An Intro to Liberation Thinking

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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Hi! How’s everyone? Stressed, upset, angry, depressed, maybe. Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s a little magic puppy hug from Snowy to chase away those blues.

Today we’re going to discuss something heavy. I’m going to teach you something that will help you make sense of where we are in the world. And what to do with your life.

We’re going to go a bit deeper into what I call Liberation Thinking. An ancient, ancient principle, and how it applies to us today.

It goes like this, and then I’m going to discuss and explain it.

An unenlightened mind can never be free.

The Prison of an Unenlightened Mind, or the World in the 2020s

Now. You’ve heard some version of this before, I’m sure. Many versions, probably. But today I want you to really reflect on it with me. Really absorb and understand it, because it is at the root of your pain and confusion.

This is where we are in the world. All over again. Do I have to explain that part? Surely it should be self-evident. Many unenlightened minds have chosen self-destruction, in its many forms. They will end up poor, desperate, bewildered, panicked, broke, and at the end, unable to understand why their lives went awry. They will Sink With the Ship. And a ship made of unenlightened minds can go nowhere, really in the end, until it crashes into the bergs.

So. This is where we are in the world. Unelightened minds are choosing not to be free, which is a paradox, unless you really understand this most ancient of principles.

Really grasp that. Take a moment to take it in. It will take away all your confusion and bewilderment and shock and unease. Let all that go. The explanation is no harder than the principle: an unenlightened mind can never be free.

And in our age, again, such minds have chosen various forms of slavery, whether to demagogues, or the very broken systems in which they’re imprisoned, or hatred, ignorance, greed, rage. What you must understand is the principle.

And that it is true. It is eternally true. 

It is the most ancient principle of history and of human existence. An unenlightened mind will always be imprisoned. It can never be free. It doesn’t know how to be, why to be, or what that is. Can’t be not just in some abstract spiritual sense, but in a very real political, economic, social, cultural one. Just as a person. How many teachers have taught us that? From Buddha to Jesus and beyond, prophets and poets and painters and sages. 

Now you must understand that it was never metaphorical. It was as literal as you can see all around you in the world today. These cycles of history repeat themselves, though they change form and speed and quality. You are considering deep questions, questions of being, and they are causing you great hurt and bewilderment, because you are now confronted by a way of being that makes little sense. But every great mind in history has warned you of just this, which is what the human condition is.

What is an Enlightened Mind?

Now. What does all of that mean for you? First of all, like I said, I want you to let your confusion and dismay go. And as we’ve been discussing, renegotiate your relationship with the world. Forge a confident, mature, and poised one.

I’m teaching you all this because that is precisely what unenlightened minds don’t have. And that’s why they choose various forms of bondage and slavery over and over again. By the way, that doesn’t mean, sorry college leftists, that I’m saying people who were enslaved throughout history chose it. Of course not. Enlightened minds, too, struggle for freedom. But unenlightened minds can never be free.

So let’s come back to you and me.

People like us choose various forms of enlightenment. And those forms of enlightenment give us various freedoms.

Picture a pyramid if you like. There’s financial freedom, which comes from the knowledge of a profession or career. There’s emotional freedom, sitting atop it, which comes from self-knowledge, relationships, and security. There’s self-realization, sitting atop that, as we pursue lives of meaning and purpose, which comes from a higher level of enlightenment still, what we might call the moral good. And atop even that there’s the highest level of enlightenment, which is spiritual or transcendent, in which we understand the oneness of things, and that changes us forever, as we release our primal fears of mortality and aloneness.

So. Various forms of enlightenment gives us certain freedoms. Again, I don’t mean this in a Western sense, it’s not about that, and this isn’t a college lecture in political theory, it’s about your life.

And those of us who are like you and me have devoted our lives to that equation, if you like. This is the part you must understand, because in many respects, people like us are different.

We’re different for many reasons. Perhaps we grew up in different ways, where these values were cherished, or we had good teachers, or we read many books, or so on. Perhaps, like me, you resisted much of this, even, and then something came along—I spent many years right at the edge of death—and time and being held you in their arms and shook you awake.

Doesn’t matter.

The point is that some of us live this relationship. We have devoted our lives to it. Whether we’re doctors or teachers or academics or intellectuals or writers or artists or creatives—that doesn’t matter, either. The point is that we have striven to realize ourselves through this relationship between enlightenment and freedom.

And as we’ve done that, we’ve focused our lives on expanding this relationship. Giving it to others. Enlightening them. So that they, too, can be freer. 

But now we are in a very, very different chapter of history. And this relationship is now breaking down. 

Where does that leave you and me? Where does it leave your life?

