Stop Wanting

The very desire to be free or to be enlightened will be the desire that prevents your freedom.

Achaan Chah

Retire before you are too old

It would be wise if after a certain age, perhaps let us say forty or forty-five, or younger still, you retired from the world, before you are too old. What would happen if you did retire not merely to enjoy the fruit of sensate gatherings but retired in order to find yourself, in order to think feel profoundly, to meditate, to discover reality? Perhaps you may save mankind from the sensate, worldly path it is following, with all its brutality, deception and sorrow. Thus there may be a group of people, being disassociated from worldliness, from its identifications and demands, able to guide it, to teach it. Being free from worldliness they will have no authority, no importance and so will not be drawn into its stupidities and calamities. For a man who is not free from authority, from position, is not able to guide, to teach another. A man who is in authority is identified with his position, with his importance, with his work and so is in bondage. To understand the freedom of truth there must be freedom to experience. If such a group came into being then they could produce a new world, a new culture.

Krishnamurti - Ojai 4th Public Talk 4th June, 1944

The desire to be free cages us

In its yearning for freedom, with Spirit wild and unbroken, the untameable Soul cages itself in this very desire. Not before even the desire has burned away shall it be truly free.

Peter Erbe in "Garden of Gods" page 89

Freedom

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the feedom to make mistakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom has a terrifying aspect

A hidden tendency of the human mind is to escape from freedom. Freedom has a terrifying aspect. It wears the mask of dread. For those who are not emotionally mature, it arouses unbearable feelings of anxiety and insecurity. It produces a kind of vertigo.
So people are usually eager to settle down with a set of fixed ideas. They seek security in some well-established castle of philosophical thinking, or religious creed or political ideology. They yearn to hand over the burden of life to some authority figure - to a prophet, messiah, avatara (a god coming to earth in human disguise) or benevolent dictator - so that they may live happily ever after.
This brings, no doubt, some peace of mind. But it is the peace of spiritual stagnation. It blocks further growth  of personality. It sets in motion the process of decay and stagnation.

Haridas Chaudhuri quoted in "A selection of conscious and unconscious yoga"

Freedom from Convention

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it.

Alan Watts in "The Way of Zen" page 31