Bondage to the Flesh

Bondage is your captivity and confinement to someone or something that has absolute control and power over your life, including your life choices and decisions. 

Ironically and paradoxically, bondage comes from freedom. It is human desire to control and manipulate anything and everything in life to get what one wants. In the process, one may make the wrong choices and the wrong decisions leading to wrongdoings.

For example, if you are experiencing fear and insecurity, you have the freedom to “detach” yourself from your attachment to fear and insecurity by dealing with your problems of fear and insecurity. But if you choose to “distract” yourself from your fear and insecurity, the solution is only temporary, and the problems do not go away. Any distraction, such as drinking alcohol or even taking medication, will only lead to more attachments that ultimately become the shackles giving you bondage and not your freedom.

Freedom or bondage is closely related to the thinking mind—how it perceives and processes all life experiences. So, it is important for you to know your freedom of choices in the different phases of your life, such as the Development Phase, the Transition Phase, the Consolidation Phase, and the Awakening Phase.  Understanding the freedom of your choices and your decisions in all your actions and reactions throughout each of these phases will let you see the importance of your obedience, and how your freedom may become your bondage, or how you can turn your bondage back into your freedom.

The Flesh

Yes, in many ways, humans are all held bondage to the flesh, which is the thinking of the human mind based on its own perceptions and interpretations of its unique experiences in the flesh.

An illustration

Say, you needed some cash to do something you wanted to do. Your thinking mind immediately might send you two messages: “needing some cash” and “your next-door neighbor being away.” You had the “freedom” to break into the home of your next-door neighbor to “steal some money.” If you “chose” to do that, you found some cash and got away with it.

Now, you no longer have your freedom because your “freedom” has now become your “bondage”: in future, whenever you need “extra cash”, your mind will give you the “freedom” to choose to “burglarize someone’s home” or not to.

Another hypothetical illustration

“Committing no crime or wrongdoing with no victim”

You and another man sitting close to you were the last two persons at the bar.

The man next to you had just paid the bartender who returned with his credit card. Then, you paid the bartender who just left with your credit card.

Then, the man left some cash on the table, said goodnight to you, and left the bar.

Now, you “pushed” the cash left by the man “a little bit closer to you.”

The bartender returned with your credit card, looked at the cash in front of you, and said: “Thank you.”

You responded: “You’re welcome. Good night.” And you left the bar.

The realities

 

·       You did not give the bartender any tip.

·       The bartender received the same amount of tip.

·       With or without your pushing the cash “a little bit closer to you,” the bartender would still have said: “Thank you.”

Nothing had changed, except the position of the cash.

 Questions

            ·      Did you do anything wrong? Yes!

·  What was wrong with changing the position of the cash? Changing the mind and the perception of the bartender.

·       Did you have the “freedom” to “change” the bartender’s mind? Yes!

·   Why did you choose to change her mind? So that she would be appreciative of your generosity.

·       Why did you lie about your “generosity”? It was just a “white” lie.

·       Can the “white” lie lead to other lies in the future? Probably yes!

·   What could be the consequences of your white lie? Craving for self-satisfaction and an inflated ego-self will further corrupt and distort your thinking mind when it comes to your freedom of choices and decisions in the future.

Yes, you were held bondage by your “freedom” to “change the position of the cash.” In future, your thinking mind in the flesh would tell you to do this or to do that to make people have a "better" perception of you to inflate your ego.

FREEDOM with BONDAGE shows you how to "free" yourself from your bondage to the flesh.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau