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I was sitting around our 4th of July barbeque yesterday with a bunch of ex-patriate Brits (how's that for irony), when I found myself thinking about freedom.

Freedom, to me, has always meant freedom from my own oppressive thoughts. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the United States where, for the most part, government has let us do our own thing, if it didn't hurt someone or break any laws.

So, for me, freedom was not a political issue, but rather a personal one - about attaining a state of grace, of pure "beingness," which in my case meant that all-too elusive condition of uncluttered self-acceptance, without self-deprecating thought.

I believe, however, that this particular Shangri-La is just too lofty for many of us to target directly. For most of us, eliminating all negative thinking is just impossible. Because of this, personal freedom is most successfully achieved by allowing all sorts of thoughts to enter our mind, not qualifying any as either good or bad. Rather, we should develop the ability simply to watch as these thoughts float in and out of our awareness. Meditation is a great tool for this.

If I have the thought "I'll never amount to anything," maybe rather than try not to have that thought, it would be easier to say, "There's that thought again. Isn't that interesting? Obviously, there's still some deep-seated aspect of me that is struggling with self-worth. Now what might that be, and what can I do about it?"

Being free enough to let all my thoughts have expression; being free enough not to personalize all my negative thinking; being free enough to experiment with what else might be true for me - that is freedom of the highest order.

Because sooner or later, if I give these thoughts free expression, I will come to the inevitable realization that I am not my thoughts at all - none of them, but rather the awareness behind the thinking. I will successfully have identified with something other than thought - and thereby have found the greatest freedom of all.