Paving A Path To Your Personal Liberation

Your spirit’s com­fort zone is the infi­nite and eter­nal. Any­thing else is a path to anx­i­ety and fear.

Mar­i­anne Williamson

This week, we gath­ered in town squares across the coun­try to cel­e­brate our nation’s birth­day. We gath­ered in churches and syn­a­gogues, marched in parades and stood on curbs wav­ing flags. We went to county fairs, rode amuse­ment rides, ate cot­ton candy and devoured corn on the cob. We lis­tened to coun­try bands and blue­grass music. We fired up our BBQ’s and invited friends over to share the typ­i­cal 4th of July menu of hot dogs, ham­burg­ers and potato salad, as we watched fire­works dis­plays light up the night sky. This week, in our quin­tes­sen­tially Amer­i­can ways, we cel­e­brated our her­itage of free­dom and independence.

Yet within each human being, whether Amer­i­can or South African, there is another kind of free­dom wait­ing to be declared. No one can give it to you, but it is yours for the claim­ing. It costs noth­ing, but will most likely require you to give up every­thing you’ve ever held on to in the name of safety and security.

Per­sonal Lib­er­a­tion Is An Inside Job

The free­dom of which I speak is the free­dom every human ulti­mately seeks. No mat­ter how much or how lit­tle money or edu­ca­tion we have, no mat­ter who or how much we know, or how many titles or pos­ses­sions we accu­mu­late, our task is the same. We’re here to dis­cover and align with our soul’s agenda, to live out the life we came to live, as the per­son we came to be. We’re here to grow beyond our nar­row def­i­n­i­tions of who we think we are and claim our per­sonal liberation.

Sounds sim­ple enough, doesn’t it? Yet here is where the human jour­ney gets inter­est­ing. Because if you take a look around, you’ll notice that in spite of all we’ve achieved through­out human his­tory, human­ity still strug­gles with the same issues our ear­li­est ances­tors faced. Today, our phys­i­cal sur­vival is threat­ened, not by mete­ors crash­ing into earth caus­ing mass extinc­tion, but by the mass extinc­tion human activ­ity has helped bring about and caused to accel­er­ate. Our ear­li­est ances­tors faced fierce preda­tors that threat­ened their sur­vival. Today, the fiercest preda­tors we con­front are those we see in the mirror.

Who must we think our­selves to be?

We con­tinue to inflict pain on our­selves and each other. We shrivel and shrink, com­plain and whine, project our best and worst qual­i­ties out­ward and think we’re see­ing the truth. We hold grudges, blame and judge and live in fear of what oth­ers think, cer­tain they judge us as we judge them.

We hold our­selves cap­tive to our great­est fears, con­vinced we are as small, pow­er­less and insignif­i­cant as we believe our­selves to be. And yet, even as we are our own jailors, so are we also our own lib­er­a­tors. The key to the door that opens to free­dom is con­cealed in the heart of the one held cap­tive. The jour­ney to find the key, pick it up, open the lock and walk through the door can be mea­sured in cen­time­ters, but can take a life­time to navigate.

This is the whole game for human beings. Are you up for that jour­ney? For at the end of the day, when our last breath is taken, we will all sit face to face with our soul and have a lit­tle “Truth Ring” chat, for it alone knows whether or not we were true to its mission.

So the ques­tion arises, who did you come here to be? I’m not talk­ing about a job descrip­tion or role iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. I’m speak­ing of the quin­tes­sen­tial qual­i­ties you came to embody and express, as the unique human being you are. Given that there is no other you, what will be miss­ing in the entire human expe­ri­ence unless you bring it? If human­ity is a 7 bil­lion faceted dia­mond, what is your indi­vid­ual facet about?

You are a part of this dia­mond, come as we all have come, to illu­mi­nate the world with the bril­liance of who you are. As the light shines through you, (to the degree that you allow it), your gifts are offered into the glo­ri­ous caul­dron of cre­ation. Are you free to be who you came here to be? Free to offer up, in grat­i­tude, the gifts you came to contribute?

If you were hav­ing that lit­tle soul chat right now, what would your answer be? Truth ring! (Remem­ber the story I related last time of a friend who found a beau­ti­ful ring in a shop in Nepal and the shop­keeper explained that it was a “Truth Ring”. If any­one swears that some­thing is the truth by the Truth Ring and it turns out they lied, they’re vol­un­tar­ily tak­ing on bad karma.)

