Find your freedom

Freedom is pure and unencumbered. It asks us to shed, release, let go of… anger, doubt, fear, and limitation.

It empowers us to live and love honestly, and therefore, fully.

It demands that we know what we believe in, and conquer limiting thoughts in order to establish our authority, on our terms.

When we take time to clarify our values, and to cherish our innate worth, we are free.

This week we're celebrating the quintessential American holiday. Beyond the sound of fireworks and the sizzle of burgers on the grill, we celebrate the birth of American independence.

While the American colonists claimed the freedom to form their own country, we, as individuals, yearn to be free – from self-doubt, harmful relationships, or the feeling of others' dominance.

Freedom is claiming, feeling, and expressing our fullness… and celebrating that we are enough. Unfortunately, though, rather than claiming that freedom, we often imprison ourselves. One of these might resonate with you:

• You focus on what you haven’t done, rather than celebrate the progress that you have achieved.
  
  
• You compare yourself to others, or look at what you think others think about you, to gauge if you’re enough, rather than take time to discover and affirm your individual unique beauty and gifts.
  
  
• You allow cultural expectations to dictate your actions.

Nothing has authority over us unless we allow it. We create our own battles. 

With all that the world gives to sadden, shock, disappoint, or anger us, we choose our responses, affecting their impact on us. Are we reactive, or proactive; wounded, or victorious; confused, or focused and free?

Independence or Dependence: It’s a game of opposites, and we get to choose our side.

I sometimes need to remind myself that I’ve chosen my current life, that I’ve found freedom releasing numerous limiting beliefs about myself, and that I’m learning to drop the instinct to suppress feelings from childhood. I am more attuned to and embrace how I feel now.

I’ve learned to slow down and value quiet moments when I feel aligned with the Infinite, rather than rushing around to accomplish one more task on my list, or look at the person next to me to see if I measure up.

Calmness, confidence, clarity, joy, satisfaction, knowing our unlimited nature…these qualities are freedom. There’s no need to look to anyone else for approval or assurance. We are complete, and we can believe and trust it.

I’ve identified and felt the freedom of releasing cultural expectations that tended to direct what I did. I got to a point when I no longer felt genuinely inspired in how I was living. I felt spiritually dull and emotionally numb, and I found myself doing what was expected of me given my position. 

It wasn’t that I felt dishonest, but I didn’t feel a pure, freeing honesty about how I was living either.

I yearned to align all that I did with a genuine incentive that came from the heart. A thorough integrity, with every desire and action in sync. I believe it’s OK to question; it helps us discern what we believe, and why.

I woke up and embraced the freedom to love myself, with grace, in my desire to live honestly. That in itself was worth celebrating. 

I found new sources of spiritual inspiration and oneness with God that brought a deepened understanding of and love for the faith of my choice – not because I had to, or was expected to, but because I wanted to. My spiritual life was set free.

I’ll be honest. At times, while living on the road during the pandemic, I feel removed from people, communities, or even a reputation that used to bring me validation or a feeling of belonging. But that’s where I draw the battle lines and know that integrity brings freedom…and a natural, resulting joy. 

I’ve found that listening within, rather than looking to the world, is the source of my freedom. Honestly aligning with our core unfolds insight, intuition, inspiration…open and free.

Freedom lets us discover our own unlimited nature that’s always been – regardless of people or circumstance. We just need to allow it.

     Maybe the journey
     isn’t so much about becoming anything.
     Maybe it’s about
     unbecoming 
     everything that isn’t 
     really you,
     so you can be who you were meant to 
     be in the first place.

                     – Paul Coelho