Thread by @RealNatashaChe

10 Principles of Ultimate Personal Freedom--
A thread on the mindsets that increase and diminish your freedom 👇 (Skip if you like political correctness)

#1 You don’t exist
The idea of a self is a neurological programming, the ultimate make-belief. There’s nothing tangible or absolute about the concept of a human self. You are pure consciousness disguising as a human.

If you want more freedom, don’t be loyal to the perception of “I”. And to the extent you can, don’t identify with the species you happened to have born into, either.

#2 Your values and moralities are not real
All dualistic value judgments—right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, valuable and valueless—are made-up, and mutable perspectives. They are useful to hold because consensus is convenient.

Examples: there’s no inherent value in the US dollar, except for a consensus agreement that it holds value. And for the longest time slavery was normal and gender equality madness. Now the former is savage and the latter a bedrock of just society.

Duality exists to organize human existence and save processing power for the brain. There’re an infinite number of color shades btw black and white. Yet we judge most of them as “gray”.

The brain can’t handle an infinite number and categories are useful short hands. But believing your dualistic judgements as absolute truth cast by God diminishes you freedom.

#3 You’re free to choose all parameters of your reality, but most people can’t and won’t take that freedom because it’s not convenient

Time and space are merely a very specific version of consciousness perception. And your neuro programming perceives all dimensions as linear...

which is one choice out of many possible. Truth is there is no such restrictions on reality outside of the mind. You’re free to change those fundamental parameters.

But it’s a hassle because you need to then create new (and numerous) organizing rules of which entire existence is built on. It’s a lot of responsibility and beyond the processing power of most brains.

So we take the “factory defaults” for granted. But if you’re at least aware that those factory defaults are not the real-real, it increases your freedom.

#4 Failures or bad decisions do not exist, unless you insist they do

Any value judgment is a bed you made yourself and then choose to lie on. If the bed doesn’t fit you, make a new one. Yet most people choose to cut off their limbs to fit their made-up bed.

No standard or value exists outside your consciousness, including notions of success and failure. Consciously choose the values that allow you to appreciate all human experiences as they rightly deserve. And that increases your freedom.

#5 You never die.
People live life as though time is running out on them towards the final inevitable. But since you don’t exist, how can you die? There’re so many death and rebirth you’ll go through in a “life time”, if you do life right.

Consciousness is ever evolving regardless of whether you occupy the same physical form. Understanding this, to whatever degree you can, increases your freedom.

#6 There is no end game
Most people do stuff as a means to achieve some other end. You study, to get good grades. You get good grades, to get good jobs. You get a good job, to put food on table… on and on we go.

But if you trace this chain of actions, you’d find no “end” at the end of it. Life has no point by itself. You give meaning to every action. So rather than thinking there is some kind of end goal (there's none), treat every action and every moment as its own end game.

You’ll have richer experiences and you’re more free in every given moment.

#7 Optionality increases freedom
Spend time and energy creating options before you need them. This applies to every area in life. If you have one job, one source of income, one place to live, one tradable skill, you’d find yourself having to make constraining decisions...

...when the push comes to shove, especially in a fast changing world as you live in now. This also applies to how you conduct your “humanhood”. Example: when someone offends you, it’s fine to be angry.

But if anger is a reflexive response, aka the only way you know how to react to a type of situation, you don’t have any options with your emotions. i.e. no freedom.

#8 Identity is a prison we all willingly live in
Identity is the ultimate box we put ourselves in that solidifies everything about us that are not real. Values, personalities, habits, and human self concept are all made-up neuro programming.

But when you put a label on the collection, it looks like the real deal. Identity has convenience value. It makes relational interactions more frictionless and society more stable. But the more you’re tied to an identity, the less free you are.

An antidote is to create optionality in identities. The internet makes it more possible than ever. Blockchain technology will expand freedom around identity, by allowing people to have identities different from what their government ID dictates, but still maintain credibility.

Figuring out how to leverage those options increases freedom.

#9 The less you value your ego, the more freedom you have
Most of us spend all day doing “ego maintenance” business and therefore have no free will. We simply do what our long-standing personal programming dictates.

The more vested interest you have in your ego / identity, the more predictable you are. Example: you know you would be better off writing/painting/coding/working out. Instead you find yourself sit on the couch watching cat videos. Why?

The former activity challenges ego’s existing self perception. When you take your ego less seriously— i.e. understand that you don’t really exist to whatever extent you can— you start to have “free will” and you need less psychotherapy.

#10 The less you hold sacred, the more freedom you have
People are skeptical of the new, but hold on tight to existing values, standards and beliefs. Do the opposite and you’ll have more freedom.

Especially true in an age where old institutions and norms are melting faster than the south pole. You increase your freedom when you question what others hold as sacred immutable, while being infinitely curious about what didn’t exist yesterday.

In a fast changing time, this is your evolutionary advantage.

Bonus #11 Freedom has no intrinsic value
Freedom is valuable only if you make it so. It’s not different from any other values— e.g. truth, love, peace, integrity...—that humans put up on a pedestal. The irony is when you understand that, it automatically increases your freedom.