"Life is a choice of sacrifices."

Arnold Lunn

"God has endowed one creature, man, with the power to act in an unpredictable manner."

Ronald Knox

Understanding psychological freedom is to understand that only humans have psychological freedom on the planet. This "psychological freedom" is beyond what "freedom" means in nature. In nature freedom seems to pervade the universe but it always is in obedience to matter except in man psychologically.

In a sense, there is freedom at subatomic, atomic, molecular, physicochemical, biochemical, vegetative and biological levels. That is, interactions can occur in random engagements which are essentially "free" in the elemental diversity possible. But still, each unit, from subatomic partick to subhuman creature, always obeys material laws. That is, a photon will remain a photon. A fish will remain a fish. Their interactions may be "free" in terms of uncontrolled chance interactions, but they still remain confined to the matter embracing them. Subhumans cannot cooperate with nature. Unanticipated outcomes are possible from a split atom to an earthquake, but all are still confined to matter-on-matter "freedom" as random interactions. Related to this is evolution which, if you believe in it, can be seen as a witness to the seemingly-free random interactions of individual units of all sizes resulting in progressive increasing complexification of matter as it appears to have organized itself from its initial movement, however so first moved. In such a sense, freedom is an operative natural part of the universe unless it is deformed by illicit "power" which would be anything intrinsically thwarting the free flow of the give and take of natural movement.

However, freedom also exists in the psychological sense at, and only at, the human level. This psychological freedom involves sociological and spiritual dimensions. Through the higher mental functioning of humans, the bonds of biological confinement for freedom have been broken sociologically and spiritually. Humans will make choices beyond the material laws with or without matter. Mankind naturally does not need to cooperate with nature all the time. Psychologically (society and spirit), man has become the leading shoot of the evolutionary process (if you believe in evolution) by the mind on mind interactions available.

For man, psychological freedom is a self determination process beyond biological constraints although still obedient to matter in terms of activity. This self determination by the "freedom to choose" is a divine gift confined, for planetary creatures, to humans. Humans can choose what other natural creatures cannot. This psychological freedom is supernatural, and, therefore, it must not only be fostered and protected, but understood above all because psychological freedom, as mind on mind, sanctifies the world as God's gift of His image. In a sense, only when we know what psychological freedom is, can real freedom in God's Image occur.

Substrate of freedom

Some would deny freedom by claiming that there are emotional control centers in the brain which govern how choices are made with all choices secondary to perpetuating one's DNA. Superficially, this seems true and many "choices" are conditioned by reflex, biochemical and biological factors rendering freedom illusory. But there is mom: studies of the human brain reveal the presence of a meditative/reflective center identifiable in those with intense spirituality — an area concerned with more than the mere perpetuation of one's DNA. This spiritual center contains the fundamental notion of a "Why am I me?" center, identifying a personal epiphany of self where the mind's awareness becomes mystically (transcendentally?) an embracing of the universe. I call this a "transcendental center" wherein we can sense the "image of God" in ourselves and all else. (Read Why God Won't Go Away by neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Vince Rouse. That there is a "neurotheology" center in the brain should inflame another proof of the existence of God. Its proper neurological name is the posterior superior parietal lobe.) This center is not for mere focus of "consciousness?' "awareness?' "thinking" or "choosing?' To the contrary, this center is for "mind on mind", i.e., the "consciousness of consciousness" or "awareness of being aware" or, what I prefer C² (consciousness squared). This transcendental ME center embraces genuine human beingness, constitutes the material substrate of personhood and is the central nervous site of genuine human personal supernatural psychological freedom. (What is more /free and escaping from confining and controlling matter than reflecting on God, the universe, and the transcendentals or equivalents.) When an individual substance has C², there exists a rational species specific process entitling personhood because with C² is a cognitive awareness of self, the life process,
the species, and a potential transcendental life. With C² man can break biological bonds and do extraordinary things independent of biological constraints and ordinary nature — such as develop planes to fly or communicate long distances or choose not to follow some of one's biology in marked contrast to all other biological creatures. With C the choices available to men approach infinity and the infinite.

God made freedom intrinsic to our being. At conception CZ is a biochemical awareness of the species from fertilization, confirmed by the natural pro-self, pro-species development of the embryo. However, C² does not only apply to the individual substance alone but to all of us. Self aware of being aware, C embraces and protects our species by a communal "awareness of being aware" of our C² species itself. (This species action provides the community universals, a la Donald DeMarco, of dignity, unity, integrity, identity, and spirituality.)

C² gives dignity by awareness of being aware of the need for clothes to transcendental protection of the species such that a C² being can never be used as a means but only as an inviolable end. C² gives unity by awareness of being aware of the totality of one's being without inappropriate exaggeration or treatment of fragments of self or portions of the C² species. C² gives integrity by awareness of being aware of one's moral good as a part of nature's law with rights and responsibilities reflecting the image of God. C² gives identity by awareness of being aware of one's origins, one's family, one's culture and, of course, total undeformed C² humanity. C gives spirituality by awareness of being aware of being partially free from the material and reflexive nature of biology by having mind on mind choices, substance manipulations and freedom not available to other creatures. DeMarco's community universals (dignity, unity, integrity, identity and spirituality) socially link creatures.

