SUMMER BLESSINGS, dear friends! Freedom is very much in our hearts and minds these days. Still freedom is just a word, a concept; an ideal until we will it in our individual lives. We cannot have outer freedom, however, if inwardly we are imprisoned by our fear and all its negative companions. Yet blessed are we who choose to face our fears, one by one. Each fear faced increases our love-quotient. Silence is the golden key that helps us open our heart-gate wider and deeper toward freedom: thus, we bless the world.
Freedom is not an end in itself. It is not just freedom from something; it must also be freedom for something. In the spiritual life, freedom is for nothing other than love. Human beings exist because of love, and the meaning and goal of our lives is love.
When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom. Where true inner freedom is, there God is. And where God is, there we want to be.
The inner spirit is who I really am. My body is alive in this nature and exists in its frame. I do not need to be spiritual to find this. I only need to stop believing that the ego, the small self, is me. If I do, a different knowing emerges which has a largeness and a certain beauty. It is an expression of power and love beyond the usual definitions. To live in its knowledge is to know yourself to be free.
To lie fallow is a gift. We don't really know how to do it. Rather we are done by it or undone by it. The moments we are allowed to be in that condition are times of gratitude. It is from these that our freedom comes. It is where authentic being exists. Any fruitfulness arises from that surrendered openness. It is there that God makes each of us a fertile ground, a bearing soil.
Those who are disciplined with joy and light within become one with God and reach the freedom that is God.
How can we discern the true freedom of our soul, the freedom in which everything is given, from the promises and practices of personal liberation? Mystics who have given themselves to love know what is beyond the borders of culture and conditioning. They inhabit a region of the soul where love and service are given freely and there is neither striving nor achievement. Living a relationship of oneness, they recognize that the deepest longing of their heart belongs not to themselves but to their Beloved... Belonging neither to this world or the next, they are servants of love and carry the wisdom that comes from a commitment to love.
In the last years of his life, Rultin was fond of repeating a statement attributed to A. Philip Randolph: "The struggle must be continuous, for freedom is never a final act. "A few months before Rultin died, a young admirer asked how he kept hopeful in dismally conservative times. "I have learned a very significant message from the prophets," Rultin replied. "They taught that God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What is required of us is that we not stop trying."
Spirit's gift of freedom comes to us as a conscious rhapsody of being chosen and choosing. We are journeyed through life by mysterious Spirit that will not let us be till we grasp our freedom, with fear and fascination, till we say yes or no. This is the glory of being human: experiencing being chosen to decide, and deciding, again and again, endlessly. This is the conscious rhapsody of our lives.
Consider freedom: find an inner freedom and then,
however constraining the circumstances are,
it will not diminish your internal freedom.
Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool streams gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word "Water," first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty caress as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
Play is our contact with our love for life. It brings us back into our joy at being alive and shows us where our freedom is. Play moves us out of our fixed mindsets: it offers freedom from the tyranny of habit, freedom from the mundane and ordinary, from the rational and need to know and be in control. It is freedom from rigid identification with race, class, gender, and even species.
Most people want solitude because they want to discover their unconditional freedom, where they are free of all definitions.
There's such beauty in sharing the distinctive songs of our own souls as we dance with the grand web of life, each of us embodying particular forms, energies, and rhythms, bringing into the world our unique purposes, passions, and gifts. The tapestry of our lives is colored with freedom when we are guided by our own creativity and knowing.