How to check whether one is really free

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner : Sir, we were talking about bondage (bandhan). So Bondage is attachment basically. How to know these bondages as they become part of our life? How do we see what attachment is?

Acharya Prashant : See, when you are inside a cage, it is not necessary that you feel captured (unfree). If you are just contended circling inside the enclosed area, you will feel free.

Whether you are really free would be determined only when you try to go beyond your patterns. Once you have consented to remaining within a specified area, it is quite likely that you will not experience any bondage.

Now the bondage is hidden implicit or latent. It will not show up. It will not explicitly show up because your very movement “is in bondage”. Bondage shows up when your movement hits against bondage. If your movement is within the enclosure, bondage will not show up. Bondage shows up when your movement hits against the enclosure.

That will happen only when you try something out of your regular patterns. Then see whether you easily take to “the beyond”. If you want to determine whether you are really free, try to go beyond your regular life. It is quite possible that your enclosure is wide and spacious and you are…