Breaking Free
Freedom is a great essence. It’s one of my favorites and probably ranks high on everyone’s list. Yet I wouldn’t say that being free is an easy state to achieve. More often than not, I spend most of my time in the ‘breaking’ part of breaking free, the ‘trying to become free’ part.
Perhaps it is because there is so much to break from, to be free from, that I spend so much time in that mode. At this particular juncture on our evolutionary journey, there is a whole lot that we are breaking from–both on the inside and the outside, as individuals and as nations and as a global community. We are breaking from economic structures that have existed for centuries that no longer support us; from ways of surviving based on an outdated, tribal model of dominating or being subservient to a dominator; from trying to control the earth, control the resources, control the future, control each other; from deeply ingrained conditioned reactions that are used to hold the ‘tribe’ together, such as shame, blame, guilt, outrage, pity and self-pity; from beliefs that bind and blind us; from the obsession to judge and pass judgment. In fact, there is not too much that we are not breaking from or need to break free from during these times.
It is worth noting that the process of breaking free from anything can’t happen until you first realize that you are not free. It is a substantial spiritual step to realize you are really not free; that, in fact, you are living in a prison. It is an equally substantial step to see it is a prison of your own making existing inside your head, or that you have unconsciously agreed to living in a prison because everyone else is. And the next giant step is to do something about it.
These steps do not come easily. It is only when living in a box is no longer acceptable, or when some crisis forces you into awareness, or when the structures in our collective lives collapse under their own weight, or when the earth sends us continual, loud messages that we must change, that we have the marvelous opportunity to confront our prison and to break free. We can then begin our evolution in earnest. You break free because you must.
The change starts where the prison is: inside your head, with your thinking. It starts with a change in perception. Your perceptions influence your behavior and the choices that you make. As you clean up your inside world so that you no longer are held captive to the thinking, beliefs and habits of the past, you begin to view the outside world through a different lens. You perceive the journey differently, you respond differently, and you make different choices.
You and I are part of civilization at a time of collapse. We are both the wrecking crew and the clean-up crew, as well as the designers of the future. We span all these roles sometimes in the course of a single day. Standing in the midst of a huge rubble pile, we see that there is still more to come down. If we are to become powerful, we must keep breaking free from old ways of thinking, perceiving and doing. Breaking free is the task we have given ourselves by being born duirng this time. The more we are able to free ourselves on the inside, the more change we are able to usher in on the outside.