The Truth Shall Set You Free

Finishing up Chapter 4, we look at what frees us from the suppression of our humanity due to the limitations of the Group-ego. Harold tells us:

Jesus saw that man is, first of all, in bondage to the sin and error he embraces – “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” (John 8:34) But He saw, too, that truth frees.

Truth, parent in man, will not forever allow him to embrace a false ideal. And truth, parent in man, leads the mortal parent to drive the child from parasitic bondage – both suffer the traumatic effects.

So freeing ourselves from deriving our physical, biological, and psychical sustenance from other humans is a traumatic event for us. Harold says that not only truth, but this trauma also frees:

When Pavlov’s conditioned dogs were caged in a cellar that flooded one night, that single stressful exposure was so shaking that much of their conditioned learning was lost.

Every human being, if he lives a normal span, suffers five traumatic events that serve to expand his consciousness and increase his need to know the truth of himself in being: the trauma of birth, of puberty, of recognizing himself to be cast out in solitary being, of losing his sexual competency, of anticipating the loss of his life. Thus, built into his nature are the stresses that periodically “flood the cellar” of his subconscious mind and free him of much of the “conditioned learning” society and Babel Tower builders have imposed upon him. Therefore, before death overtakes him, he is free of much of his spurious “conditioning.”

And of course it is death that completely sets us free. Which is why Jesus tells us we must die to self, pick up our crosses and follow him. We must “hate father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, and yes, even our own life.” If we are truly free of conditioning, then like Him we will have “nowhere to lay our head.” We will be completely open and present to the “here and now” moment, eternity.

I hope you have enjoyed the considerations presented in Chapter 4! With the next installment we will begin digging into Chapter 5, “Original Sin and Saving Grace.” Until then, peace…