Qualities of freedom

"With Knowledge you are free in the world. You are free to join. You are free to leave. You are free to make agreements. You are free to complete and change agreements. You are free to surrender yourself. You are free to extricate yourself. In Knowledge you are free."

"Freedom is difficult. It tends to be disorderly. It does not have the kind of stability that other races have acquired through dominance and control. But freedom is more important. It is more significant. It is more creative. And it is more beneficial."

Rare in the universe

“Freedom is not a right in the universe. It is a privilege and a luxury. Your values may argue with this, but your expectations eventually must conform to the real circumstances of life. Individual freedom is extremely valuable, but it is not guaranteed, and you cannot claim it as a right. You will be shocked to find, as you begin to learn about and even experience the Greater Community in which you live, how rare freedom really is.”

Needed in all worlds

"Whatever form the desire for freedom takes, it is universal, both within this world and within the Greater Community of worlds in the Universe around you. Beyond meeting certain basic requirements of life, freedom represents a deeper need of the soul, and this deeper need expresses itself through a person’s understanding—through their ideas and associations. But the pure impulse comes from deeper within them, beyond the realm of the intellect or intellectual understanding." The Bridge to a New Life: The New Message on Freedom

“The problems that you face in this world are the same problems that individuals in all worlds face. The need for freedom is a need that is experienced everywhere—the freedom to think, the freedom to act, the freedom to move around, the freedom to discern one’s own inner direction, the freedom to pursue that direction, the freedom to create, the freedom to discover one’s greater purpose and to express that purpose, without oppression, without condemnation and without subjugation.”

Inner freedom

"Personal freedom is valuable only in that it gives you this opportunity to find Knowledge."

"To break out of the personal hell of isolation, to break out of the domination of the mind and the domination of your social conditioning, represents freedom in the most fundamental way! For you can be free in the world, but if you are not free inside, well, you cannot really take advantage of your external freedom. Look about you in the world. People seem to be free, relatively speaking, compared to, say, other people in the world. And look what they do with their freedom. They become lost in addictions, they make horrendous mistakes in their relationships, they abuse themselves physically and emotionally."

"Even within yourself, you know you are not free. Freedom is not simply having no obligations in life or not being accountable to anyone. Freedom really in its greatest and most real sense is the ability to find and to follow Knowledge because here you are finally free to do what you came here to do, which is the source of all real integrity and satisfaction."

See also

Aspects of freedom

Enemies of freedom

Further study

• The Bridge to a New Life: The New Message on Freedom

• The Journey to a New Life, Chapter 3: The Prison

• Marshall Vian Summers on "Beginning the Freedom Journey"

• The New Message for the Impoverished and Oppressed