Love as Freedom

Does it take six million lives to sensitize human consciousness? What else does it take to live in real freedom? Indeed, we equate sensibility to freedom and we must paraphrase it as, what does it take to be sensitive enough to experience true freedom. The God of the Jews is the One of freedom as defined in the First Commandment of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God who took you out of the house of bondage in Egypt”, and reaffirmed in other passages of the Torah as the One “Who lift you up from the land of Egypt”, which means that His freedom for us implies an elevation from one stage or place to another. In this sense, Egypt and the Promised Land represent a lower level and a higher level, respectively. We have mentioned before in this blog that Egypt is the epitome to abject bondage to the negative aspects of consciousness, as it also occurs with the Canaanite nations as specific traits that we must overcome in order to gain moral and ethical principles as preconditions for the kind of freedom that the Creator wants for Israel (see in this blog our commentary “Conquering the 'nations' with Love” on June 26, 2010).

The answer to our questions above is the same for our quest for true freedom, and it is Love. It takes Love to sensitize human consciousness, and all the opposites of Love are the abject slavery in whose name the worse crimes are committed. In this context, evil and its derivatives are the negative expressions opposite to Love. In terms of ethics, the Torah defines “negative” as the kind of actions what deny or obstructs the connection with our God. Evil as the approach that curses life and rejects life's blessings. At the same time the Torah defines “positive” the actions that elevate us to our God by doing them. These actions are the cause and effect of our sensitivity in order to live in real freedom. Goodness as the epitome of positivity is the way to pursue such freedom. In this sense, we can't be free if we think, feel and act under anything that denies or rejects Love's ways and attributes. It takes the greatest Love of all, God's Love, to live truly in freedom and this is the kind of Love that we must experience and embrace as our true Essence and identity, because this Essence is our real freedom.

We have already learned by experience that we can't live without Love, because it is the material reflection of God's Love as the Essence that created us and sustains us. We don't need to believe in God in order to know what Love is. Agnostics and atheists know this, as well as people in the most isolated communities that we consider “primitive”. They and us agree on Love's ways and attributes as the goodness that we must embrace and pursue individually and collectively in order to live in freedom. On the other hand, we who believe in the Creator, recognize His Love as the Source of everything which include Love's ways and attributes.

Freedom is built in loving kindness because this is the foundation of the world: “The world is built on loving kindness” (Psalms 89:3) because it is an emanation of God's loving kindness as one of His attributes: “[I am] The Lord, the Lord, the God of compassion, and [the God of] grace, abundant in loving kindness (...)” (Exodus 34:6) and these are attributes from which we were created that define our Essence and identity. In these attributes we find our true freedom, and not in their opposites. Our Sages say that “those who study Torah every day secure a life in the World to Come, because the ways of the world are its [the Torah's] ways”, and in practical terms this means that those who love every day build the World to Come, because the ways of the world are Love's ways. They also speak of peace as the result of Torah study, “All your children will be students of the Lord ['s Torah], and great will be the peace of your children [as builders of peace]” because peace is the result and also a foundation to build the world according to His ways. Peace, as one of Love's ways and attributes, is also the cause and effect of living in freedom.

At this point we already know what to do regarding the content in the vessels of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. We have said that they are dimensions of consciousness waiting to be filled with the choices we make between curses and blessings, positive and negative, true and false. Some say that the evil in the world is enough, then we should ask how much Love is enough to erase so much evil. How much does it take to Love enough? How many more ruthless and despotic rulers in the world? How much more fundamentalist religious oppression? How much more humiliation to human dignity? Were not enough already six million Jewish lives to learn how much does it take? We must return to our God who brought us up from the land of Egypt by walking in His ways, and emulating His attributes as our freedom from the bondage of the lower aspects of consciousness under the rule of ego's fantasies and illusions. God's Love is always present and pervades all His Creation, and it is our choice to return to Him as our true Essence, and to His Love as our true identity. Love is our way out from negative illusions because Love is our true freedom.

We must say that one of the main opposites of Love is fear, and some say that fear is the opposite of freedom. They certainly claim that as long as we live in fear we live in bondage. We have to see this predicament in our current times, and ask ourselves individually what are the issues that determine our bondage, starting with our ego's fantasies and illusions. What is that we believe we are and have, or what we are not and lack that restricts our freedom? What is beyond our simple, basic needs that shape who we are, what we want to be, or what limits who we want to be? Also let's ask what is that we are afraid of, that which cuts down our freedom. And even more important, what do we think or believe that is freedom? Again, the answer to all these questions sooner or later refers to Love as our true freedom. Are we afraid of Love even if we know that it is our Essence and identity? Let's reiterate again that Love is the cause and the effect, and when we are fully aware of this principle, we are truly free.

We as Jews and our history are the living proof that God exists, and we have existed, still exist and will exist regardless the hatred of others against us, regardless their rejection of us and their desire to destroy us. We love in spite of the world and its illusions, and we will continue loving because Love is our permanent connection with the Creator. This is our greatest freedom. He brought us up from slavery to be truly free in His Love, and that is living in His ways and attributes. We remember every day our Exodus from Egypt in order to acknowledge that all exists out of His Love, and we honor the Shabbat as a testimony of this. The Jewish tradition, defined as our identity, has been and will be the proof that God exists. We are not faithful to it as our legacy from God if we don't recognize Him nor proclaim Him, because when we don't express our true identity we simply deny His existence. This means that if we do not love, we deny the Creator. We are free when in complete free will we love the way He wants us to, and do it in His ways and attributes as our identity.