Cut the bale.

You are all bound up.

You have projects and to dos and more than you can deal with. You know this isn't your natural condition, this isn't who you were meant to be or even the posture that you want to embody. You know all this to be true, but you don't know the alternative. You don't know how to solve the riddle. There isn't a readily available answer.

When you cut a bale of hay, the hay has no intention in how it is going to open up and land. It just does. You simply cut the bale, and it settles into its own place.

The bale finds its natural place of rest.

What would happen if you simply let go and found your natural state of rest? You don't know what it is going to look like. You don't have a clear picture of how you will land.

But you will. You'll land. You'll discover a new ground, and maybe a new way to sit or stand. Maybe even a new way to dance.

Born free.

When you enter a new situation, a new job, a new city, a new life, what are your primary concerns?

We are concerned about our parents and teachers, the neighborhood and school district, the crime and homelessness. We care about the class we are in or the team we are on. Reputation, notoriety and association are all a big deal.

These are deep seated concerns. We care about where we are born. We have an innate predisposition to seek out positive rebirths, positive circumstances.

The purification of rebirth isn't to be reborn in the wealthiest neighborhood with the best schools and the best odds of getting into the best colleges with the best sports teams. No. The purification of birth is to able to enter any situation, any circumstance, any life and to be unstained by its faults.

When we are able to take any form and not be bound, then we are truly free. Taking the conditions that you find yourself in, using them as the basis of the path, and transforming them through wisdom to bring benefit to others, that is freedom.

The rest is just bondage in gold chains. 

Bound.

No one likes to have their freedom taken away.  No one likes to have limits placed on them, on their ability, on their choices.  No one likes to be bound and confined to a limited space.

Yet, we do it to ourselves all the time.

We are bound by concepts.  We get ourselves tied up in thoughts.  We become restrained by our own narrative.  We become a captive stuck in solitary confinement, our own confinement and we are the tormentor.  It is a strange phenomenon indeed that we become a victim to ourselves.

But how does this happen?

Grasping and fixation.  We fixate on thoughts as real.  We grasp to ourselves as real.  When both ourselves and thoughts are perceived as concrete things, we easily slip into bondage.

Of course, right now it is pretty easy to dismiss the idea that we fixate on thoughts as real.  Of course thoughts aren't real, they come and go and not a one of them has ever lasted.  Reason and logic can easily refute this proposition of them being real and only a fool would think otherwise.  Yet, time and time again we fool ourselves, because when bad things happen and when we don't control the situation, everything seems real.

Then our thoughts become demons.  Real demons.  Demons with fangs and colors and imminence.

Reason and logic serve us no benefit when we are bound in confinement with our own demons.  Reason and logic might even serve to reinforce our demons due to our own grasping and fixation.  So we don't move.  We sit there helpless and scared, waiting for the darkness to pass.

What choice do we have?

Meditation opens you up to the experience of thoughts as illusory, like clouds that come and go through the spacious sky.  This definitely helps loosen the chains, but it doesn't undermine grasping and fixation completely.

Introduction to the nature of mind opens us up to the experience of the true nature of mind and the nature of phenomena.  This undermines fixation and grasping at the root, but carrying this understanding from the cushion into the real world takes perseverance and dedication.

Introduction to rigpa zangthal, transparent awareness, opens us up to the groundless nature of mind in which thoughts have no legs to stand on.  Even as thoughts and demons arise, what can they do?

Unbound.  Not afraid to dance with demons.  The highest yoga, Dzogchen.