The paradox of freedom has been on my mind for quite a while now, but most recently, it has become a central theme in my mind’s philosophical ramblings. What inspired this focus on freedom is a YouTube video I recently saw about George Orwell’s 1984 and also recent political occurrences, particularly my ability to make choices as a Canadian citizen during the current Canada-US trade war. As tax season ramps up, I’ve also been feeling a resurgence of personal or collective triggers related to the conflict between individual freedom and authoritative control. Usually, I sit with ideas for a while, but this time I felt an urge to write this post almost immediately. Perhaps my subconscious is desperate to heal the remaining wounds that keep me from being sovereign or I’m hearing a collective cry for freedom to be expressed into reality. Or perhaps, someone on the Internet manifested a message here. Regardless, we cannot achieve freedom until we know what it means to be free.
Deciphering divine justice in the human world of legislation
The first topic related to freedom that I want to unpack is the authority of justice. The conundrum around justice, for me, can be symbolized in my struggle to decipher the Justice card in the tarot deck. While I have a strong grasp of some other cards, the meaning of the Justice card has always been a bit vague for me. As a spiritual tool, I intuitively knew tarot justice was not the same as human justice.
One major difference in the symbolism of Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration from the popular Rider-Waite Tarot is that Justice is open-eyed and holding a scale and a sword. On the other hand, Lady Justice in our human legal systems also holds a scale and a sword but she is blindfolded to represent her impartiality and fairness. This symbolism reveals the difference between human and cosmic laws and the flaw of human judgment. We think that we can blindfold ourselves into fairness, but spiritually, we aren’t meant to be unbiased. What we are meant to do is become more aware, more intuitive, and more empathetic.
An anecdotal experience I had yesterday has led me to some insights. To seek clarity over a personal (and objectively insignificant) tax issue related to rental housing, I called the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and my province’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB). Long story short, the conversations left me unsatisfied and more bewildered than when I started. From the perspective of the representatives, they had given me clear and straightforward answers according to what was explicitly stated in their documents. But from my perspective, their clear and straightforward answers did not specifically apply to the scenario I was inquiring about. While I could see multiple interpretations for the semantics of the matter, the institutions via their representatives revealed that they were not interested in seeing that interpretations exist. So, I wasn’t dissatisfied because we were not agreeing on the details of the matter. Rather, I was unconvinced because the details don’t even exist.
Justice (Major Arcana XI) from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Source: Wikimedia Commons 
Lady Justice, Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
From my mind’s logic, the law is only a law when an authority can document and stand firmly in the interpretation that matches a particular situation, otherwise, that law is only a suggestion. But my logic doesn’t matter in our human systems. These suggestions are laws because they also give the legislative administrator the right to reprimand an individual for not following a law even if the communicative agreement between administrator and individual is left vague or incomplete. The individual would have to submit to the administrator’s interpretation (which has no function for interpretation) unless one gets a lawyer to negotiate that interpretation.
So, while my tax issue was not resolved in the way I would have liked, this experience revealed to me a greater philosophical conclusion: human laws are not laws at all. They are merely elaborate systems of narratives used as a means of controlling a population. Now, I’m not saying that governance and control is a bad thing. Collective humanity hasn’t reached a level of awareness and empathy to sustain a functional anarchy. But even with authoritative laws and governmental control, we are still hurting each other and destroying the planet. Human laws are not laws because they are not universal. Human laws must be interpreted and enforced. So, while we may associate legal matters with justice, human laws are inherently not fair.
On the other hand, cosmic laws (e.g., the law of attraction, the law of polarity, the law of correspondence) are universal. That means they apply to everyone. You cannot negotiate your way out of a cosmic law. They are fair in the truest sense. It may seem that you can be granted a pass from a particular law, which would manifest as a miracle, but even miracles are governed by some sort of divine order. Miracles are for everyone, and most people would welcome the chance of receiving one. In contrast, the loopholes in our human legal systems are the areas that people take advantage for self-gain or use to manipulate people by inciting fear and guilt.
