This is not a popular topic because most of us are wanting shortcuts. Unfortunately like all valuable things in life, freedom is earned by diligent work.

To make the changes necessary, constant vigilance, patience and a devotional attitude is required.

Permanent freedom (as some call moksha, enlightenment, satori, nirvana, salvation, Christ consciousness, etc)  is a gargantuan task that can only be undertaken by the purified and highly motivated mind.

Everyone has these qualifications, but more often than we need to further cultivate these qualities in order for self-knowledge to ‘stick'.

QUALIFICATIONS

The first qualification is discrimination. We use it every day. On the basis of your likes and dislikes you chose to associate with one person and not another. You buy this, not that.

Worldly discrimination is choosing between two apparent realities. But Vedantic discrimination is choosing between what's real or unchanging (satya) and what is apparently real or ever changing (mithya).

1) Discrimination (viveka)

This is the firm understanding that you (limitless non-dual awareness) is eternal and that the world of changing objects (including the person reading this) is non-eternal. Moment-to-moment distinguishment between the ephemeral and the ever-same.

Our job is to shift our identity from the limited person to the limitless awareness in whose presence the changing person (which constitutes your worries, joys, memories, epiphanies, ignorances, knowledges, life story) is known.

Firmly resting in awareness as awareness is enlightenment. It's not something you schedule in or recite as a mental affirmation. 

A qualified person keeps this distinction in mind as much as possible (at least until permanent liberation takes place) and makes life choices based on it.

Jesus' statement “On this rock [metaphor for solid/unmoving] I build my church” means that his life was centred on what is eternal, not on the shifting sands of time. If the rock of truth is the foundation of your life, you can weather any storm.

2) Dispassion (vairagya or viraga)

Dispassion or objectivity with reference to objects. Absence of longing for changing things from the body up… to spiritual states.

Dispassion means that your not ruffled or don't care if you get or don't get what you want. It is a rare quality because people's desires make them blind to the fact that results of your actions are not up to you.

“Don't care” does not mean being cold or apathetic or numb to the environment. Rather you recognize all objects gotten are subject to change, your own taste of those objects will change too, and the object doesn't intrinsically have any happiness in it. 

If something needs my attention, I gladly attend to it with best of my ability. But when it's over, I don't miss it because I have something higher and bigger to fall back on – God.  Take God out of the equation, and your mind keeps falling back on idea of getting something bigger, better, different.

Again, dispassion does not mean that you don't want things and one doesn't work to gain them. It means one works patiently with a quiet mind, and leave the results to life.

A dispassionate and discriminating mind does not act for fullness – but acts from fullness.

3) Control of Mind

You don't control the mind by controlling the mind. If you think you are in control please tell me what you will think in five minutes.

You do not control it because your conditioning controls it.

So what do we mean when we say control of mind? You understand because the thoughts and feelings arise and subside on their own, they have nothing to do with you (awareness).

Understanding this fact is control.

Furthermore, the world “control” is strong. Rather manage. You can definitely manage your mind such as choosing to think of the bright side of things too. You can interpret things differently. 

If your mind is not controllable, you should at least control your senses, the next qualification.

4) Control of Senses

Even if your mind is a mess and you can control your senses, at least your outer life will not be a mess. When your outer life is in line with the cosmic order, your inner life tends to follow suit.

You can think and feel what you want, but once thoughts and feelings become actions, they are in the hands of the world and they will bounce back to you one way or the other.

If your thoughts are not happy the world will not smile at you. If they are, it will. Attachment to any sense organ can get you in trouble.

The most important sense to control is the organ of speech because it is through our words that both healthy and unhealthy emotions reach the world. The rules of communication require truthful and pleasant speech. Meaning telling the truth needs to be balanced with delivery, tone and timing. 

Your speech should add value to the context.

Just talking to talk is a sign of low self esteem and a waste of energy. When you find yourself in the grip of anger, it is not wise to try to speak loving words. They will not come out properly. Just walk away from the situation.

5) Doing What is Appropriate to your Nature (Svadharma)

Svadharma is responding appropriately in any given situation.

Playing your role to the best of your ability in reference to your employer, parents, sibling, spouse, children, neighborhood, country, etc.

It means doing your duty to the person you think you are. 

It means not trying to live up to an ideal or imitate role models.

The road to liberation is not about transcending or denying your ‘little self'. It is accepting who you are here and now.

If you made mistakes and did bad things, don't punish yourself by doing penance. Understand that if you knew who you really were – you would not have done what you did and forgive yourself.

Ignorance, not you, is to blame. Understanding this makes forgiveness possible. Then convert the desire to be different into a desire to know who you are, since you are pure and perfect and incapable of harmful actions.

Why humans don't always know or follow their svadharma?

Nobody comes here on his or her own. We all appear here one fine day at the behest of a power much greater than ourselves. We arrive programmed with a certain nature. After the basic biological stuff is sorted, we differentiate into various types.

The creation itself is a vast and complex intelligently designed program that requires the contributions of many mini programs or beings.

The world needs thinkers, artists, business people, scientists, workers, saints, criminals, athletes, musicians, warriors, politicians, farmers, managers, administrators, accountants and so on.

Plants and animals follow their programs faithfully and human beings are expected to follow theirs too. If they don't, they suffer.

However, owing to a self-reflective intellect and the desires and fears that self ignorance engenders — the minds of human beings are not always attuned to their relative natures.

If I do not know what my svadharma is, I do not know how to respond appropriately. Doing whatever is to be done at a given place and in a given situation, whether you like it or not, is svadharma.

For example, it is a mistake to override your svadharma because of a need for security. Taking an unhealthy job just to pay the rent is not always the best course of action.