While the individual human genome is the genetic linkage for the human community, C² provides the spiritual linkage by the transcendentals of matter, identity, truth, oneness, good and beauty. Transcendentals exist for humans in nature and are not embraced by other creatures. As G.K. Chesterton said: "It is natural for man to be supernatural?' and transcendentals make it so. C² enables awareness of being aware of at least one's own corporeal body; i.e., the confluence of the being with matter completing it C² enables at least a biochemical sense of one's self as materially existing. C² enables the identity or form of the being in confluence with its essence of humanbeingness embracing total humanness — all for all and with all; in other words "catholic." C² enables the truth of the being as confluent with reality and not fantasy, fakery (like video images), lies or untruths. C² enables the oneness of the being in confluence with itself and all desirables related to it; i.e., its integrated whole entirety. C² enables the good of the being in confluence with proper functioning in nature; i.e., the proper choice and genuine freedom in confluence with natural law. (Natural law: Eternal Law in a rational creature. It means to pursue good and avoid evil. It means be who you are, where you are, and persevere in your own being; accept and exercise biological functioning; seektranscendentals according to ascending reason; and follow human law prescribing acts imposed for the common good; that is, Natural Law is a morally ordered freedom and vice-versa.) Finally, C² enables beauty of the being as in confluence with ascendancy• or the "bringing out ,the best of itself and all around it" (The presupposition here is that "beauty causes ascension" — beauty uplifts even beyond the confines of biological matter engulfing us).

These transcendentals coincide with the potential awareness of, conscious protectiveness of and participation in the species by C² (humanbeingness) all of which elevates the creature to personhood and genuine personal freedom.

Basically, C² awareness of transcendentals gives personal ownership of one's self as one's own property of self belonging to no one (except God). Such self-ownership means that one can do with this self property whatever is capable of achieving the transcendentals comprising one's personal self. The awareness of being aware (C²) and all it entails, ranging from elementary material self to a spiritu-
al confluence with God, is the basis for humanbeingness and our freedom.

Freedom

For genuine freedom to occur, the spiritual C² center of the brain needs reinforcement of its design for a transcendental outcome. In C² is a restless heart searching for the true ME and my personal aspirations, trying to ascend as all nature is moved to ascend if free as it can be. Much depends on the information received and how one has learned to judge and think. The transcendental brain center needs reinforcement (the Ten Commandments, the Church, the Mass, the Bible and Tradition) as it searches for "what matters, what does one believe and what does one do for salvation?" Indeed, if all the universe is seen to ascend, how do we ascend with it? This center, dare I now say "salvation/freedom brain center," seeks that which can help perfect human nature, illuminate all, and complete each individual's last step of development; i.e., one's personal transformation to the higher state With God — an outcome that even must make sense to evolutionists, unless they believe unscientifically that evolution stops with man. C², this center, tries to embrace a sanctified universe touched by the Incarnation — and Jesus brought us humans real freedom at a psychologically free level at long last teaching us how to live by the C² Church He founded. Indeed, Christmas needs celebrating most because it is the Birth of Freedom — the Birth of Transcendental Information for C². 0, in touch with God, does not embrace power that deforms the free flow of life nor does it contort the divine substance that got us here. It does not seek the degrading illusions of disgust flooding our culture today from the unfree press and media to antitranscendental politics or anti-transcendental religions. Actually, C', undeformed, seeks freedom from all that.

If reflective choices are made, and these choices are called "freedom" meaning "self-determination," then these choices must be in confluence with C². Only enables genuine freedom. This freedom is intrinsic to the creature himself and depends on no one else. Based on personhood, there is no "right" (even if there is the opportunity) to reject C' for the species or to reject the pursuit of transcendentals. Personhood requires the obligation to embrace C² for the species, respect life processes, and to process positively the transcendentals. Indeed, all freedom is to help establish and maintain C² and the transcendentals for the species. Freedom in nature and supernature (mankind) ascends ranscendentally to a higher and higher level. To say that man is the climax of the evolutionary process and that we, as we am, are the maximally spiritually free beings, given the incredible difference between man and the rest of the creatures, is to be a member of the Flat Earth Society. Freedom in man is so different from that of subhumans, this very freedom when transcendental, demands a higher freedom to come as incomprehensible to us almost as we are to lesser creatures. There is something beyond the spaceltime continu-um and beyond pure matter. This should be obvious even to evolutionists who cannot take it the next step because they themselves are theophobically unfree. The antientropic ascending process so evident today needs no "testability" loudly touted as necessary for scientific acceptance. The outcome of genuinely transcendental life is unimpeachable and incontrovertible. An unimaginable, fantastic outcome must be in our future, with or without evolution.

