For me, freedom is living life through Authentic Self and not the False Self. The False Self is our Ego, and most people think this is who they are, thus staying locked in the illusion. On the contrary, Discovering the Authentic Self is the way to freedom, and this is the awakening process we are going through on this planet now.
For us to be incarnated here, we had to be split into two – into male and female aspects of our being. I don’t know if that is true about the twin flame concept, but at least we can experience the division between feminine and masculine internally and externally. This was created so that we can learn about opposites and dualism and get into the process of marrying them together. The marriage between a man and a woman is often a more superficial process, but if conscious, it can accelerate the internal marriage.
This process is the cornerstone of our spiritual evolution on our level of existence.
For me, it is about rising above the right doing and wrongdoing. There is nothing wrong with this life. There is nothing right in this life either. Things just are so that we can experience them. This experience leads us, in the end, to the conclusion that nothing makes sense; this is the core of dualism. At the mental level, life cannot be solved or fixed. Staying in the mind keeps you away from true and deep happiness. This leads to non-dualism, which is the rising teaching because it is closer to the truth.
Once the illusion is transmuted (we start experiencing life in a non-dualistic way), we get elevated to a higher level of consciousness where we no longer judge anything. Instead, we accept and allow things as they are as there is nothing to do here logically; we are here just to experience life.
This will lead to the Sacred Marriage, where we realise that there are no opposites, no men and women; there just is. It is the ISness of the creator that we are after. Once we reach this state, it lifts one’s consciousness to a higher level where unconditional love truly exists. This is our way back home, the path to God-realisation.
However, it is challenging to love unconditionally at this level of existence due to our conscious and unconscious minds’ lower-level emotions of anger, hatred, shame, and guilt. We can often temporarily be elevated to a higher level of existence. Still, we often fall back to the Earthly vibrations and find it more difficult to love unconditionally. The key here is not to force anything. Just allow and accept things as they are. Allow and accept our own emotions, feelings and thoughts as they are. We should not force ourselves to do anything or to any condition.
I do not believe we are meant to love unconditionally at the Earth level; we are meant to experience life as it is. It is all about being authentic. The pain of separation is the source of all our pain. The Ego is the result of this separation. Once we truly have merged our feminine and masculine and gained inner peace, we can start loving each other (more or less) unconditionally, as then it is genuine love. This is where we expect nothing anymore, as we have realised that everything is already within us. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Being in a pure state of love fills one with a feeling of completion and happiness that cannot be achieved by any other means. For most of us, getting there is a long way, but some can achieve this in this lifetime. Everyone will achieve this eventually, but not necessarily in this life.
This is freedom for me. Freedom from Ego and its desires. This freedom has nothing to do with physical freedom, life circumstances, or whether one is in a relationship. It is purely an inner state. It is complete freedom from ego attachments, allowing the source energy to come through us fully. The more we release our ego attachments, the more we become channels for Source Energy. The fewer attachments we have, the more energy goes through us.
There is no mental or logical path to this freedom; it is a process of remembering and undoing the ego attachments, addictions, needs and desires. But as the Ego operates at the level of mind, any program we aim to create at the level of mind to ease the pain usually does the opposite or does nothing at all.
A higher level of consciousness is achieved through the cracks in the Ego, through the apparent “faults” in the program. The light comes through when we surrender, give up, and let go of all our control systems. The more we hold the ego illusion up, the stronger we push, the stronger the pain is. Once we collapse, crash and surrender, we experience the truth, the light, and this light is the only remedy. This is the light of your own being (Source). Once you are really in the light of your being, you are in an orgasmic state at all times. The orgasm we get when intimate with our loved one is training for achieving this ultimate orgasm, the complete oneness with everything. It is a genuinely explosive feeling if you have ever come even close.
We are here not to achieve things; we are here to surrender.
What can help in this process, for those who can surrender enough, is a conscious relationship where the ego reflection process can be done in a supportive environment. However, if the consciousness is not high enough in a relationship, it can become toxic quickly as the Ego resists losing its position, and things can get challenging.
So a relationship which is not conscious may not help much, as it just recycles the shadows of the Ego and changing the relationship does not help either, as the same stuff re-surfaces in a slightly different shape. So staying in toxic relationships is not good, and sometimes it is much better to stay alone.
Free love (open) relationships may not help either, as this allows the Ego to escape the pain of another mirror to another one. If the consciousness of each and everyone in a polyamorous relationship is high enough, it might work out, but in Earthly existence, this is rarely the case. There certainly is no rulebook on this, but the level of collective consciousness we are in committed relationships, if conscious enough, often offers a much better chance for growth as one cannot escape the mirror, and the only option you have left is total surrendering.
Most people are not ready to surrender. They hold onto their egos instead and keep changing relationships and running away from our responsibility to be true to our Authentic Selves (not to our False Selves). A genuine, conscious relationship can be a true healer, but only if both parties are conscious enough of what it takes. It takes a total surrendering to it without trying to control, adjust, manipulate or trick any aspect of the relationship or any aspect of the other person.
It is all about seeing your own image and projections and seeing the other person without the distortion of your Ego.
This certainly can be challenging, but we came to this Earth to grow, not to complain.