening to a video of a Gangaji-and-Eli workshop that my wife Joyce and I had attended, I was struck by a teaching to which these two luminaries kept returning: The only trustworthy reality is the reality that is always here. That statement implies that our consciousness can have access to something more permanent than our most wonderful states of being, for all our states of being come and go. We need not hold these states in contempt; we can treasure them as we treasure life itself. States of being are not the enlightenment experience. The full deliverance of our being is a trust in that Profound Reality that is always present.
So what can I say about that Mysterious Profound Reality that is always present—present whether it is present to me as a conscious state or not? When in ordinary matters we close our eyes to what is happening, those matters do not go away. Profound Reality is like that. Profound Reality never goes away. Gangaji-and-Eli are Eastern-rooted religious teachers who seldom use the word “God,” but they are nevertheless trusting in the dependability and trustworthiness of the same Profound Reality that I am naming “my God”—my God-devotion.
The above statements about Profound Reality are poetry, not science. It is also poetry when I picture this Profound Reality as an Eternal Governance that grants human beings their essential freedom. We humans quite often flee from this Eternal Governance and thereby flee from the essential freedom that this Eternal Governance grants. If we are stuck in a devotion to a temporal power, (that is, to any power other than the Eternal Governance) we are thereby also stuck in an inner unfreedom of our will.
This unfreedom may be described as a limited freedom of the will, for our essential freedom is seldom completely eclipsed. Our limited freedom is like living in a prison cell; we can move around with a confined space. Our prison-cell-like “bondages of will” eventually become hellish, because Profound Reality goes on being that Profound Reality that is undermining our limited views of what is Real and trustworthy.
Nevertheless, the Eternally-Recurring miracle of being delivered from our hellish bondages and thereby restored to our essential freedom remains a possibility for each and every human being. And we don’t have to create this essential freedom. There is no way to achieve it. We don’t have to do anything to have it. We only have to surrender to the essential freedom that is being given to us in the events of our lives—events that restore this essential freedom to us.
To access this gift of essential freedom we will have to pass through the hell of experiencing the undoing of whatever un-freedoms we have created to substitute for our essential freedom. These fragile bondages, when consciously faced, become doorways to our returns to our essential freedom. We must pass through our hellish despairs and unfree living in order to make these returns to our essential freedom. This truth is why many refuse to take this “dark night” inward journey into the “noon day” of our essential freedom. We may prefer the false peace of denying our bondages to the pains of out moving toward our true rest in our essential freedom. Such are the “laws” of this “Eternal Governance”—this “Kingdom of God” as Jesus called it.
How is Eternally-Granted Freedom related to
Human-Government-Granted Freedoms
Here is the answer I will illustrate: if most of us do not live our essential freedom, decay will set into our political freedoms as well. If we do not fight with our essential freedom for our political freedoms, then social slavery of one sort or another will be chosen for us.
People who are stuck in unfreedom create social slavery for all of us. Unstuck people create political freedoms. A human government does not grant essential freedom, and a human government cannot prevent essential freedom no matter how hard it strives to oppose it. So what sort of freedom can a human government grant? Government can indeed grant us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if these three rights are understood politically. Of course no government grants us our biological birth into life, but if a government is not providing safe environments and an adequate public heath service for our birth mother, for ourselves and for our children, it is not providing us the right to life. If a government is not providing us the right to vote and have our vote counted, it is not providing us the right to liberty. If a government is not providing us opportunities to work, to eat, to associate, to own our private property, or to practice the religion of our choice, it is not providing us the right to pursue our happiness.
These and other political rights can be provided equitably or inequitably. “Justice” is a word that is used to indicate the appropriate distribution of political freedoms to all people in some sort of equitable fashion. A democratic government is one that allows its citizens to use use their Eternally-granted essential freedom to maintain a government that grants citizens the political freedoms they need and dearly want. In contrast an authoritarian government, even one with a so called “good king,” is undermining political freedoms.
Even democracies can undermine political freedoms. The unwillingness of a society’s citizens to access their essential freedom will limit the success of any democratic vision. The vision of democratic government came into being in the light of our essential freedom and is widened and sustained by acts of our essential freedom. Without that constant empowerment and improvement of democracy by essential freedom, political freedoms decay.
Every real-Earth democracy is a work in progress. Democracy is never complete. The U.S. manifestation of democracy began as political freedom for white, male, property owners, including the owners of other human beings. Even after the abolition of slavery and the right of women to vote, political freedom for U.S citizens has remained incomplete. While progress has been made for blacks, for women, for GLBTQ rights, and in safety-nets for the poor, the struggling, the old, and the disabled, all these political freedoms are still threatened. Democracy is about who is and who is not politically empowered, and who is and who is not given economic and cultural opportunities. Democracy is an ongoing dynamic of meeting ever-new circumstances with fresh manifestations of equitable, just, and workable governance. In the United States, we still fall short of a democracy adequate for the times. We even experience political movements in our nation that are destroying the democracy we have.
The idea that society must be a monopoly-game competition in which there are huge winners and big-time losers is an anti-democratic vision and a sociological delusion that leads to ever-new forms of disaster. In a fully democratic society, citizen freedoms will manifest a balance between competition and cooperation, between personal striving and empathy, and between personal power and personal benevolence. Such an ever-improving, freedom-granting democracy is revolutionary in an ever-surprising and never-ending way.
The expansion of democracy is strongly opposed by powerful authoritarian forces. No one living in the United States can watch the current news without seeing that a fight still needs to be won against strong authoritarian impulses. The oppressive fabrics of white nationalism forbid an equitable life for people of color, for Muslims, for Hispanic immigrants, for Jews, for women, as well as for a huge number of unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid citizens. People who are stuck in an unfreedom that is hiding their essential freedom are allowing this nation to coast into a reactionary, nationalist authoritarianism that excludes people from a full participation in this well-established melting pot of human gifts and problems?
Those of us who have at any time experienced being given back our essential freedom need to look now and see if we are fighting for these political freedoms. If we are not, we need to check and see what bondages may be ruling our lives.
Democratic activism is part of being the freedom-loving “people of God.” If we do not want for all human beings the political freedoms we want for ourselves, we have lost sight of loving God-and-neighbor. If we do not care for the neighbors we see, then we do not trust, serve, or care for the unseen Profound Reality that is confronting us in the provision of all these neighboring beings. So-called Christians who claim that their religion is separate from their politics are overlooking the very essence of their Christian faith. The Kingdom of God is not a mystical escape. The Kingdom of God is a perpetual political revolution.