What’s between you and your per­sonal lib­er­a­tion? What’s between you and free­dom to be who you are? All of the below are based on erro­neous think­ing and are ego strate­gies for sur­vival. Let’s take a look and see some of the more com­mon bar­ri­ers to free­dom and their remedies.

Bar­rier #1:

The fear of what oth­ers think- This one is deadly. Inside of this con­straint, we hold our­selves hostage to what we think oth­ers think of us, how we look, how we dress, what we say, what we do. We think and fear the worst about our­selves and find evi­dence out­side to sup­port these beliefs.

Take Your Power Back Rem­edy:

Get a grip! It’s all made up! Given that we don’t know what oth­ers actu­ally think, we uncon­sciously project our self-judgments and opin­ions out­ward and attribute our own thoughts and fears onto oth­ers. You can take back your power by own­ing your pro­jec­tions as your own. The truth is, most peo­ple don’t think about you as much as you might imag­ine. Really! Every­one is too busy wor­ry­ing about what oth­ers think of themfor you to be too con­cerned about what they think of you. It’s all an ego game, designed to main­tain the illu­sion that it’s (the ego) keep­ing us safe. A dead end game. Give it up.

Bar­rier #2:

The need to be right and avoid being wrong — To an inse­cure ego, being right is equiv­a­lent to sur­vival, being wrong is equiv­a­lent to death. If one is dri­ven by inse­cu­rity, being wrong brings humil­i­a­tion and shame, two of the low­est vibrat­ing emo­tions on the totem pole (David Hawkins, Power Vs. Force). But the price for need­ing to be right has a heavy price tag, for there is no room for error and there­fore no room for learn­ing. Also no room for free­dom. Who has to be wrong in order for you to feel good about yourself?

Take Your Power Back Rem­edy:
The right/wrong game is a zero sum game where nobody wins and every­one loses. Here’s a dif­fer­ent idea: make it your goal to have every­one win, includ­ing your­self. Who would you need to be to pull that one off? Within every con­flict, there is a solu­tion where all needs are met. To get there, you need to get off your posi­tion that it’s “your way or the high­way” and be will­ing to get down at ground zero, where new pos­si­bil­i­ties can be dis­cov­ered. The Every­one Wins game is a much big­ger and more sat­is­fy­ing game to play. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.

Bar­rier #3:

The need to be in con­trol– Last week’s post evoked a lively dis­cus­sion about this topic. Please refer to reader Law­son Meadow’s and oth­ers’ com­ments here.

Take Your Power Back Remedy:

In truth, most of what hap­pens in life is beyond our con­trol. What we do with what hap­pens how­ever, is entirely up to us, thus we shape our own real­ity by the choices we make in response to life. Life hap­pens and we choose. That’s it! Take charge of your responses and let go of the illu­sion that you can part the Red Sea. That was a fairy tale to begin with. BUT.… Can we shape how events occur with our inten­tion? Now that’s a sub­ject for a future post. Stay tuned.

Bar­rier #4:
The need to be safe- The ego requires cer­tainty and pre­dictabil­ity. This is its def­i­n­i­tion of safety. That which is unknown and unfa­mil­iar threat­ens the ego’s grip on its ver­sion of real­ity. This, of course, is a trap, which even­tu­ally becomes a prison. LIfe has no guar­an­tees of safety on any level. By cling­ing to this notion, we hold our­selves hostage to a false idea of who we are, con­vinced not of our pos­si­bil­i­ties, but of our limitations.

Take Back Your Power Remedy:

When you par­took of this jour­ney to become human, your soul gave up the need to be safe in order to avail itself of the learn­ing required to ful­fill its mis­sion. Above all the soul seeks learn­ing, and by hook or by crook, will bring to our doorstep what­ever serves its pur­pose. Life is an adven­ture into the unknown. There is no way out except through. Put on your boots and start hik­ing! The true safety the soul seeks is con­tained in the Mar­i­anne Williamson quote at the top of this post and below:

Your spirit’s com­fort zone is the infi­nite and eter­nal. Any­thing else is a path to anx­i­ety and fear.

This is only a par­tial glimpse into the ques­tion of lib­er­at­ing our­selves from the tyranny of self-imposed lim­i­ta­tions. What bar­ri­ers do you still strug­gle with and what reme­dies do you see?

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Tagged as: 4th of July, Behavior, David Hawkins, Existential therapy, Freedom, Human behavior, liberation, Marianne Williamson, Nepal, Political philosophy, Power Vs. Force, Psychology, Psychotherapy