Liberty cannot really be refused ... not really. Because liberty is my inner state of being and try as I might I cannot ultimately refuse myself.
So when I offer liberty to someone, that person could reply, but can't really mean it: "What in hell would I want to be free for!" Therein lies liberty's assurance of success.
If I offered a million billion dollars, I could be refused.
If I offered cradle-to-grave security provided by stealing from more productive workers and giving to less productive workers, I would certainly be refused by any moral person.
But no one can ultimately refuse one's natural state of being. So all I have to do is offer freedom and keep offering freedom.
Do I have to produce freedom to back up my offer? Not hardly. Why would I have to produce something that already exists inside of people?
Obviously I might be guided to work for political freedom, but it is the act of offering freedom that really does the work. Ronald Reagan stated to the American public, "I want to give you back what America once had ... freedom!" He won elections by landslides.
Did people actually experience more freedom when Ronald Reagan was president? After all, the government continued to grow, taxes increased, and there was little perceptible movement toward more political freedom.
The answer is people did feel freer. They had voted for freedom. They had chosen the natural state of their spirit. Having so chosen, their predisposition is now to be open to feeling more of their natural state regardless of conditions outside themselves.
Strange as it might seem, the dictator who offers freedom does, at least in people's subconscious minds, get taken up on his offer.
Whatever is being experienced in the subconscious mind gets reflected in the outer world, doesn't it? So the same dictator who had no intention in the first place of actually granting freedom ends up being the facilitator of freedom after all, either by voluntarily surrendering or by subconsciously setting himself up to be taken down.
Whoever offers freedom, by virtue of the offer, ends up facilitating freedom.
During the 1998 elections, the Libertarian Party chose one of the weakest possible campaign themes. The one consistently publicized campaign issue favored by the party leadership was, "We offer an alternative to Republicans and Democrats."
Big deal! Joseph Stalin would be an alternative to Republicans and Democrats. Adolph Hitler would be an alternative to Republicans and Democrats. Not voting at all would be an alternative to Democrats and Republicans.
The truth is Democrats and "go-along-to-get-along" Republicans might have forgotten their source, but will someday remember that they too are libertarians down deep. To offer merely an alternative to Democrats and "go-along-to-get-along" Republicans is to offer no clearly defined opening into people's deepest desires. Is it any wonder that most libertarian candidates got a mere 3 or 4 percent of the vote?
This week I want to check my premises and check what I am offering. When I waken each day I ask myself a few times:
"What am I offering and how clearly does my offer call upon people's natural desire for freedom?"
During my daily meditations, I specifically search my mind, asking, "What issues are my ego's favorites and do my ego's favorite issues really awaken the desire for freedom in most other people?"
If I find myself focusing on positions which do not serve my overall purpose more than the position of merely offering a little something other than "go-along-to-get-along" Republicans and Democrats, I ask myself inside:
"What issues would really, really, really resonate with people's inner desire for freedom?"
This week during my meditations I listen inside and allow my inner voice to tell me what I really need to be focusing on and I make a list of issues that just about everyone is going to respond favorably to, at least on a spiritual level. I remind myself that issues given by my inner voice are issues worth campaigning for because these are issues that are going to open people's inner desire for freedom.
Before retiring each day, I practice feeling what it feels like to be offering freedom in ways which will really open people ... instead of in ways my ego might have preferred. What does it feel like to be offering something people really cannot refuse? Before sleeping I let myself feel one last time for the day the joyful certainty of this week's lesson:
"By offering freedom, I am making an offer which really can't be refused."
The device which even more deeply prepares freedom lovers for success, A Course in Miracles , talks about our ultimate need to free ourselves from every kind of slavery:
You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
Also available free of charge online:
Course in Relationship Miracles
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