This Spirit Is Free (Part 1)
6 ways to Find Freedom from Suffering (Part 1)
The thing I like the most about myself is also the thing that others have rejected in me the most. I am a free spirit. I learn the edges of that freedom the hard way. I but up against the comfort and the roles that others have for me and I scare and overwhelm some people with my freedom.
I have been building a process of graceful freedom, but it hasn’t always been graceful. At times, my free spirited nature has been anything but, and I have had to learn to take responsibility and to say I’m sorry when I have wilded in the wrong context…or at the very least…when I didn’t read the room.
Being free spirited is not always easy. It requires discernment and humility and it is best refined within the interdependence of the whole, not outside of it. I am a work in progress. Free of spirit, more and more. Finding the edges with more ease and less pain. Through this expression, I am allowing myself to see that I am who I was meant to be. And I deserve to be free.
And so do you.
Because you see, I’m nobody special. I’m just a 44 year old woman, wife, and mother. Deconstructing religious indoctrination, examining limiting beliefs, trying to remember to choose personal freedom from suffering. I’m just a therapist who recently endured a midlife awakening, raising a trio of teenage boys, taking yoga classes, seeing clients, writing in my journal, reading Ram Dass. I’m just a creator being, a tiny slice of the universal creation, expanding in this such a way right here, like this. Don’t take my word for it. I’m nobody special. Free your own spirit, do it your way. But this…this is how I do it. This is how I allow free.
In this content series (what is it? Is it a blog is it a podcast, is it both?) my mission is to root for your free spirit. To encourage you to allow your own freedom. To celebrate your wholeness. And to inspire in you, a timely re-wilding of your heart and soul.
Throughout the content I will be sharing, I will reference freedom. This is what I mean by free.
1. Free of limiting beliefs. You deserve to be free of toxic and harmful contaminants known as limiting beliefs. You had no other option than to believe what you were told. What you inferred through the experiences you had with harmed and wounded beings became a truth that you accepted. You may even believe them. Perhaps you learned you are not enough. Or you are not worthy of love. You may have learned you are not okay as you are. Or that you need to become a different and better version of you. You may have learned to strive and to drive and to push and to pull your way to a greatness that you will never get to be and you may have learned to tell yourself, when you are not there, that you have failed.
Every miserable emotional state, mood, or mental condition can be traced back to the root cause of limiting beliefs. Most common; I am not enough, I am not important, I am not worthy. Also common are; I am too much, I am too difficult, something is wrong with me, I need to change something fundamental about me (and I can), and, I need something that I don’t have.
These beliefs generate emotional responses to life which become emotional patterns or archetypal energy systems. The effects of these contagions limit our potential and prevent our fullest expression. To say the least. Regardless of how we learned them, we eventually realize they live within. We hold them now. As conscious beings with a great amount of motivation to create our lives, we naturally deconstruct these beliefs throughout our lifespan. Fortunately, as a species, we are evolving. More and more, in the collective, we recognize the validity of the work we are doing to free ourselves of limiting beliefs. We are beginning to resonate with the truth of our inner humanity, and our limitless potential.
Without the burden of limiting beliefs, we taste and feel the freedom of inner peace. The lifespan you are living is motivating this entire process by revealing the suffering you experience from the old system of believing. Deconstructing limiting beliefs, knowing what is true and what is not, this is the work of the free spirit.
2. You are free to take full responsibility for your inner peace. This is how you release the limiting beliefs you carry: Within the container of skin and flesh, you witness the experience of dis-ease, and you flush it out with your conscious breath. More or less. You are free to take full responsibility for your energy through the setting of relational boundaries. You are free to do this exclusively to your benefit and regardless of the experiences other people will have of you, so long as you show respect for others autonomy. You are free to ensure that wherever you go, and whomever you are with, you are responsible for the environment 6 inches outward of your body…in other words, your energy field, your aura, your orbit. You are free to cut any cords, block any unwanted energy, and contain yourself inside of this field for your personal safety and security.
You are allowed to exit rooms and environments and relationships where others ask you to hold a projection of yourself that is true for them, and not true for you. You are allowed to say goodbye and walk away when you are being given toxic or diseased energy of violence and pain. You are allowed to take full responsibility for your inner peace, to insource instead of outsource the love you need. Because deep down you need to understand this…You are the one you need to impress. You are the one you need to make see you. You are not suffering because other people are judging you, shaming you or not loving you. You are suffering because a part of you agrees with them. And you are allowed to heal this part of you. To bring the parts of you who do not feel the love, into the realm of inner peace. That is your full responsibility. And you are free to take it.
3. You are free to fully express as your whole, unique self. If we are one, then each one of us is a wholesome everything. But in the way we make contrast, in the way we split from the whole, into these teeny tiny beings of human stuff, we are all made up of a little bit of everything. Different doses and flavors. Greed, Lust, Hate, Love, Compassion. We are wholly human. But we do it so differently, so infinitely diversely. We just show up in all these incredibly unique forms exploring all that we are through this little tiny unique example of what is life.
It is sort of the whole point I think, to explore the human experience to its fullest expression. Being a being who is doing their wholeness right through fullest expression is akin to a rainbow being a rainbow. It just allows itself to be. But unlike the rainbow (as far as we can tell), we know we are this one being (for now). And we are allowed to be in awe of who we turned out to be. You are allowed to love your fully expressed self. Even when it does not get received. Even when it is not graceful or easy. You are allowed to bring the exquisite gift of your wholeness to the surface of every moment. And you are free to mingle this wholeness within the interdependence of the whole.