Able to Live in Two Worlds

Excerpt from The Science of Enlightenment(Session 9) by Shinzen Young: 

Freedom means the ability to have a complete experience when it's appropriate to.

Human beings are in some ways intended to be amphibians. We are intended by nature to be able to live in two worlds, to go back and forth between those worlds.

A frog is very happy because he is a creature of two worlds. When it's appropriate to be on dry land, it's completely comfortable on dry land. When it's appropriate to be in the water, it's completely comfortable in the water. It can go back and forth any time it wants, as frequently as it wants. And if it gets tired of the water, it can go to dry land. If it gets tired of dry land, it can go to water. There's no impedence in its freedom to traverse back and forth between two realms.

We human beings were also meant to be that way. To be able to go under the water of oneness, into the world of fluidity and connectivity. And then to come out into the solidity and aridity of dry land, for certain kinds of functions.

But the problem is, we forgot how to get back into the water and now we're stuck in the solid, arid, terrestrial zone. We have no way to refresh ourselves. We have no other perspective on things. And we can't really even appreciate the solidity and the aridity of the land because we have nothing to contrast it to.  

A liberated person is like the frog—they are able to appreciate the congealed world of separateness and individual self in an entirely different way because they have the option of going into the fluid, connected world of complete experience any time they want.