Is liberation— to be completely free— something that we work on or something that happens to us? It is both. It is simultaneously the path of effort and the path of grace.

The effort is there because it means we have to get to the point where we feel we’ve had enough of our own self-sabotaging behavior that is keeping us in misery, that we are willing to do something different even if it’s raw and unfamiliar and creates great discomfort. It means we truly learn to accept ourselves. This is not the watered down or distorted version of self-love where we allow ourselves to indulge in addictive pleasures. But rather, accepting ourselves is the hard work of self-confrontation. And though this confrontation is a kind, gentle, and friendly one, it is most certainly not an escape. It is the complete opposite of escape as we investigate every nook and cranny that make up our belief systems and thought patterns and unconscious behavior. It is looking at those hidden spaces, those blind spots, seeing them completely, and accepting them unconditionally. It is letting go of our biased discriminating mind, so we no longer create these barriers of you vs me. It is hard work of seeing that putting hierarchies of who’s higher and lower based on gender, sexual orientation, species, religion etc isn’t working for our peace of mind or for the world that we live in.

Then the grace happens because after all the hard work is put in, there comes the point that we just have to allow for things to fall together, or apart, whatever the case may be. We surrender to the unknown, the unexpected, the unpredictable, and the impermanent. We become willing to be a part of it all, to be a string in an instrument, a pawn in a chess game, a hero and a villain in someone else’s story. We let go of our attachment in how things should be, and come to accept things as they are. It doesn’t mean we withdraw from the world, that we don’t do our activism or voice our opinions or do our part in making a difference, but it means we let go of the aggression in control and self-centeredness. We become so gentle even our efforts feel effortless, our deliberate actions become organic actions. There is no forcefulness anymore.

And so there is the interplay of effort and grace, hard work and letting go, awareness and softening. We become a soul comfortable in this shell of a body because we know how to navigate the seeming opposite characteristics of living liberated.

Liberation or absolute freedom does not mean that we are able to take control of everything in our lives. It means that even as things do not go our way, we are able to feel at ease in the world. It means an expansion of the heart that allows for grief as well as joy, sorrow as well as happiness, pain as well as pleasure. It means that instead of running away from difficult emotions, we are able to sit with it, with kindness towards ourselves, and compassion towards others.

Tonglen meditation is a tool used to find that heart expansion. When you feel suffering in your own situation, you use your in-breath to take in the suffering of others, especially those who are going through the same challenges as you are— be it physical pain, emotional anguish, debilitating heartbreak, unexpected death, etc. Then you use your out-breath to send out relief and comfort and love. It may feel counterintuitive to take on the suffering of others when we are already feeling so much of it ourselves, but the miracle that happens is that in so practicing, we become connected to our shared human condition. And then we remove our attachment to our storylines— Why did this happen to me? What have I done to deserve this? Is it always going to be this way?

We realize what happened to us is not the world punishing us, but the way of living as a human being in this complicated world. And then we don’t have to take things so personally. And then we don’t feel as much suffering. And then we realize we have so much to draw from deep within that we are capable even of wishing others relief when we ourselves are in the midst of the difficulty of it all.

It takes practice. Maybe in the beginning we are only able to draw from that place for one second, and we are miserable the rest of the day. But in time, those spaces of freedom become wider and wider. Eventually, through consistent practice, it becomes our natural state. That then is absolute freedom. It is liberation.