Freedom is what we naturally love because freedom is our nature. That is the reason why no nation or individual ever likes to be dictated to. No individual likes to be controlled. They may be fine with controlling others, but not the other way round.
What is bondage really? It is not just being tied down and chained, hands and feet, to a post in a jail. It is not just being kept under house arrest. There are many many ways by which we are bound and we are blissfully unaware of it. Bondage is the cause for great stress and worry and liberation alone is its panacea.
How does bondage happen? The process is very slow. When you were a child you probably got the smell of coffee from the kitchen and it did not make any sense to you. You saw someone drinking it at home and you admire that person too. While the person drank the coffee, you saw him or her enjoying it. The seed of desire is sown in your mind. You too want to do it. You demand for coffee to be given and because you are a kid, it is refused. The mind becomes more hard and adamant when it is refused and it gathers more strength and energy until you throw such a tantrum that the first cup is given to you.
Now whether you really like it or not, all the inputs that has been given to you so far are mentally in favour of your liking coffee. So you are excited as you finish your first cup.
There is an impression of this experience deep in you as it has been peppered and flavoured by your feelings, by how much you strove to attain it and by the first success in getting what you want. You keep persisting and soon you have joined the band of those who regularly drink coffee.
When does bondage express itself here? Soon you have problems like acidity, a bad after taste after a cup has gone in, headache, nausea and excess of bile. Yet you have no choice. You cannot and do not want to give it up. It does not really make you happy as it did the first time. Yet you must have that cup first thing in the morning to fuel your day.
A simple aromatic cup of coffee has now bound you successfully and kept you chained to it invisibly for that half-an-hour experience every day in the morning and evening. Coffee is just one small example. All objects bind us in the same manner—computers, mobile phones, television, CD players, looking at things that we really shouldn’t be looking at, tasting things and relishing all that is not good for the body, even touching things that can distract our mind. Some people have the habit of constantly touching some or the other part of the body, pulling at some nails or skin, all as a result of enslaving habits.
How to get out of it? Well to be aware is the first step. I must become aware that I am bound by coffee, I am bound by some smell, taste or sight, I am bound by some person, object or habit. The first step is awareness, the second step is awareness and the last step is awareness. Awareness alone liberates.
—Swahilya Shambhavi (www.swahilya.blogspot.in)