Whether or not we feel free depends on how we define freedom. Defining words is something people who like to think like to do and people who don’t, don’t. Free is a feeling word, meaning it doesn’t really mean anything. Do you feel free? Are you free in your prison cell with people painted on the walls, clouds on the ceiling and grass on the floor? Are you free in the body that you and a hundred-trillion microbes call home? Are you free in your single-player gamespace that creates a multi-player illusion? Are you free in the knowably false timespace, energymatter, causalistic, dualistic universe? Are you free in your mind? In your programming? From your programming? Obviously, you can never really be free, so if you feel free, I guess that’s about as close as you’re gonna get — free in your ignorance. 

I know I’m not free, but I feel free and my feelings are valid because I feel my feelings are valid, but of course, enlightenment aside, I’m just as stuck in this situation as anyone else. The only way to get unstuck is to die, but that seems like a bit of overkill. Not to give away the ending, but dead people, if really dead, are fully enlightened — they have achieved no-self and are free of delusion — but it’s something of a hollow victory due to the whole dead thing. Nobody can really be free or enlightened within the false context of the dreamstate, but dying for freedom is a cross between throwing the baby out with the bathwater and biting off your nose to spite your face. Really, once the baby and your nose are gone, what’s left?