We’re way out of conceptualization at this point. I mean, we’re not talking about this intellectually, because we’re not in an ivory tower. We’re in life. And we’re experiencing this happening, because we’re not bound. What makes freedom? This is a very, very important thing for us to face: What really makes freedom? It’s not lacking things; that doesn’t make you free. It’s not necessarily having things, either. What makes you free is that you are directing yourself. You’re not controlling the circumstance outside of you, you’re utilizing it. If you’re free, everything happening is a vehicle of enlightenment. So, let’s say I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m filled with anxiety. I realize that I’ve been tossing and turning, so I think, “Hmm, this is a drag. Okay, what can I do?” You know what? I can remember what helps my being to flow. I can remember the feeling of flowing in my life. I lay my head back down remembering that, and it changes the whole experience.

We talked about what happens in that situation in our last conversation. Because of my orientation, over time I end up creating eventsstringing together circumstances that actually become my reason for feeling anxiety. I’m actually a Co-Creator in my own response patterns, which are fixed, in this case, in anxiety.

Let’s say I have a super-structure of being upset, worried, afraid, and anxious. In that situation, I’m actually going to let anxiety select what I focus on over time in my life, so that I can find something to focus on and say, “That’s why I’m anxious! I knew I was anxious because of something, for some reason.”

Well, in my super-structure, there’s a relationship between that anxiety and the inimical universe. Obviously, if you live in an inimical universe, you’re going to be very anxious because it’s pretty frightful.

You’re a little boy who’s afraid. I mean, you have a frightened little boy inside of you. And you have developed, as I did, a tremendous intellect to be able to work with, to insulate, and to protect that little boy. That intellect thinks it is controlling circumstances of your life. You’re maneuvering, and you’re a very swift computer, and so you can rationalize all kinds of things. Yet, in the middle of the night, you wake up anxious.

Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and the author of Dancing in the Fire of Transformation, The Everyday Sanyasin, and Experiments in Awareness, a workbook for yogis.