Being free of judgment
Reflecting on my conversations with the employees at the governmental agencies, I remember that they work for an “invisible” authority, because fortunately, in the democratic country that I live in, we don’t have a real-life “Big Brother” constantly watching and judging us in anticipation to reprimand us. This means the responsibility of freedom is on the individual, whether one identifies as citizen, employee, politician, or business owner.
From years of healing my inner critic (which uncannily often resembles the attitude of my older sister), I know that a Big Brother / Freudian Superego lives inside many of our psyches. Under his watchful eyes, we are always doing something wrong, always not good enough, and always guilty. The only time we are spared from the judgment of being bad, inadequate, and blameworthy is when we are obedient in our thoughts and actions to the status quo and anxiously anticipating judgment and rejection. But just like in 1984 where Big Brother has never been physically seen, our psychological Oppressor is also invisible. To free ourselves, we need to make the Oppressor visible. In phenomenology, we make the invisible visible by seeing the world in another way. So, we need to see freedom from another perspective.
In liberal countries with free markets, we don’t have an omnipresent Oppressor. But somehow, we’ve managed to manifest an omnipresent Salesperson instead. This salesperson has created an obvious and painful paradox to the word “free.” While almost every person would consciously and conceptually claim their desire for freedom, we may need to think a bit deeper on whether we want to be free. From the perspective of sovereignty, to be free means to be liberated (i.e., to have freedom). But from the perspective of a capitalist society, to be free means to have no value (i.e., $0, zero worth).
Businesses give out freebies and set up buy-1-get-1-free campaigns as negotiation strategies to gain more attention and more profits. The closer you get to free in a campaign, the more money you lose. What is free becomes a throwaway leverage for something of more perceived value. But freedom is one of, if not the most, significant of life values. How can we reconcile this discrepancy? The notion of gifting can help with a paradigm shift. When offered genuinely, a gift is priceless and valuable. In a previous post on finding self-worth in a capitalist world, I wrote about use-value, inherent value, and pricelessness. In this post, I will focus on free will.
Free will is the freedom to surrender
Free will versus determinism is a popular topic in introductory philosophy. I remember writing an essay on it for an undergraduate course. I believe in fate and destiny (karma and darma). and purpose, so my position has always been that free will does not exist, at least from the simple free will versus determinism polarity. Yes, we can make choices, but we don’t have free will.
While we are stuck in the human matrix, we aren’t even our true selves. Half-asleep and following the patterns of a wounded paradigm, our actions are not free. We don’t even know what our will is. When we awaken, we realize that we have a choice to continue a pattern or choose a different course. Oftentimes, the physical manifestation of the choices doesn’t even matter. It is the awareness that we have a choice that grants us the freedom to choose. However, we may not necessarily have the freedom to will. Even though we are still bound by external systems, there is room for us to shift internally.
The deeper we go on our spiritual journey, the more we will realize that our natural path is to surrender to divine will. We become free from the pull of the old world matrix and its traumas, and our will is found in our willingness to surrender to an eternal force that is greater than ourselves. When we talk about oppressive systems that limit our free will, we are referring to the oppression of the system on our natural ability and inclination to flourish. We may be forced to act like we are willing to surrender to the Oppressor, but we are not flourishing. These systems are unnatural. Therefore, free will is the freedom to be willing to flourish, be natural, and be as we were meant to be.
Being free takes courage because it asks us to surrender our human will. Freedom does not ask us to be rebellious by resisting all external systems because exerting energy in being resistant can also be a form of (un)willingly being controlled. So, while I continue to heal my inherited authority-wound, for sure, I will still be doing my taxes. But I can do them consciously with the awareness that I have a choice not to (and that choice will come with consequences). The agencies and people I do not have control over, I will surrender, because that is where I do have free will.