Summary why we sometimes don't know what is to be done, feel stuck, or fail to do our part — even though svadharma is natural and never absent:

1. Overidentification with personal preferences: One may have been conditioned to seek only pleasure and avoid discomfort, making them hesitant to engage in something that requires effort or uncertainty. Svadharma in more cases then not, is hard work and isn't necessarily comfortable. Svadharma is your duty, NOT your comfort zone.
2. External conditioning: Society, family, or peers may have imposed expectations, making you doubt your natural inclinations.
3. Fear of making the wrong choice: You're expecting moment of total clarity from which you can act. Life doesn't work like that. Clarity only comes from engagement to life. You have to make a choice to see what's the next step. You'll never make the perfect choice first time.

6) Single Pointedness

This quality is meant to correct two tendencies of the mind: multitasking and too many interests. They are both born of greed and render the mind unfit for inquiry.

The mind is curious. It is its nature to wander. If it does not wander you will not know anything. It is like a video camera, not a still camera. It is momentary, a series of energized images. But this tendency is not always helpful for self-enquiry.

Your mind desperately needs the ability to hold itself on a given topic for a considerable period of time.

The only topic for those of us looking for freedom is the self because it is the only free thing! The way to keep it in mind is to bring it back to the teachings over and over until the tendency to wander is curbed, or until daily life conforms to the inquiry moment to moment.

You need to see that inquiry is not just an occasional activity.

Difficulty focusing is a values issue. Does anyone have difficulty focusing on sex? No, because it is highly valued.

Failure to focus means that clarity with reference to what you want, in our case freedom, is not the number one priority. When freedom is the number one value, concentration takes care of itself.

7) Forbearance

Forbearance or tolerance or endurance is objectivity toward pain of all kinds without anxiety, complaint or attempt at revenge. It only applies to situations that we can do nothing about. 

Understanding that people cannot be changed but giving them the freedom to be what they are and setting up boundaries to take care of yourself – is forbearance. This qualification creates a simple life.

These days society is highly complicated and neurotic. Our sense of entitlement knows no bounds. We feel empowered to whine and complain from dawn to dusk about petty things. Our likes and dislikes are out of control. Luxuries have become necessities, our lives complicated and our minds shattered. These small things are not worthy of attention. Suffering them in good humour is necessary.

8) Devotion

Devotion is love of truth, love of knowledge. It means that my emotional power is behind my quest for freedom. It is a positive value.

I am devoted to inquiry because I love truth. Devotion knows no pain. It is steady and deep and overcomes everything.

The more you see the value or the positive benefit of something, and the more time you spend involved with or on it — the greater your devotion (attention and love) grows towards it.

A devotional personality is developed like anything else. 

9) Faith (shraddha)

Some say faith is the number one qualification. 

Faith that is asked of you in Vedanta is the belief that you are pure and perfect. That nothing is wrong with you on any level. Then even your ignorance and a messy life isn't your fault. You may not see this at the start, because you've been told otherwise. But the more you spend time in Vedantic teachings, the more you'll come to see the truth.

Vedantic faith is not blind. For example, toward the end of the cold war the Russians said “Trust us, we are destroying our nuclear weapons.” And the Americans said, “We trust you, but we would like to see for ourselves.”

In other words, you should trust the teaching that you are already free – while verifying it through your own investigation by the help of the scriptural logic.

Without faith, you will continually doubt, which will compromise your ability to hear, reflect and assimilate the teachings. There is no success for doubters.

10) Burning Desire for Freedom (mumukshutva)

One day a disciple asked his guru to talk about burning desire for freedom. The guru said, “Never mind. It is not important.”

The disciple was very intelligent and curious, so he asked again and again, but he got the same reply.

A few days later they were at the riverbank taking a bath. The bathing ritual involves dunking oneself three times in the water. On the third dunk the guru jumped on top of the disciple, put his foot on his back, gabbed his arm and held him tightly on the river bottom as he struggled to get free, releasing him just a second before he was about to drown.

The disciple was very angry and was about to give his guru a good beating. The guru agreed to take his punishment but not before he asked the disciple this question, “What were you thinking when you were down there on the bottom of the river?”

The disciple that he definitely wasn't thinking but the guru insisted that he was.

They argued for a minute or two until the disciple asked, “OK, what was I thinking?”

“You had one thought and one thought alone,” the guru replied.

“What was it?” said the disciple.

“Air,” the guru said. “Your only thought was ‘I want to breathe.' Wanting liberation with the same intensity you wanted air is burning desire.”

Everyone says they want to be free but on this issue you need to be very honest with yourself. Is your desire, piddling, middling or burning?

A Qualified Teacher

So far we have a valid means of knowledge and a qualified student. You also need a qualified teacher. You cannot teach Vedanta to yourself.

Reading books and listening to unqualified teachers does not work. It is natural to begin your journey in this way but there is an obvious downside: your ignorance will cause you to interpret what you read.

An enlightened person is not necessarily a qualified teacher and a qualified teacher is not necessarily enlightened. When you meet a free person, you can feel it. There is a lightness, an unconcernedness, an ascetic simplicity to them that is unmistakable. They never have an agenda. A teacher is someone who reveals the truth.

If you see the truth, it will do the work for you. A true teacher is dispassionate and self fulfilled and has nothing to gain by teaching you.

It is the duty of a teacher to warn against attachment and offer techniques like karma-yoga that destroy attachment instead of feeding it. When the time is right the right teacher will appear.

Continue to expose your mind to the teaching at every opportunity, work sincerely and cheerfully on yourself and stop worrying about the result. A sense of freedom will sure arrive, no doubt.