PERMISSION TO BE FREE
Acceptance of the rhythm
Our nature is free. We are bound by nothing except our stories that we must be bound. There is nothing limiting us except our beliefs that say we are. We are infinite energy and awareness with a focalization in this bodily form, yet we live as if we are the form and feel imposed upon by its configurations and sensations. The body is not a prison cell for awareness, but rather a tool for it. We only feel like we are in a prison cell when we are identified as the body rather than seeing it as something we are using to express through. You are not trapped, stuck or un-free in any way, other than the ways in which you believe yourself to be.
Even though we are by our very nature freedom itself we live in boxes, containers and mental constructs that say we are not free. We then don’t feel the freedom that we are, but feel rather that life is a series of events that occur within limited capacity. We then wait for life to bring us experiences that stretch us beyond our made up constraints so that we can taste ourselves again and reconnect to the freedom that we are. For some people that taste of freedom is a relief and a remembering. There is gratitude and inspiration. For others there is confusion, uncomfortableness and destabilization as their sense of confinement is shaken. While on some level they might think they want to remember and taste their freedom, it is ultimately too destabilizing to their sense of self. Their identity of who they think they are is threatened and rather than enjoying their taste of freedom they learn to fear it.
It is important to recognize that as much as you might say or feel that you want to be free or experience more of yourself, it may be more than you are ready for right now. Attempting to force ourselves to be ready, rather than honoring the rhythm that’s present, is often a waste of our energy. There are ways to prepare ourselves to be ready such as investigating our limiting beliefs, seeing where we externalize our power and taking actions to clean up our life so that it is in greater and greater alignment. While preparing ourselves for freedom is important, so is honoring and fully accepting where we are at. If you don’t yet fully live knowing you are free its ok. You don’t have to race to the finish line. Be where you are. Accept where you are first. Know that it is through this process of accepting where you are at in each stage of the journey that ends up being the resource you need to deepen in your knowing of self, of freedom. Acceptance is the ultimate permission slip that guides you even when you think you haven’t yet arrived.
LIVING FREE
What does it look like?
When you live knowing that you’re free, your best friend is the mystery. You no longer brace, protect, avoid or fear the unknown, but rather you invite it in as the new container for which you reside. The container of the unknown has no edges or limitations. It is an open box of possibility and potential. It doesn’t make assumptions based on its past, nor does it try to control its future. Freedom realizes that life is fresh and is happening now in this moment. Living free doesn’t imply that you don’t work towards things you want to create into the manifest world, it simply means you create from alignment and joy. Alignment and joy are your guiding principles. If you aren’t coming from alignment and joy then you are required to shift things up in order to come from yourself again.
Living free also doesn’t mean that you stop having feelings, or that sensations in your body change or go away. You can be free as fuck and still have pain in your body. You can live free and still feel heartache. Freedom doesn’t mean that you are robot, it just means that you aren’t bound by the sensations or feelings that you experience. Your choices come from your alignment, not from attempting to control, avoid or get rid of certain sensations or feelings in your body-mind. When you decide based on what is true for your alignment and guidance, and not on what you think you should do, have to do, or is the right thing to do, this is living free. Free to follow your inspiration, guidance and excitement.
The experience is one of less attachment. Logically the less attached you are to things, people and outcomes, the more freedom you experience. Understand that attachment and love are different things. You can love the shit out of things, people and outcomes, but the moment you attempt to control any of them is the moment that you bind yourself again. There is immense freedom in loving. Loving doesn’t bind you, your attachment to the object of your love does. True loving actually comes from freedom. If you don’t know your freedom, than you don’t know another’s freedom. Not knowing your freedom with create dynamics of attachment as you attempt to get stability, freedom and knowledge of yourself out there somewhere rather than in you.
Living free is living loving. It is the most bold and courageous way to live from the perspective of humanness. It requires immense faith and trust in the mystery, in the not knowing. It exposes you as you are open with life rather than living trying to protect yourself from it. There is nothing to avoid. Everything is you. Trust your guidance even when it seems you made a wrong choice. Realize the impossibility of wrongness and learn through your choices rather than judge yourself for your choices. End your doubt in yourself, in the universe and in God. Only you can do this. Discover that you are already free if you so desire too.
Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado