Unconditional Freedom

Unconditional Freedom

We may enjoy unconditional freedom, unconditional love, unconditional happiness.

Tony de Mello told me that people tend to desire conditional happiness. “I am ready to be happy provided I have this or that or the other thing.” Or something like this: “You are my happiness. 

If I don´t get you, I refuse to be happy.”

Maybe you cannot conceive of being happy without those conditions. Those conditions are what we typically call attachments.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there were two friends, Vany and Bella. When they were fifteen years old, they went with their classmates and teachers to a visit to an art gallery. There they saw a beautiful painting. They were enormously impressed… It was a landscape…  A green field full of flowers of multiple colors. A nice girl with a spring dress that matched the scene. A marvelous blue sky with white clouds… The peace of the scene and the combination of colors grasped the feelings of Vany and Bella. They were captivated, ecstatic. Both wanted to own it!

Five years later Bella was married to a prosperous young man. She told him about the beautiful painting, and he bought it for her. When Vany, which at this time was married too, visited Bella, she almost died, full of envy! “How come you bought the painting I like!” Vany suffered because she wanted to have it at her house. She started pressing Bella to sell it to her. She insisted for years… three years, until Bella finally sold it to Vany, and replace the painting with other nice one.

Vany was thoroughly happy! Finally, she owned the painting. It was in her leaving room. She used to sit down at her favorite armchair in front of the fireplace, and watched at it for hours. She felt completely satisfied.

Two years later Vany´s husband had some financial problems, and he had to sell all the art works he possessed, including the marvelous painting. He sold all of them to an art gallery. Vany felt desolated. Instead of feeling satisfied for hours every day, she cried for hours every day. She sat at the same spot. She didn´t kindle the fire, since she felt depressed. She even didn´t turn on the lights, since she preferred to suffer her depression in the darkness.

Once Bella visited an art gallery, and she saw the painting. She felt it was strange to find it again! She didn´t know about the financial problems of Vany´s husband. She thought that maybe the taste of Vany for that particular painting was ephemeral, and that she had finally got rid of it. Bella liked the painting too much, so she asked her husband to rebuy it, and he did.

On Bella´s birthday she threw a party, and Vany was one of her guests. Imagine Vany´s surprise when she saw what she considered her painting in one of Bella´s walls. “Noo! You can´t do this to me!” “What did I do to you?” “You have my painting. I will never forgive you!”

During the following days, Bella considered Vany´s reaction. She knew it was not justified, and she didn´t like the idea of being subject to a sort of emotional blackmail. However, well, she like the painting, but she did not feel attached to it. And she had other nice art work too. So, as she loved Vany and was sensible to her special life situation, she decided to give the painting to Vany as a gift. Now she knew Vany could not afford to pay for it.

Vany was thrilled! She didn´t change herself for anyone in the world! Again she place the painting in the old spot, above the chimney, and spent hours and hours delightfully watching at it.

Until… one day Vany´s marriage deteriorated. She and her husband were divorced. A Saturday morning Vany went to have breakfast with her mother. When she came back home, Vany´s husband had taken some stuff to the new place where he was moving… including the painting!

Vany was truly upset, angry. She called her now ex-husband, and told him that the painting belonged to her, since it was a gift from Bella. But her husband replied that when Bella formalized the transaction, she made the paperwork naming him as the new owner (for Bella, at that time, it was the same thing to set forth in the paper the name of Bella or that of her husband).

So Vany was desolate again. She was attached to her now former husband and to the painting, and she had lost both.

Bella was happy with or without the painting. She was not attached to it.

Dear reader, examine your own reactions. Are your reactions like those of Vany, or like those of Bella? 

Examine yourself… If you are like Bella, congratulations! You are now closer to the plenitude which lies at the end of the process of spiritual development. If you are like Vany, you have an option: go on suffering, or resolve to change, starting right now!

I invite you to examine yourself, and to congratulate yourself, or to start changing right now, as the case may be.