Spirituality and Freedom

Lord Krishna says in the Gita that by following your desires you will turn something that tastes in the beginning as sweet as honey into something bitter, while following the Tao will at first have a bitter taste to it, but will be as sweet as honey after a while.

It appears that following the Tao is hard work. You want to proceed professionally, yet the Tao tells you not to undermine a colleague and to have a loving attitude towards her instead. You want to live out your sexual desires, yet the Tao tells you to be faithful to your partner, etc. It looks like morality binds you to the Tao, while expressing your desires is true freedom. So perhaps we can restate Lord Krishna'a advice like this, by following your desires you will at first have the impression that you make free choices only to find that you are enslaved by them, while by following the Tao you are first under the impression that you are bound to it, only to find after some time that you are finally free.

I never liked the morality aspect of religion and always felt instead that the Tao needs to be apparent as a free choice. In fact, I have come to realize that life is a giant experiment in which you make your choices every day and their consequences are projected back to you until you finally understand and just feel what your Tao is all about. Yes it is true, sometimes you have to do something for a while that appears to go against your intrinsic desires, but then you study the consequences and maintain your course of action if you like what you see, while dropping it otherwise. Your Tao is here, it can be seen and felt if you put your heart and soul into finding it. At times you have to use willpower and be stoic about your choices, but it does get easier over time. In the end you will see that You and Your Father are One and that everything you do is a free choice of your loving heart.