Freedom is Fun
Metaphorical references to nature that is wild and undomesticated placed in juxtaposition to children is used to illustrate the central appeal of freedom. It isn’t the ability to do what you want when you want; that’s total illusion. Freedom is about something much simpler:
The human is completely wild. Just like a flower, a tree, or an animal that has not been domesticated—wild! An if we observe humans who are two years old, we find that most of the time these humans have a big smile on their face and they’re having fun.
Humans
Throughout the book, metaphor is applied to provide a working definition of what a human being is. One of the most memorable is also, perhaps, one of those which most would just as soon avoid. The style and fashion part, anyway:
Every human is a magician, and we can either a spell on someone with our word or we can release someone from a spell.
But are You Happy?
The author defines bliss as a state in which everything is perceived with love. Everything you see and experience is seen and experienced through the eyes of someone being in love. The trick, of course, is how to go about falling in love with everything around you. Or, then again, maybe the real trick is staying in that zone and keeping bliss alive:
Being in bliss is like being in love. Being in love is like being in bliss. You are floating in the clouds. You are perceiving love wherever you go.
You Can’t Spell Judgemental without—oh, wait!
Who really suffers at the hands of your judgmental attitudes toward others? It is the person being judged or you? The metaphor gets a little messy here since if you are the Judge there is really no escaping the tyranny without completely hanging up your robes, but the idea is still valid:
There is something in our minds that judges everybody and everything…Everything lives under the tyranny of this Judge. Every time we do something that goes against the Book of Law, the Judge says we are guilty, we need to be punished, we should be ashamed.
What is the Mind? It Matters.
The philosophy at the heart of this book is derived from the ancient Toltec civilization which viewed the mind as a fog they called mitote. The author then expands upon this exceeding vague and open-ended imagery to narrow things down to a simile that is much more impactful:
Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other.