You see, this is what your panic and fear and despair right now is really about. You are learning that some people will never be free. That no matter what we do for them, they will always choose various forms of slavery and bondage. That they want masters and lords. That they desire subjugation, because in the end, freedom carries with it too much power, too much responsibility, and an unenlightened mind can’t accept, manage, understand, realize those. They are too heavy for it. They become burdens. And broken by those burdens, unenlightened minds twist in rage, fear, and hatred.

Understand that. Really sit with it and grasp it. This is the root of your heaviness right now. You are learning an ancient principle is true, one you’ve resisted learning, because in our age, perhaps, it isn’t fashionable to say it, or what have you. But the truth of it remains, and it is now proceeding to rip our world apart.

So to understand just what to do with the brutal truth of this ancient principle, let’s now delve into it a little more.

An Unenlightened Mind Can Never Be Free

An unenlightened mind can never be free. What does this mean? Really mean?

Think about yourself. As you began to read books, you came to know things. This gave you freedom. From the stupid mistakes of history. As you grew, and you learned even more things, you gained the freedom to form meaningful relationships. As you enlightened yourself further, and learned about science, art, literature, commerce, doesn’t matter, you gained the freedom to prosper. And as you enlightened yourself about yourself, you gained the freedom of self-expression and self-realization.

These are incredibly powerful freedoms. Throughout history, most people have never had them. Many millions upon millions have struggled for them.

But it’s also true that in history, people have chose, time and again, servitude and bondage and slavery. I don’t just mean this in a political sense, and this isn’t a college seminar. Now let’s think about some of the ways unenlightened minds imprison us.

—Ignorance imprisons us in stupidity, dooms us to repeat the mistakes of history.

—Hatred imprisons us in fear, dooms us to be servants of demagogues and tyrants.

—Fear imprisons us in loneliness, and dooms us to be servants of our worst impulses, and of the clan and herd

—Rage imprisons us in emptiness, and dooms us to empty, wasted lives

Unenlightened minds can never be free, and this ancient principle is meant in all these senses, and many more, too. It means that such minds will be imprisoned, but not just even that. That they will choose, repeatedly, over and over again, their own bondage, because that is all they are capable of. They will choose it politically, economically, socially, culturally, relationally.

Until and unless they have some kind of enlightenment. And so over time, human civilization built things called schools and universities, precisely to try and break this ancient pattern of bondage. Even in newer forms, called corporations and so on, education became something desirable and ongoing. The point was precisely to enlighten the…

Darkness of the average mind.

This is a point you must understand, too.

An unenlightened mind can never be free. Why not? We are thing dominated by our primal fears. Fears of mortality, of aloneness, the questions burning away eternally in us. Why are we here? Who made us? Where do we go? Without answers to these questions, our fears and worries consume us. And we do not grow and mature.

So enlightenment became an institution. Part of what we try to do for people. So that they don’t end up with feeble minds, weak spirits, broken hearts, and make self-destructive, foolish choices.

But of course we have failed. Because look around and ask yourself how all this is going in the world. And that is because our approach to enlightening people is perhaps too academic, too abstract. Enlightenment, in all the senses above, must be an experience. If it’s just “learned” in a textbook, the mind never really changes. It just thinks. But thinking is not awareness. Awareness is conscious and unconscious both. It is a way of seeing. 

I’ll discuss that further in later essays, but for now I want you to understand this. Many of us have been part of this meta-institution of enlightenment. Our lives have been about enlightening people. In whatever way, again, whether as doctors, teachers, academics, artists, musicians, doesn’t matter. The point is that we were part of a meta-institution, meaning something bigger than a university or hospital or what have you, a process and way stretching across centuries, that is now…

Failing.

So what are we to do, exactly?

Now that we’ve discussed all that, we can discuss your life in a more thoughtful and intelligent way.

Liberation Thinking, or (How) Freedom Comes From an Enlightened Mind

Now we are in an age where this meta-institution of enlightenment will go on failing. There are debates about whether or not people saw what happened before their very eyes. This is the definition of folly, isn’t it.

So what we cannot do is go on hoping that we can enlighten much of the world, or the people in it. The path has been chosen, as it often has been throughout history, and those of us who are enlightened know that it is wrong, foolish, ugly, and it will end in tragedy, but we cannot change it. Nor should we try, because that way, we waste our own lives.

Let the world destroy itself, and accept it. Understand that this is the human condition. You may feel many things, grief, despair, bewilderment, but as you do, if you really grasp what I have taught you, all that will begin to lift. This is the human condition. This is the ugliness, stupidity, disgrace, folly of it. 

We are the other side of it.

We are the other side of it. 

And now you face a series of choices. I suggest you think about them in this way.

You are a person who has pursued some path of enlightenment, and attained some level of accomplishment on the pyramid I sketched for you earlier. I know that, because you have found your way to me, and you can understand my words. 

Now the question before isn’t: How far up the pyramid can I lead the world? You can’t.

Think of the greatest teachers in history.

