True Freedom

To all my American friends, I hope you enjoyed the Fourth of July holiday. With the word freedom popping up everywhere, I began to think about what that really means. And don’t worry this is not about countries or politics, because my perspective is firstly personal, because I don’t believe change can be created in the world if it can not be created in our inner world first. We are energetic beings, after all and we create more of the energy we embody, no matter how hard we try to do otherwise.

So what is freedom anyway?

We have so many associations for this word. Many of them are about about releasing the grip of some external force. The image of stepping out of a prison cell to a life of your own choosing seems to embody it. Or maybe its a country stepping out from the grip of another to make their own decisions. And for most those moments would have the sense of freedom but external freedom is very fleeting. You leave one prison to find that the amount of choices you have and the society you are in feels like a prison of its own. A tyrant thousands of miles away replaced for one in your backyard… etc. Of course this is not against improvement in society, not at all. But where does the feeling go when the dust settles? Typically we don’t celebrate freedom long and go back to trying to resist another albeit lesser oppressor.

So if we look at the external examples most of freedom comes down to choices. It is embodied by the ability to easily and accesibly choose what kind of life we want to have. Or at least the perception of it. Freedom is about gaining greater possibility than we had before.

But this external freedom relies on conditions not always within our control and therefor it is never really free.

After a particular good feeling meditation, I realized that true freedom lies in the ability to feel how we want to feel despite any circumstance or condition. True freedom lies in our internal unshakeable wholeness and our access to experiencing it. I was explaining this in a session recently. The other person expressed fear of something not going as planned, and I said and then what would happen enough times to realize the only fear was how they would feel about it. It’s always about how we will feel about it.

Now you might think, “we came here to feel it all and we can’t avoid our feelings”. While this is somewhat true, our feelings are very much tied to the narrative we are holding about a situation in any given moment. Of course there are other things at play such as biological stressors etc. But there is still a range of emotion available beyond even what our body is currently doing

If you connect to a part of you that knows it’s wholeness entirely, that not only knows it’s loved but is love itself and you felt that, do you think you would really feel the same about a breakup, or loss of money, or even the loss of a loved one? You would not. It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t feel something and its not through avoiding difficult emotions that we arrive there anyway. It is through not resisting and allowing them to be as you move towards the divine center of you.

How do we do this?

Well first you have to get comfortable with your inner landscape, then you have to quiet the chatter, then you must observe what is beyond it and finally you must intend to open to more of your true nature. Trust me you will know it when you feel it.

As a society we are living such a small aspect of our divine potential and the older we get the narrower it seems to be. In our current world of more and more noise and fear mongering, the the valve that opens to our spiritual nature has tightened just a bit more. The natural spaces that existed in life, where minds slowed down and easily opened up are dwindling if we don’t work to create them.

I know for me personally, I get lost in all the things I could be doing and improving and I suddenly feel flat. But then something reminds me we are so much more than this flat screen of existence. We are meant to embody that “more”, we are meant to embody it in the midst of the challenge to embody it.

We are not here in this moment with all these distractions by accident. No, in someway it is an amplifier for our spirit even as it’s consumption of our attention soars while we consume it’s distractions. Somehow all this noise is teaching us to hear truth. Somehow all this distraction is cultivating focus.

But it comes down to choice. It comes down to cultivating freedom because we can. If you’re tired of doing this alone message me for mentorship options. And if you would like to do this in a group let me know as I may be cultivating that for fall and your interest just might be the nudge I need.

From the inner landscape of the free,

Avery