This is a place where my writings find a home.

This is a place where I discover who I am.

This is a place where I nurture and grow my freedom.

This is exploration and synthesis, anchor and sail.

The idea of ‘growing freedom’ is that the self, the identity, cannot be created; it can be counterfeited, or it can be discovered as it is and nurtured, expressed, guided perhaps, but first accepted. How do we go about becoming ourselves? I think one of the first things is to look at where we do not feel free in our lives. Where do we motivate by fear, because fear is not freedom. Where do we come alive, and where do we go dead inside? What habits seem to carry themselves without our express wish for them

to continue, because these habits do not make us free. These are some of the questions that I do think can be asked in order to fully realize ourselves, in order to become fully expressed in the world. In a word, fully alive.

Freedom, then, is personal.

Freedom may be freedom from the tyranny of others, from external things, but fundamentally most of what is not free is internal. I will not tell you that a person bullied into submission, or thrown in jail, or raped or murdered, or otherwise violated did this to themselves. Absolutely not. We (human beings) do take away freedoms from each other, and it is vile and evil. However, the bulk of inhibited freedom in one’s experience of living does seem to come from internal stimuli : from ourselves. From the things we take to be true limitations which are not, from external positive obligations which are illegitimate because they are not chosen but assumed to be legitimate out of fear.

Can we grow our true freedom alone? Perhaps. But I would suggest that we don’t become unfree alone. Our cages grow from our early relationships, and relationships can later liberate us as well. This isn’t to say that freedom cannot be found alone, when the chains were accepted under deep duress (childhood). Just that it may be far easier to lift the chains of our own self-captivity with trusted others.

I wish for freedom for everyone. Personal freedom above all else, because it is only our subjectivity which can experience freedom, in the end.

-Alex