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October-December, 2013

The Fireworks of Freedom and How to Ignite It in Ourselves

by Rev. Mary Beth Ellis, O.M.C.

July 4th in this country is a day when we celebrate freedom — American freedom from the tyranny of other countries, dictators, and terrorists.

This country was founded on the idea of a new world order. Out of the European enlightenment came such authors as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, who wrote about such blasphemous ideas (as the European monarchs saw it) as democracy and freedom, where men had the right to govern themselves.

The odds were nearly impossible. Here was this huge land of rough, unknown terrain and hunger, wild animals and Indians, unknown diseases and little medical care. But these people, determined to live their dreams of freedom and opportunity managed to cut their way through, win their battle against the British navy, the largest the world had known, and establish their ideals and their religion in this new land. They often lost the small battles, but they won the war against all obstacles, because they believed and they never quit believing that freedom was possible.

July 4th is a day to honor our soldiers of all wars who have given up their jobs, limbs, security, and their lives for our freedom, and I think we owe it to them to identify these freedoms, live by them, and protect them ourselves. If a few Enlightenment scholars hadn’t conceived of these freedoms and the idea of democracy that had virtually died with the Greeks, our ancestors may never have come to America. 

I believe that we, too, are like those forward thinkers and soldiers. We are working to gain our freedom, an inner freedom. We are working at not being a victim of the tyranny of our faulty programming, not being slaves to our thoughts and emotions, not letting the false values of a material society put us in captivity like the old kings often did their subjects.

So July 4th is a day that can be a metaphor for many kinds of freedom — freedom from inner conflicts, our inner dictators and terrorists, like negativity, judgment, depression, loss, alienation, hopelessness, ego driven desires and material values.

Yes, there are many kinds of freedom. We can be very thankful that we live at a time and in a country where so many have fought for and won our outer freedom for us and where we have the knowledge and tools to be gaining our inner freedom.

Let’s look at some of those tools that help us gain our inner freedom from some of those concepts and programming that cause us to be enslaved and thus suffer. Let’s imagine that one of them is a hammer that can shatter the tendency that we have to believe our thoughts all the time.

We have thoughts about ourselves and others that we have learned from society, thoughts that tell us that we or they aren’t okay, thoughts that say that we or they shouldn’t or should have done something. We have thoughts that tell us that life shouldn’t be or should be a certain way. We are basically at war against reality. That is the wrong war to fight. It’s really a type of insanity that we, as easily programmed children, bought and never questioned. It’s like the psychotic in the psychiatric ward who is convinced that he is Napoleon and that all the doctors, nurses and patients are there to serve him and gets angry and attacks the physician if he is told otherwise.

The reality is that he isn’t Napoleon and that the other people are just there going about their own business and that nothing they are doing is meant to defy or threaten him any more than anything that happens in our lives is happening to hurt us or complicate our lives.

My students say, “That’s not fair. We shouldn’t have a test every week.” Okay. So that’s how Jane feels when she’s stressed, the moon is full, and she’s been absent for three days. It’s not good or bad or worthy of getting mad, hurt, or self doubting about.

The spouse says, “You are so controlling. You always want it your way.” Okay. So that’s how he’s programmed to react when I want our son to do his homework instead of going out, and the spouse is too tired to deal with it.

It doesn’t matter what is happening. It’s our thoughts about it that make us suffer. We think that the student or son shouldn’t be doing x,y,or z. The only fact is that they did. The thought that it shouldn’t have happened or that we won’t be okay because it did is what the problem is, and we can look at these thoughts, choose to believe them or not, and, if not, have a type of inner freedom that Jesus did on the cross when he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Life is full of people who know not what they do and situations caused by the laws of physics or psychology that we don’t understand, be it a hurricane Katrina or an armed robber. The Dali Lama didn’t condemn the Chinese communists who killed so many Buddhist monks in Tibet, because he understood that they were doing the only thing that they were programmed to do and that the Tibetans should have created an army.

It’s not reality that is the problem. It is our concepts and thoughts about reality that are the problems. It’s not the stick on our path that is the problem. It’s our projection onto it of our snake phobia that turns it into a reptile that causes the thought that results in a heart attack. We need to constantly examine our thoughts about reality, not reality, which is perfect as it is.

I was feeling in one of these states recently. My best friend had a stroke and can no longer talk with me or write to me. I felt like I’d lost my confident, a person who loved me unconditionally and to whom I could always turn. I thought, “This shouldn’t have happened. I will now go through life alone without a sister/friend.”

When I asked myself about this thought, however, I suddenly looked outside at the tall trees and their leaves glistening in the sun, as only Wordsworth could describe in a poem, and I realized that I had every reason to feel joyful. I thought about the fact that I was in my peaceful home with the time to go about my business doing exactly what I wanted and that I would have been doing the same thing with or without the knowledge that Holly was a phone call away. I had books to read about the intellectual and spiritual things that we had discussed non-stop and I had other dear friends — even a sister/friend.

Yes, I was sad about the fact that she was incapacitated, and I’d do and did all I could to help. But for me to suffer about it was to believe the thought that I wouldn’t be okay without her being there for me. I was okay, if I didn’t believe my thoughts otherwise.

Sometimes it takes the patience of Job to get to that point. Remember how he lost his livestock, children, wife, and wealth and how he continued to have faith in God? Well, sometimes we are like Job in that we feel that we have lost things, but in reality it’s just the laws of physics, psychology, or maybe Karma doing their thing, and we need to accept the reality of what is — and in the end it all turns out for the best, because reality is always perfect.

When questioning our thoughts about reality, we might even need to ask ourselves if what happened really was bad. My friend seems to be quite content to not have to work two jobs every day and to have the long deserved rest that allows her to read, watch her favorite movies, and sit outside in the sunshine watching her daughter’s cats in the afternoons.

The friend who passed on whom we miss so much may have put an end to terrible suffering that we wouldn’t wish on anyone. They kill horses, don’t they?

The job we lost may be just the catalyst that will propel us to start our own business or do something totally different.

The comment from our spouse or child may help us to understand them better — because, after all, they are just projecting onto us their worlds and what is in their minds and what their problems are. Or they may force us to turn within and turn the situation over to Spirit in a way that will help us be even more aware of our oneness with the Christ Consciousness within us.

The truth is that it’s all God’s world. We all have Christ consciousness within us. It is all perfect. True, nothing stays the same,  but that is part of the dance of life, the “only dance there is,” as Baba Ram Dass, the Hindu Harvard professor always said. There is nothing separate from us. We are all that is, and it’s all Spirit. We need only let thoughts go that say otherwise.

We can view life as if it were the most interesting movie ever made or we can sit in the theater and be mad at the script.

So when preparing for this July 4th and being present to the freedom that others have fought so hard for, may we also be cognizant of the freedom that only we can give ourselves — the freedom from our limited beliefs, our beliefs that our suffering can come from anything out there, our beliefs in our faulty programming that believes in the dualities of good/bad, beautiful/ugly or I/other.

So let us know that the new world order that our forefathers brought to this country is possible within us. Let us create a new promised land.

May the fireworks go off in our minds to wake us up to the realization that we have the constant ability to look at and question our thoughts about everything. We aren’t victims of our thoughts. They are just passing through. We are free of them.

Yes, let us celebrate our inner and outer freedom this July 4th. Think on these things as you go through that day. Let’s be in the world, and celebrate our outer freedom, but not of it and celebrate our inner freedom.

“Know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” as Jesus said. The truth is and always will be that all is well in God’s Kingdom.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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