In principle, you were born free.
Others can use force or violence to compel your behavior or influence your thoughts and feelings, but they can’t control you directly. You’re not a puppet.
At the same time, you’re born naked, susceptible to a variety of gunk and debris, which will attach and lodge itself to you through the course of your life. Your job, if you want to achieve real freedom, is to dislodge and dissolve this.
Plenty of restrictions and impositions press upon you, from the social structures you live within and upon, to the very words you use to qualify your thought and experience.
Once you do start to untie the tethers lashed upon you, you will probably find that your choices are affected quite significantly. For example, Dr. K explains, “Thirty percent of people who come into my office, within 12 to 18 months will change their job.” He goes on to explain that people shed their conditioning and socialization, and then change their jobs as they no longer seem appropriate.
The interesting thing is that as you dissolve more desires, you become more free, and you can end up choosing to act compassionately, which is usually what happens.
So I think getting rid of ambition is only scary until you discover there are other compasses, and most people want the compas instead of ambition. Because ambition is like, relentless. And it kind of drives you instead of you controlling it.
Interesting question is where do these desires come from? From you? Or from outside you?
You’re not that big.
Your mind tells you it wants all these things. But think through it. You don’t have the time or attention to care for them all.
Gandalf told Frodo, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?”
The same is true for “things.”
You say you want all these things. Can you handle them? Will you keep them gladly, and not seek to give them back, either by force or by “accident”?