Freedom does not mean the right to live as we please. It means 
the power to live spiritually, to rise to a higher level of existence.

Freedom is not, as is often maintained, a principle of 
uncertainty, the ability to act without motive. Such a view 
confounds freedom with chaos, free will with a freak of 
unmotivated volition, with subrational action.

Nor is freedom the same as the ability to choose between 
motives. Freedom includes an act of choice, but its root is in the 
realization that the self is no sovereign, in the discontent with 
the tyranny of the ego. Freedom comes about in the moment of 
transcending the self, thus rising above the habit of regarding the 
self as its own end. Freedom is an act of self-engagement of the 
spirit, a spiritual event.
                                                   Abraham Joshua Heschel