In our society and I guess generally in the world, freedom is defined as having the ability or the right to act, to speak and think as one wants and a state of not being imprisoned or enslaved physically. But as we start to look more deeply into this, questions arise. This is because we can’t live in a vacuum where we aren't affected by other people‘s opinions, the laws of society and cultural expectations and norms. These all influence our ability to think, act and speak and so one could argue that there is never anything like pure freedom because there are always factors and influences. But this is a view of freedom based on the external world of our physical senses. It is a concept of freedom that is deduced from what we see, smell, touch, taste and hear. Consequently, it is a perspective from the lower self that is based in a reality that isn’t tempered or reformed by spiritual principles or truths. It is an idea of freedom in which the Lord as the higher Self is not what rules or oversees as the law of the land.
The concept of spiritual freedom however, recognises the Divine. It doesn’t try to measure or define boundaries in what make us free or not free by examining the physical, external life. It is based in the principle that all are interconnected because everything living is the Lord, and that therefore, all influences all. Spiritual freedom is more about the idea that we aren’t actually in a state of freedom until we see what opposes the Lord, what opposes the truth and its good. There are passages in the Heavenly Doctrines that speak about the state of temptation being a state of highest freedom because it’s a state in which the person can see the evils and falsities present. Or at least see what they are able to see of them and conversely see the opposite goods and truths.
AC 1937 [5] This is the case most of all during temptations, for in these-when the man compels himself to resist the evil and falsity which are infused and suggested by evil spirits, there is more of freedom than is possible in any state out of temptations-
although at the time the man cannot comprehend this-for there is an interior freedom, from which he wills to subjugate evil, and which is so great as to equal the force and strength of the evil that is assailing him, for otherwise he could not possibly wage the combat.
This freedom is from the Lord, who insinuates it into the man’s conscience, and by means of it, causes him to overcome the evil as from what is his own. Through this freedom, man acquires an Own in which the Lord can work what is good.
Although it can be an extremely difficult time in having to see what opposes the Lord’s life flowing into us, it’s also a time of great freedom because it’s only then that we truly have a choice. If we can’t see clearly what opposes good and truth then the assumption is perhaps good and truth aren’t present in the first place because they are what shines light onto their opposites, the evils and falsities. And thus this is a state in which there are no clear distinctions:
AC 5217
It sometimes appears as if falsities and truths are in one subject; but these are not falsities that are opposite to the truths in him, but are those which are associated by applications. The subject in whom truths, and at the same time falsities which are opposite to them, subsist, is called “lukewarm;” and the subject in whom falsities and truths are mingled is called “profane
AC 5219
for where truths are not, there is obscurity, because the light of heaven flows only into truths; for the light of heaven is Divine truth from the Lord.
Hence the truths with angels and spirits, and also with men, are subsidiary lights; but they have their light from the Divine truth by means of the good in the truths;
When we experience a state of good and truth being present but mingled in with the evils and falsities...
