We must move through unpleasant experiences with grace and detachment, if we can. If we cannot, then those experiences will keep coming back into our consciousness to be fully experienced. When they return, we call them 'memories', and if they are unpleasant, it is because they need acknowledgement--like the moth to the flame. The 'flame' is our awareness, but it has to be truly neutral and if it is not, then the memory will keep coming back with the resultant pain or displeasure not resolved. When resolved the memories still remain, as this is the function of thought--to give us a sense of identity in time and space--but the emotional charge is gone or it does not bite as it did before. There can be a sense of 'space' or 'room' or 'air' between awareness and the memory of the physical, emotional, energetic organism. This is the freedom. J. Krishnamurti spoke many times that prime intention was to 'Free Mankind'. This is the freedom he was speaking of. Inner Freedom. From there, all things are possible. From there, it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor; if you sweep floors to pay the bills or are a white collar professional with three degrees, for you have this thing going on that is priceless and free, all at the same time...and you were born with it...it is called awareness and this awareness can be sleeping or awake and that is entirely up to you and how serious you are to Find Out the Truth. That Truth can only be perceived by you inside of yourself; no one else can give it to you and This is its priceless beauty.
Where we get caught, is in the lack of realization that the 'One' who 'Is Observing' is part and parcel, completely, wholly the same energy we are watching. Ask yourself, "when I watch myself...."--Jesus said, "know thyself"; he did not say, "listen to what Joe, down the street says", "listen to what the Rabbi says" or "listen to what the Pope says". He said, "know thyself", First Person discovery!! The beautiful thing about revelations and spiritual development is that it is an Entirely Personal Process wherein you can Discover FOR YOURSELF what is real and what is false FOR YOU. He asks, "When you 'watch', 'observe' yourself are you GATHERING?? MODIFYING? ETC?. If you are, then the One that is Watching is Part of The Machinery (thoughts, sensations, reactions, feelings, energy, judgements, hypotheses) being watched. You can only realize this in the moment and then it is gone. Thought has no place in Discovery. Discovery is Of The Moment Only. Once we 'remember' the 'discovery', the 'learning', the 'realization' it is already dead for it is then in the field of memory or time: the 'trail' that thought energy leaves as it moves.
This is why 'time' and 'practice' are immaterial....because Revelations Are Only In The Moment for the Sage as well as the Novice. The practice is like a reference point for consciousness. If we are With What Is, we will not know it, because the moment there is Re-Cog-Nition the actual experience has already taken place.
This if freedom when you realize it.
"Freedom is at The Beginning, Not at The End" -J. Krishnamurti