Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 5, Issue -3, 1 September 2020 | Page 13

When we use the word ‘paradise’ we associate it with outer beauty and also
freedom. Interestingly the origin of the word: “Pairidaeza”, which is Persian for ‘a
walled, enclosed, garden’ reveals the true nature of the idea of paradise: no matter
how beautiful, the garden is still enclosed, you are still a prisoner. The same is true
of the story of Adam and Eve, who, once eating from the Tree of Knowledge,
became free from the confines of ‘Paradise’, with God releasing them and their
potential. However, without developing our awareness, we’ve again created our
prisons in the form of national borders, religious beliefs and egocentric (https://
lonerwolf.com/egocentric-self-esteem/) ideologies.
Our perception of freedom is always external: the Garden of Eden, protective
government laws and financial wealth. We ask God to help us because we don’t
want to take responsibility for our own lives and we don’t have the courage to
experience our own divinity. And when God doesn’t help us, when the world
doesn’t turn out the way we want, we blame others.
A simple example of this is our typical love affair. Throughout our lives, many of
us fail to grow to love ourselves, and when we do find someone else who loves us,
we become overwhelmed with happiness. Very quickly we throw our happiness into
the other person’s hands thinking they’ll fulfill everything we desire out of life –
but in doing so we have enslaved ourselves to them. How? For example, when they
connect with someone else we feel jealous. When they don’t behave the way we
expect them to, we become angry. We lack so much awareness of ourselves that we
blame them constantly, and in doing so we imprison them in our own cells of
expectations.
This is the nature of every encounter with other people. Someone cuts us off on the
road, we blame them as ‘idiots’ and become angry instead of taking responsibility
for our patience, tolerance and expectations of others. The truth is that we never
made a deal with them that they shouldn’t behave the way they do – we only
project our ideals of responsibility onto them so they don’t make our lives more
difficult. We never stop to think that the key to freedom is changing something
inside of us, rather than something on the outside.
To be free from all that binds you, from all that is false, from all that is ephemeral,
to rid yourself of all that is imaginary and mortal is to experience the truth and the
immortal within you. This is what the Hindu’s call “Moksha” (’emancipation’,
‘liberation’ or ‘release’) and what Mahavira spoke as “Kaivalya” (‘solitude’,
‘detachment’ or ‘isolation’). Freedom from past thoughts and future expectations is