Question: Following the path you speak of gives me only temporary freedom from pain. This is actually my fault because after getting freedom, I forget to continue meditation, which gives past pain some time to regain strength to attack me at other times. How do I get permanent freedom?

Answer: I know it’s challenging, especially when one is working seemingly so all alone in the world as it must feel to you where you are at present, but try to understand the following. Freedom — real spiritual freedom — is not something that one possesses in the sense of an object, or the ideal. True freedom is the moment to moment flowering of one’s relationship with three elements: the unfolding event, the parts of us that reflect and resonate accordingly to that event, and the awareness we have of this one whole movement at the same time. Seeing properly, there is that which touches us, that which is touched, and the part of us that is capable of being, at once, something that is not only aware of this relationship, but changed by it and through it at the same time.