True Freedom Is When You Can Move In and Out of Identification

In this culture where more is felt to be better, there is often an implication that bigger truths are better. If your Heart can open and expand, then it may seem best to find a way to open the darn thing all the way and keep it that way.

However, if you check in your Heart right now as you hold the idea that it’s better to open your Heart and keep it that way, you may be surprised to find that this idea actually feels tight or limiting. It’s simply not the biggest truth or the most freeing possibility. An even bigger, freer possibility is to allow the sense of your self to be whatever size it is. If your Heart is always accurately and appropriately opening or contracting to show you how true each moment’s perspective is, then the best result of experiencing a small truth is for your Heart to contract and show you how small that truth is. It can be as liberating to find out that a small truth is small as to find out that a vast dimension of Being is profoundly real. In both cases, the nature of truth has been more fully illuminated.  

Once you realize you can trust your Heart just the way it is right now, whether it is open or closed, you can just rest within the folding and unfolding of all perspectives. You don’t do anything to get rid of the small perspectives, which just arise out of the conditioned parts of your Being, and you don’t do anything to bring on the bigger perspectives, which just arise out of the unconditioned parts of your Being. You just rest in the moment as it is.   

There is never a need to have a bigger or smaller experience, as Being is still Being even in the small experiences. Its nature is the same, and part of its nature is this capacity to discriminate how true—how complete—a particular perspective is. The small experiences of Being are still an expression of Being’s ultimate nature, just as a single drop of water is still wet.   

Spiritual seekers often think of liberation as staying in an expanded experience of truth. While expanded experiences are freeing (especially when you’ve been contracted for a long time), the ability to move in and out of many different perspectives is an even greater freedom. Walls are only a problem when you don’t know where the door is and therefore can’t get in or out.   

True freedom is when you can move in and out of identification with a small sense of your self. You don’t have to take my word for it. Find out what happens in your Heart if you just let the opening and closing of your sense of self be just the way it is right now. Does this allow your Heart to open? Does it allow you to just be for a moment?

The above is an excerpt from the book Living from the Heart by Nirmala. Download this book for free.