It is now better and better understood that the social improvements which we all so passionately desire can be achieved through normal evolutionary development — with immeasurably fewer losses and without all-encompassing decay. We must be able to improve, patiently, that which we have in any given “today.”
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
LIB’ERTY, noun [Latin libertas, from liber, free.]
1. Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty when not checked or controlled.
2. Natural liberty consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others.
3. Liberty in metaphysics, as opposed to necessity, is the power of an agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, by which either is preferred to the other. Freedom of the will; exemption from compulsion.
4. Religious liberty is the free right of adopting and enjoying opinions on religious subjects, and of worshiping the Supreme Being according to the dictates of conscience, without external control.
The ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna was called “the Queen of Heaven.” Her domains were politics, divine law, love, and fertility. She was a powerhouse. One chapter of her mythic story tells of her descent into the underworld. She was stripped of everything—clothes, titles, weapons—before she could be reborn. Why did she do it? Scholars say she was on a quest for greater knowledge and an expansion of her authority. And she was successful! I propose we make her your guide and companion in the coming weeks, Libra. You are at the tail-end of your own descent. The stripping is almost complete. Soon you will feel the first tremors of return—not loud, not triumphant, but sure. I have faith that your adventures will make you stronger and wiser, as Inanna’s did for her. —Rob Brezsny
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.
―Unfolding the Stone, Terence McKenna