Summary: This teaching explores the paradox of human freedom and captivity. The Storyteller explains that what people often call commitments or agreements are actually forms of captivity when they prevent participation—the very quality that creates true freedom. Freedom arises not from avoidance or control, but from full participation in life’s flow. The teaching likens memory to ripples in a pond, showing how perception is shaped by the interference of past experiences. Fear turns the mind into a jailer, while wonderment—curiosity without judgment—opens the door to liberation. Through a parable of a farmer who loses his livelihood to war and fails to see the growth in his transformation, the Storyteller illustrates how attachment to old forms creates suffering. True freedom, they say, is recognizing that change is constant and growth inevitable; participation in that change—rather than resistance to it—is the essence of joy and human evolution.
You, as humans, hold many aspects of what it is that you call freedom. You hold also almost even more aspects of what you call captivities — very often you call them commitments, very often you call them agreements, and very often you call them almost everything except participation. Yet participation is the element that gives you the greatest freedom. So it is we will speak greatly about participating in life and participating in those aspects of your life, and recognizing when those aspects interact with other things around you. And instead of chastising the world because it doesn’t offer you the interaction you desired, embracing the world because it does offer you interaction.
Each of you holds life, and in your life, you hold those objects of your creations that you have been in in the past. Those are pictures — they are absolutes of how you can be with things. And it is from that that you start your steps towards the next thing that you will be involved in. It doesn’t allow you quite the freedom that you wish to have when you look upon the world in that way. What I will show to you, if you desire, is most wondrous thing for you. Everything that you remember is as that which is a pebble thrown to a pond. It ripples outward inside of you and it strikes other ripples of other remembrances, and in between those ripples there becomes this place, and that is what you now remember. It is how you see things — how you recognize things. It is those interferences of one ripple to the next ripple. Truth what it is is interferences of what you knew to what you think you are seeing, and from that you determine what you believe you have seen. It is through that that you receive conscious thought. And that conscious thought can either become the gatekeeper to your jail or the doorman to your freedom.
It is because you desire to defend yourself in everything that you do so you can be there the next moment that you make the gatekeeper to your jail. But in that which is your aspects you can also change this. To look upon a thing and to say just because you have not experienced it before does not mean you will hurt yourself in experiencing it. And the way that it is that you can change that is a most wondrous thing. It is a simple activity. And it is called wonderment.
Instead of perceiving the world through threats and anxieties you may perceive it through that which is wonderment — looking for the differences and valuing those differences rather than looking for the same in order to confirm your existence. When you are looking for the same in order to confirm your existence, you chastise this new thing because it wasn’t what was. It isn’t something that you can understand. You chastise it and you try to force it to be either this or this. If it is that you force it to be something other than it is you contract, and you lose your freedom because your commitment becomes something you didn’t want to do, or you lose your freedom because you are afraid not to commit to something that you don’t want to do, because it seems like it will hurt you more. So the aspect of it that is most joyful to you is to understand a small thing, it is perhaps one of those things that you can rely upon — it is a sense of security that you may have, and that is that it is almost humanly impossible for you to take any step of action that is towards anything less than your greatest perception of joy, and your greatest perception of pleasure.
Instead of perceiving the world through threats and anxieties, you may perceive it through that which is wonderment
If it is that you and your humanity can rely upon your knowledge that that is what you are going to do, is take a step toward your perception of the greatest joy and the greatest pleasure, then you don’t have to have too much frustration that you are going to do it wrong, because you will define where the greatest pleasure is based upon what you think is the greatest pain, and you will take a step away from that pain. And you will define where the greatest joy is based upon where the lesser joy is and you will take a step away from that. You can rely upon one aspect of yourself that very seldom changes, and that is — you don’t want to be hurt and you don’t want to lose.
Having that understanding about yourself, all you truly need to do is take another step, and that is: when something looks like it is less painful to you look a little farther, for there is a ripple that happens out here also. And that ripple is perceptive quality of future, and you have the ability to project into that future. And from that future comes back to you something that matches. This middle part. That middle part is where your freedom exists, and it is this future that allows you to have it. By you perceiving that there isn’t a future, by you perceiving that this moment is the moment that you have to solve, you ignore that you are going to have another moment. And it is that perception that there is another moment coming that allows you to have a little less frustration in the one you have. You call it patience. You call it waiting. All of the waiting and the patience though doesn’t do you very much good if your frustration level demands that you have some action now, and it is resting on reaction.
Story
There is that which is a young man. This young man has a picture that is given to him by the parents and the brothers that he has. And that picture is that he is to be the farmer — to plow the fields, to tend the crops, and to provide for the community that he lives within the foods that all will eat. And the understanding is that if he does this he will receive for his own kind a livelihood an ability to live, an ability to be.
So it is this young man spends All of his efforts learning to produce the crops in the very best way — to know when the fruit ripens upon the tree, to know when the grain is ready for harvesting and when it is not, to watch the weather, to know when water is too much and too little. To tend to all of these things then he learns what you may know to be an expertise, and to him that is his expertise.
And to the land then comes a very great war, and that war takes away the ability for the crops to be grown because the ground is now formed differently. With the battling the crops have been plowed under. And it is that this man now looks upon all of this and considers that his time is done because he cannot grow the field, he cannot give to himself that which is livelihood. And to the family that he has born they do not have freedom either.
So he gives up the field and he moves to the place where he can have a way to support
the family. And he moves to a place to produce the steel that is produced for the war. In this he perceives each day as being lack of freedom. Freedom to him is his ability to plow that field. Freedom to him is to know when the grain is harvestable. Freedom to him is all of the things he has ever learned and is confident he knows how to do.
So each day while he makes the steel for this war he chastises himself at not being free. And he angers because his picture of what is him is no longer valid for him, and he is forced to do something that he never knew how. He does not form to himself a consciousness that he has learned how to also make the plow. He does not form to himself a consciousness that he has learned to extend himself beyond what was limiting, and he does not realize that he has gained two skills instead of one. And in that there is freedom.
What he does is chastise what he is doing. In the form he makes himself internally a prisoner and loses his freedom. For he is not looking that there is a future when there will not be a war, he is not looking that there is a future when he can return to the field, and he is not looking to any form of future other than the moment. And that chastisement keeps him there trapped.
And after many years the war is done. But to him he cannot return because that form is no longer there, and his ability to plow the field and knowing what the weather will be is changed. And he perceives that through this lack of freedom he has now lost the only thing he truly knew. The rest of his life is spent in that lack of freedom.
Conclusion
This rippling exists. With everything you do you have the possibility of losing whatever you were. Most wondrously with everything that you have ever learned you have lost what you were. You just didn’t know it. Everything that you learn, every aspect of you, every new creation, every time you see something you add a ripple. You throw a small pebble into
that which is the clear pool that you are, and that pebble reverberates to every other aspect of you. For everything that you have ever done you have grown. You have not moved from place to place — you have flowed. You have not expanded yourself by changing this aspect of you, or making this thing better. It isn’t a matter of that for your freedom. Your freedom exists by you understanding that everything is a change.
So there is another aspect of you that you may regard as a most important part of being human as you are — that thing most joyously for you can be this — your very foundation seeks change. You do not want the sameness. Sameness to you does not hold within it joy. Sameness within you does not risk gaining pleasure. Sameness is something that you do not want in your life. But yet your past is what gives you security for the moment. Your past looks like sameness. So the most wondrous part of you as human beings is that you cannot tolerate the same thing each day. You cannot tolerate sameness. That is most wondrous.
Footnotes
This class took place in Carlsbad, California, on 6/12/1991.