Think of history’s greatest prophets. It’s greatest seers, artists, poets. Not a single one of them could have moved the world we’re in now, could they? Imagine that Buddha or Jesus themselves appeared tomorrow. Imagine that Aristotle and Plato did. Imagine that William Blake and Orwell did. Do you think today’s fanatics and lunatics wouldn’t laugh and jeer at them? 

The greatest teachers in history, all of them, and all of it, couldn’t move our world one inch. It’s course is set. I’m a teacher, with whatever degree of acclaim and what have you. I can’t move it one fraction of an inch. And so neither can you. 

That leaves you with a few options.

—You can go on pursuing your own enlightenment.

—You can enlighten those around you, your loves ones, perhaps your communities, maybe a selected group here and there.

—You can step away from the darkness

And that’s about it.

But the truth is also that that is enough. It is more than enough to live the richest and happiest life. Why should you ask for more? Why should you want more? That is greed, and it’s also self-delusion. Just accept this much as more than enough.

The Three Paths of Liberation Thinking

So. I have given you three paths to choose from. You can choose all three, by the way, and each works with the next. But let me now explain them a little.

On that pyramid of enlightenment, the number of people who ascend from one level to the next drops more and more sharply. And while you are somewhere on it, few of us are at the top. Very, very few have realized themselves as Zen masters or spiritual saints or what have you, and I’m not saying that you have to get there, but I am saying that you should be trying to ascend that pyramid of enlightenment.

Here is how not to do it. I see stupid, really stupid, takes in the media day after day. It won’t be this bad, what about this, it won’t happen, etcetera. This is not how to enlighten yourself. By following fools. By burying yourself in the darkness. Just step away from it. All of it. Enlighten yourself by learning from history’s greatest teachers and masters.

And try to experience what they experienced. We “read books” in a sterile way, but few of us reflect and experience. Like I said, right now, you are learning the difference between a lesson in a book, and experiencing it. Now you are discovering what “unenlightened minds can never be free” means, and it’s so hard for you to really accept, that it’s leaving you panicked, shocked, and bewildered. 

That is a measure of your own unenlightenment. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. Laugh at it with me. To really have understood this—it’s almost beyond comprehension, because in a real sense, it is. You’d have had to contemplate human folly, and that’s an ugly thing.

So where are you really on this pyramid of enlightenment?

Let me ask that a different way, because here, we’re not playing a game. I’m not asking you this so you can score points with Buddha or so that you can feel smug. I’m asking you because all of this determines how free you will be.

And in an age like this, is there anything more crucial than that?

So let’s ask a different way.

In what ways are you free?

—Are you financially free?

—How about emotionally, or are you weighed down by the burdens and stresses of now?

—Are you relationally free, as in, do you have a set of relationships that give you great happiness and meaning, or do they, too feel like prisons?

—Are you intellectually free, not as in, do you read “anything you like,” but do you know enough not to be part of this tide of self-destruction?

—Are you free as a person, as in, have you found, created, discovered, built, your Haven, and remember here Havens Thinking?

—Are you spiritually free, and that doesn’t mean going to whatever church you want, it means, have you had the experience that the great masters and teachers know will change you forever, and lift you into the arms of universal being?

Almost none of us are free in all these ways.

So you still have a lot of work to do.

And as you do that work, you can focus on whom you can enlighten, in all these ways, around you, remembering that none of us now can move the world. Whatever we can do now is at a small and gentle scale. 

But all of this is more than enough.

This pyramid I’ve sketched for you is the human journey. It’s Homer finding his way home, the man of twists and turns, through the rocks, past the monsters. It’s Sisyphus and Prometheus and Orpheus. It’s every human being who has ever lived.

But this journey, too, can be rejected. Homer’s myth teaches us precisely that. A lesser man or woman would have said no, I can’t take this journey. It’s too hard. It’s too much to bear. And they would have remained imprisoned, whether by the sirens or the rocks. An unenlightened mind can never be free.

This should be your North Star now. This is how you find your way home, in a troubled age of twists and turns. You must ascend now through all these stages of enlightenment, and of course, few of us make it all the way. Just go as far as you can, with laughter and celebration. Give thanks for this journey, and give yourself credit for taking it, because this is where responsibility and power come from.

Unenlightened minds—we know where the story ends. And we do not want to be part of that story. What is left to us is all the forms and paths of enlightenment. They are more than enough. Dedicate your life to them, my friend, and the reward will be freedom. In a world choosing slavery, bondage, servitude, that will be the greatest one of all, because you will be free—and they, well, they will be what they are.

This question is about who you are, and who you become. Now this challenge is here. It is real, it’s urgent, and it’s in front of you. But all the great teachers and masters throughout history are here to guide you. They are looking at you and smiling, because already, you have taken the first steps. Let the burdens go. Keep walking. You will find your way, and it will be more than enough.

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

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