Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose
Published: Wed, 06/17/15
There is a great line in the Country and Western Song Me and Bobby McGee which goes. ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ A typically cynical attitude from 1960’s America. In this clip on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33116361 you will see American women, specifically Texan ladies, demonstrating a freedom not available to those of us living in most parts of the modern world.
No, I am not advocating anything in particular so don’t bombard me with pro and anti arguments, believe me, I know them all. I am just trying to get you think about what freedom might imply and getting you to think about how you feel and react when confronted with an example foreign to your own experience.
Closer to home, a friend of mine who is now a man in his forties had a troubled and misspent youth which resulted in some quite lengthy prison sentences. He told me that in many ways he had never been so free as when incarcerated, since he had absolutely no responsibilities or anything he had to do. I am glad to say he sorted himself out by the time he was thirty and much of his working life has been spent in helping young people avoid the problems he had.
I am just trying to show up some of the contradictions around freedom and what we might think we mean about the word.
Two thoughts about freedom in Stav terms. Firstly, we have the word Karl which means ‘free-man’ and traditionally implied ‘farmer’. This meant a man who had his own land and therefore was his own boss. Having his own land meant that he could support his own family and his status gave him the right to speak at the ‘Thing’ or parliament. The status of Karl is contrasted with that of Trel which means serf or landless peasant. The Trel might see himself as helpless and dependent upon others for his survival and willing to do anything for a land owner in return for a meal and somewhere safe to sleep. Or the Trel might just be very glad not to have the responsibility of protecting property, having to make the land productive, support other people and vote on community policy.
Which brings me to the second concept, the web. We are all centred in our own web. This means we are at a particular point in time and space right now, where ever you are reading this you cannot be anywhere else. So in that sense we are all prisoners of the here and now. You could see that as the bad news, a prisoner within your own web, no freedom there then. Then again, like the Trel described above it is more a matter of how you see your situation. If you are centered in your web in time and space then you are alive, breathing and free to think. If you can think, you can reflect. If you reflect you will see that your thoughts, leading to intentions, actions and movement brought you to exactly where you are now. Yes, it did, whether or not you did it consciously or unconsciously is another matter. You can only be exactly where you meant to be right now. You can argue against that statement as loudly as you like. It won’t
do you much good though, you will still be centred in your web so you might as well accept it.
The good news is that the web is not static, at the very least time is moving? happening? changing anyway so the opportunity for new opportunity is always there. The issue is whether or not you can make a conscious choice to create a situation that you really want, or an unconscious choice to keep recreating the situation you are used to. It is funny that we think of freedom as something we have to aspire to and bondage being the constant. Actually it is the other way around. It is freedom that keeps happening to us in that web is always changing. It is bondage we keep recreating to give ourselves a sense of security. Of course it could be the other way around, really just a matter of how you look at it. How you look at it is your free choice.
Can you really learn to work with your own web (which is of course interconnected with the web of Orlog which is the universe). Yes, you just need to practice the integration of conscious intention, effective action and meaningful movement. Okay, that is the principle. How can you learn to do it in reality? Any number of ways really but structured practical training will help a lot as it does in any education. In Stav we use Martial arts as the training system for understanding ourselves within our web. It always was part of the tradition. Then Ivar spent 14 years in Japan with teachers who both taught him traditional Japanese martial arts and who also understood Ivar’s personal goal and helped him towards it. In the 23 years since Ivar returned to Europe he has taught other people how to train in order to see the web themselves. I am one of those people and I have spent over 20 years now doing my own daily practice and
teaching others.
Last night we spent 90 minutes mainly on three or four drills with battle axes. Powerful physical training yet with the emphasis on creating intention, purposeful movement and action in accordance with the web lines. Not so much learning how to do stuff, more a matter of cutting away the illusions which blind us to what we are inherently capable of.
If you really want to see how this stuff works we have the summer camp in July in Somerset. Okay you won’t get from it everything Ivar and I have gained from decades of training but it would be a start. http://www.iceandfire.org to find out more.
regards
Graham