It can sneak up on you like a thief in night; change that is. One day, you are content and happy with your life, and the next, it's as if you find yourself living on mars.

Everything around you has somehow changed, and you haven't, or maybe you have changed and everything else has remained the same. Whatever happened, you are disoriented and puzzled about life like you have never been before. Before, you had everything worked out to the minutest of details, all tied up in neat little packages, but now everything is up in the air, and you can't be certain of anything. You have lost your footing.

When this occurs, and it happens to many of us, we may feel a strange, difficult to grasp, frightening . . . freedom - that is if we can get by the shock of leaving behind all that we knew. Everything is now thrown out; our opinions, our ideals, our very identities as life truly begins anew and takes on a brilliance that we had forgotten exists in our old regulated world. We suddenly remember how to live again, but only for a moment before we again begin to choke ourselves off with security. We just cannot allow ourselves to remain free, can we? It's as if we prefer bondage and security to freedom, and this is so sad, but true.

We can't seem to believe that we are complete within ourselves. We think that we need something to complete us, and here is where we lose the brilliancy of an unfettered life, as our fear smothers any chance of our truly becoming free. Fear is the aspect that had imprisoned us before, although the fear was never really seen as fear. Like many things in our lives, the fear was never seen, because it was such an integral part of us that it was not apparent. What was apparent were the things that we were really not, such as free and independent. That's what we thought we were, but we weren't, we were really a ball of fear.

We were afraid of losing, afraid of winning. Afraid of relationships, afraid of not having one, and we were afraid of ourselves. But when suddenly all was taken away from us, the fear was gone for a moment and we became free. It was wonderful, and it could be wonderful all the time if we only knew how and why we allow our fear to take over our lives. If you want to find out more about how become totally free, regardless of your circumstances, there is only one way, and that is to get to know yourself - judging others is a waste of precious time.

It can all begin with simple meditation.