In the specifically Roman Catholic sense, freedom is to serve the Lord. Freedom is to have the early message in the Me center from the Baltimore Catechism of "Why am I me?" — and the answer is: "To know, love and serve God in this world so I can be with Him in the next"! (This message is the most important one to give to the C' center from birth on.) I would add: Seek God by matter, identity, truth, oneness, good and beauty, because these transcendentals are the language, elements, and energy of freedom. Freedom is to follow the Lord, to embrace the cross — instead of acquiescing in the craziness of the age. Freedom is a transfiguration — a gift from and by Jesus to save us from our sins by following His Church. Freedom is the output from the spiritual C² brain center assisted in maturation by transcendental inspirations from the divine messages of the Mass, the Church, the Bible, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, the Holy Family, Mary, the Saints and myriads of other Roman Catholic motifs ranging from the Sign of the Cross to the Seven Sacraments, not over-looking the precise habits of thinking instilled by Latin.

The overt and subliminal message is the transcendental unification with God. The sacramental center needs to be taught repetitively the Divine messages from the Church. The God center needs to get God or else it gets Hell.God makes you transcendant and a better person for all the world, or else you have the wrong god. Thus C' is much less transcendental when derived from the press and media, the Koran, the Talmud, Eastern religions, and contemporary Incorrigible Liberal Loonism (ILL) which includes most of today's secularism (ILL basically is "I feel good this way so it must be so" regardless of evidence or reasons to the contrary or even a disastrous outcome). Indeed, without the transcendentals, life is easily evil. A case can be made that unless one is fighting evil, one is not free. The brain metaphysical center hungers to believe something so much so that it can be ruined and contaminated by anti-transcendental messages, an occurrence which explains why, all too often, evil outcomes happen in the brain which has no Roman Catholicism, direct or indirect. The brain belief center will find something vigorously to commit to, from the morbid recitation of the all too frequently taught violent verses of the Koran to the "anything goes" pseudofreedom of Incorrigible Liberal Loon ism and their sexed kidnapping of the C² center.

The real crisis of a misunderstanding of genuine psychological freedom is that one does not seek virtue, the transcendental life or even what is real. One ends up wasting one's life on fantasy, movies, television, flittering lights, ephemeral sport events and thousands of silly multitudinous acts (usually suggested by the press and media) which mean nothing in themselves and are regressions into reflexed behaviors which are intrinsically unfree rather than chosen to be true, one, good, and beautiful in an identity materially expressed.

To an extent, genuine personal freedom has one suffering because real choices are difficult to make and probably will be counter to most biological and reflex confoundings. For humans, freedom is not a conditioned reflex or biological reinforcement of illusions, pleasures, sex, suggestibility, advertising and so forth. Dare I say that freedom is sacramental living (as defined in my book Happy Ending)? Freedom is to climb on the cross.

Formula of freedom

Psychological freedom is a Catholic battle cry never beard outside of Christianity unifying against all else but dividing Christians unable to agree on specifics. A formula may help.

Freedom is a function of the act (A) of whatever nature. That act may be given a quantitative value on a scale of life significance(S) ("Digging a hole" has lesser significance than "delivering a baby"). This significant act (A) is multiplied by number of choices (C) available (The greater the number of choices available, the greater the freedom for the act). Freedom is reduced by the conditioned reflexes (Cr) promoting the act, further reduced by the physiologic reflexes (Pr) impelling the act, and reduced mores° by the social pressures (Sp) conditioning the act. The entire freedom calculation must be taken to the power of the number of transcendentals intended (Ti) in outcome of the act (the more the transcendentals intended, the greater the freedom).

$F=(\frac{A\times S\times C}{C_r+P_r+S_{p+1}})T_i$

Personal psychological freedom is subordinate to the transcendentals at least where an individual makes heroic free choice to live his life by actions consistent with the transcendentals as almady described. One is not psychologically free or even making a free choice if one is not embracing and seeking transcendental ends. One can almost always demonstrate that movements in an anti-transcendental way (that is, anti-freedom way) can be identiifed as reflex conditioned actions of more biological controlling restrictive unfree nature than actual choice to a chosen end. About "ends," an unknown Italian philosopher cook said: "Everything has an end, but the sausage and the cannoli each have two." Now, however, it must also be stated that psychological freedom also has two ends — not only the chosen act itself, but its transcendental intention. By such transcendental intention man can be free unlike all other creatures which remain confined to matter. It is against common sense and evolution to proclaim otherwise. That man's psychological freedom goes beyond matter is undeniable. This fact bodes well to a limitless future with God; i.e., the ultimate freedom. No one who tries to understand the planet, the mind, and science can deny the awesome significance of psychological freedom as we escape from matter. And only a theophobic fool would deny an even more free future_ Human psychological freedom as discemable is proof that a fantastic transcendental freedom is in our future beyond all comprehension except by the word "eternity?' Personal psychological freedom extrapolates to an ultimate psychological freedom called "salvation?' The Divine Author of psychological freedom says "Just believe in Me" and "Offer it up"! It all means a supernatural transcendental freedom is in our future if we live that freedom now.

None.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.