More Free Than the Founding Fathers Knew Possible
The US Constitution, as ratified in 1788, did not mention women at all. The Founding Fathers did not consider women to be full citizens and did not grant us any specific rights.
Especially after 1920, the progress of women’s freedom can be tracked to greater and greater levels within society—allowing child custody, voting rights, improved labor conditions, and expanding educational and employment opportunities. As women’s freedom expanded by degrees, new freedoms were sought to allow life to progress and prosper even further. It’s natural for a woman to aspire for more, and when she gains a greater status, then it is natural for her to aspire for even more.
But a woman’s ultimate freedom will come only from the development of consciousness within herself. This level of liberation is available through the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique. During the TM technique, a woman’s mind effortlessly settles within and broadens, with fewer and fewer boundaries, until it comes to rest unrestricted in her own boundaryless nature.
What limits us
Stress in the nervous system, along with deep fatigue, disallows a woman from experiencing the vast range of possibilities open to her. It’s like living in a dark room where she can only perceive and enjoy a small degree of reality. If she turns the light up incrementally then her vision becomes clearer and clearer and her interaction with the environment is easier and her choices are greater. With stress, a woman will continue to enjoy only the limited freedoms she believes are open to her. But if she wants greater joy—with better health, greater mental clarity and more efficiency—then she can learn TM, which effectively reduces stress, and gain access to her boundless simplest level of awareness. With repeated regular sessions of TM, her inner experience during meditation becomes permanently established in her daily life, her inner clarity grows, and her horizon of possibilities expands.
What value we perceive in the environment depends upon our level of consciousness. As consciousness becomes more unbounded, we have more freedom and free will, and our use of the resources available in our environment is maximized. With a stressed nervous system, our will is bound, perception is bound, the intellect is bound. Our appreciation is diminished. If we can free ourselves from stress, strain, and exhaustion, spontaneously we’ll have more freedom to enjoy more options.
Freedom to choose
During TM, our conscious thinking mind settles down and discovers its own source in an internal state of being that is awake to its limitless potential. When one grows in this experience of inner freedom from self imposed, or socially imposed, limitations and boundaries, then one identifies with absolute freedom within one’s self. This is a level of freedom that transcends the vision of the Constitution and its founders.
Social reforms, at least in the west, afford us the leisure to elevate our inner life to its full potential in limitless freedom. With a sure footing in the societal rights we have thus far won, and with the confidence in our competence to achieve new heights, we can now turn our attention to our inner lives. The inner transformation awaiting us and our daughters is no less historical, necessary and rewarding.
We have only to choose to do it, and we have the freedom to make that choice.
Experience Inner Freedom: Find a Local TM Teacher.
About the Author
Janet Hoffman is the executive director of TM for Women Professionals, a division of TM for Women in the USA
