Resisting Freedom
In the mind, freedom can be terrifying. Yes, in the deep, unconscious cave of the primitive mind, it can be terrifying to be living freely, fully alive, and with the power to make our own choices. That kind of true inner freedom can be overwhelming. To hold the all of who we really are is an immensely powerful and freeing experience. To take in all the paradox and change in life (and our individual life) is to be fully present to the chaotic, ever-changing present moment. It can, indeed, be exhilarating, but also deeply uncomfortable because it’s so unpredictable and uncontrollable.
To experience life fully, without the familiar conditioned rules and habits of perception, can seem so unconsciously scary to some, that the resistance to change and autonomy just explodes as a push-back to freedom. From a spiritual perspective, resistance to freedom has risen up in the collective, almost as much as the state of being awakened to freedom has abundantly flowered in the world. We are experiencing a fireworks of the quintessential yin/yang of life today.
HAPPY 4TH?
I’d like to wish you a happy 4th of July, a holiday that usually has celebrated independence and freedom, but it’s not a very happy holiday for many in our country, and the world. There is a huge threat to freedom going on in so many places. There is a threat to political and humanistic rights that have been birthed and put into laws over time — due to a gradual mass evolution of consciousness. If you read or hear the news (which I hope you do), you know what I’m talking about, so I won’t go into all that. Suffice it to say, the current events are a huge picture of the enormous resistance to consciousness expansion in the global collective.
UNTETHERED FEAR
From a spiritual perspective, the resistance to internal and external freedom stems from an internal reaction to change, due to fear, in each individual. Untethered fear — unexamined and compulsive — is a sort of cancer of the ego-mind, which has been festering for centuries in the collective mind of humankind, and is intensely manifesting now.
This fear has morphed, for many, into egotistical obsessions with control, safety, power and domination. Some people are expressing this externally; some only internally. To a certain degree, we all have these tendencies for obsessive control, perhaps almost in equal measure to the joy and fulfillment of personal freedom and choice.
On the one hand, there is the ecstatic freedom of autonomy, but on the other hand, there is the fear of making mistakes, being shown to be not good enough, and thus to feel ashamed, ridiculed, alone, powerless, and a failure. All this inner conflict is going on unconsciously in each of us. When we see this, we are truly awakened. When we see this, we might feel more compassion for those people who are exploding, numb, or paralyzed in fear now, including ourselves.
HAVE COURAGE TO GO WITHIN
I challenge you on Independence day, to sit quietly and go within. The seeing of our inner world is ultimately liberating, so gather up your courage to breath deeply into your heart, focus within, and try to get a sense of what is really going on under the surface of your life. Can you see that your mind is always chattering away, distracting you from living in the moment, distracting you from your feelings? This distraction is a huge form of resistance. What are you feeling? What feeling is it that your mind is desperately trying to distract you from?
The mind judges relentlessly, blames others for your problems, makes up stories, and seeks to keep your interests front and center. The mind wants you to feel in control. The mind hates feeling dominated. The mind tries to predict, and skews your perceptions of reality, in an attempt to feel safe. Thoughts generate feelings of fear, sadness, despair, anguish, joy, hatred, and so forth. All that is within each of us, but most of the time we aren’t at all aware of the time-tread, automatic workings of the mind - which cause so much emotional upheaval.
We feel feelings, but tend to run away from them with all kinds of distractions. That escapism is resistance. We become victims of our own thinking and the resisted, repressed feelings. We are actually not free at all. We repeat the same mistakes and make some of the same choices because of unconscious patterns of resisting the “what is” of our experiences and feelings.
BREAKING OUT OF JAIL
