It's important for your health, but also for your confidence, for you to feel free to think anything. Thinking frees the mind; unthinking repetition enslaves it. Freedom is inherent in thinking. Thinking is invigoratingly freeing. Let's distinguish between two kinds of freedom: inner freedom and outer freedom. Inner freedom is a characteristic of thought and the mind; outer freedom is a characteristic of events and circumstances. Both are vital. It's a terrible thing to be deprived of outer freedom — to be tortured, imprisoned, persecuted, exiled, held hostage, or under house arrest. It's deplorable that outer freedom is routinely regulated, restricted, or taken away completely. It's dreadful to see one's property controlled, confiscated, stolen, damaged, or destroyed. It's appalling to have one's communications monitored, limited, or censored. And it's monstrous to be threatened with death, to see others killed, or to face death oneself. It is impossible to overstate the enormity of such injustices. Nevertheless, it's even worse not to have inner freedom. You achieve inner freedom by thinking. This is almost entirely under your direct control. Inner freedom is of, by, and for thought. Outer freedom, on the other hand, depends on many variables. It's always contingent to an enormous extent on the rational, cooperative, and non-coercive behavior of other people. Inner freedom is your starting point, and it's your refuge in case everything goes wrong. Inner freedom you can do alone; outer freedom depends on what other people do. Inner freedom is closer to you; it is inside you. One's inner freedom is the architect of all realistic plans to build and strengthen one's outer freedom. If your outer freedom has been drastically curtailed, your inner freedom becomes your personal stronghold, your individual outpost. From there you can begin a principled and ethical battle to regain your outer freedom. Inner freedom allows you to keep to your ideals and values. People who have inner freedom never stoop to using the tactics of their oppressors or adversaries. After you regain outer freedom, inner freedom will help you to heal and reconcile with those who confined you. When some people use the word "freedom" they seem to mean "comfort," or "nobody to frustrate me," or "low taxes," or even "a life without stress." Such people become dependent on political leaders who promise them outer freedom, or gurus who claim to have found inner freedom, or writers who claim to have found freedom in an unfree world and then run for president. Eventually, after numerous disappointments, such people give up on freedom as unattainable. How to attain freedom? I'll sum up my advice in one short sentence: "Wake up and think." Or, better, "Think and wake up." Thinking, genuine thinking, authentic thinking, is thinking for oneself. It is looking for oneself, listening for oneself, and considering for oneself independently. In this way you acquire your own mind, and gain knowledge that has roots because it is grounded in your experience. Thinking is at the very core of inner freedom, and inner freedom gives life and purpose to outer freedom. Consequently, thinking is the secret of freedom. I don't care what you think, or what you think about. That is completely up to you. I care that you do think. And I care how you think. That is, I care that you think your own thoughts — actively, energetically, continually. I care that you expand the quality and quantity of your thinking. This is not altruism on my part. It is quite selfish. As everybody around me gains more inner freedom by thinking, I gain more outer freedom. This is because of a curious formula: The amount of outer freedom in a society is equal to the sum total of the inner freedom of its citizens. And that comes from thinking. Thus when your thinking increases, so does my outer freedom. For this reason, I do not promote a point of view or a party line. I have no agenda for you to adopt, no petition for you to sign, and no vote for you to cast. I have too much respect for you to do that. My message is open: Think more. Think better. Think independently. Find out for yourself. Draw your own conclusions. When I give this advice, I'm not placing myself in any way above you. I'm alongside you. I strive to improve my thinking, just as (if you are reading this) you strive to improve your thinking. How can anybody live an effective or happy life unless she is alert, awake, ready, paying attention, noticing, interacting with what goes on? Let's discuss two key techniques that help free the mind. Practicing them for a few minutes each day helps ready the mind to think. You are possibly already doing them, even though you never gave them a name. They can be practiced while alone, seated comfortably with eyes closed. The first is meditation. It's a shame that meditation is in the hands of religionists, since there is nothing necessarily religious about it. Meditation is most effective when done without any faith or belief or religious context. It is an activity for self-care like washing the hair. Meditation is useful. It is not an obligation of any kind. Meditation is simply looking at and listening to the mind. When you meditate, you watch the parade of your thoughts without judging or interfering with them. You get to know your mind by spying on it, peeking at it, and eavesdropping on it, without disturbing it or changing it. You can see what it is like and what it does when left to itself. The result is that meditation clarifies the mind. Meditation is helpful to improving the ability to think, because thinking takes place within the galaxy of the mind. Meditation gives you a sense of your mind's vastness, as well as its contents and movements. Meditation is time set aside for the activity of self-observation. Self-observation will then carry over to everything that you do, whenever you do it. This makes you focused and present-centered. The second key technique to help free the mind I call animation. Animation — as a thinking exercise — is the opposite of meditation. Where meditation lets the mind settle down, animation churns it up. Where meditation just notices what's there and is the extreme of watchful passivity, animation is bubbling, boiling activity. Where meditation makes us levelheaded, balanced, and mature, animation makes us whimsical, whacky, and silly. Animation is a limbering exercise for keeping your mind flexible. It prevents you from becoming mentally stodgy. To practice animation you activate the mind by deliberately stirring it up. You do this by imaginatively shaking and mixing ideas and images to put them together in all kinds of unusual ways. This is done in a wild, carefree manner, for its own sake, without worrying about what is actually possible. The crazier, the more impossible the thoughts the better. Bring ideas into your mind that rock you to the core, that shock you, that upset your mental status quo, that are a departure from your past mindset, that go against your closest-held views. Take a drug-less mind trip and push the limits of what you can conceive of. Think something you never thought before. Thinking it for a few moments doesn't in any way commit you to it. Your mind is a safe stage where you can play out anything. Speculate, dream, daydream, pretend; naturally blow your own mind. Pursue metaphors and analogies. Find alternatives, consider the unthinkable. Imagine something incredible and marvelous. Enjoy showing yourself an unheard-of possibility. Thereby you unleash the forces of newness. Afterwards you can return to your rigorous intellectual work with a sense of playfulness and a lighter air. Why be so heavy or solemn? The mind is a tool and an instrument, but it is also a toy. The best way to learn about something is to play with it. Thinking is a pleasure, its rewards are hedonistic. Laughter can be a sign of freedom of mind. People who love thinking love freedom. Thinking is liquid, it moves, it flows. It is like the current of a dynamic, powerful river. Nothing must ever dam that river. Anything that obstructs the thinking of even one person reduces everybody's freedom everywhere. Gerald Angelo Cirrincione meditates without a mantra in Marinette, Wisconsin.
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