LIVING WITH JOY - Chapter 15

XV. Freedom is Your Birthright

Freedom is an inner feeling. It is the ability to choose what you want. It is the knowledge that you are the captain of the ship. Freedom is knowing that you own your own life, that you are the one in charge. Freedom is essential for joy, for anywhere you feel trapped or that your rights have been taken away, you cannot experience joy.

Freedom is important if you are to bring the light of your soul into consciousness. You live on a planet of free will, where you learn about action and reaction, cause and effect. Earth reality is based on choice. No matter what situation you are experiencing in your life, whether you think you have freedom or not, you have made a choice to be in that situation.

You learn by trial and error. Do not make yourself or others wrong for the choices they make, for you are always growing through the reactions and effects of your actions. In this earth school of free will you call life there are many lessons and challenges of freedom.

The only limits to freedom
are those you place upon yourself.

How do you lose your sense of joyous freedom, your birthright of choice? As a small child there are many demands and expectations of you, yet a child has more freedom than it might appear. A child is free to respond in new ways, to learn and to grow without precon­ceived ideas. A child is free to examine things afresh, to take each experience for what it is and not categorize or analyze based on past experience. A child is free, par­ticularly in the earlier years of life, to form opinions based not on past ideas, but on natural reactions.

As a child grows, some feelings of freedom become lost in the process of developing the mind. The mind begins to look for patterns; it begins to see associations and starts connecting things that would be better understood as independent events. When something hap­pens, the mind begins to look at all other things of a similar nature, often exaggerating the negative by com­paring the situation to memories of the past.

As a child, you make strong decisions. A woman who often felt afraid to stand by her creative work discov­ered that when she was a young child someone had ridiculed a picture she had painted. She became afraid to show people her creative work. She began to hide her drawings, and eventually felt bad about every crea­tive effort. She became afraid to assert her power. She identified new experiences with the old one and in this way froze the degree of choice available in new, but similar circumstances. This led to a loss of freedom— she was no longer free to choose her response to her own power and creativity.

Children make constant and ongoing decisions about the nature of reality. Another woman found it difficult to speak out about things she really believed in. She discovered that as a small child, when making a cake with her aunt, she had been sharply rebuked for a com­ment she made. She made a decision at that moment— that to be loveable, she needed to keep her opinions to herself. In future situations she operated on that prem­ise. It took away her freedom to respond spontaneously and to see each situation as a new experience. She be­came afraid to speak up, and found herself intimidated when it came to voicing an opinion that might be chal­lenged.

Freedom is your birthright. It belongs to everyone. Now you may say, I am not free in this or that area of my life. I am not free to quit my job, travel the world, or do what I want. You are free—to the degree you believe yourself to be free.

To create more freedom in your life,
do not look at the areas in
which you do not have freedom;
look instead at the areas
where you have created freedom.

Perhaps you have the freedom to stay out late if you want, or the freedom to buy whatever food you want at the grocery store. To have more freedom look at what freedom you already claim as your right. Feeling sorry for yourself for lacking freedom puts you in the role of a victim. Whenever you experience yourself in that role, you are not powerful. Look instead at the areas in which you have chosen not to be the victim of another person or a circumstance. All of you have created free­dom in many areas of your life. You can see that you have given yourself many freedoms, freedoms you value greatly and would allow no one to take away.

How about those areas in your life where people are demanding more from you than you want to give? They may want more time, energy, love, or more attention. They may demand it in such a way that you feel a loss of freedom. If this is occurring in your life, try asking yourself if a part of you wants more time and more attention from another part of you than you are willing to give. Anything that you feel another person is taking away from you is symbolic of something you are taking from yourself. If you feel people want more attention than you can give them, or put demands upon you that you cannot and do not choose to meet, ask, "Is a part of me putting demands that can't be met on another part?"

Other people act as mirrors to show you something about what you are doing to yourself. In this case you can ask, "Am I in some way taking something away from myself, not paying enough attention to my own needs?" You can begin by looking at what those needs are and deciding you will pay attention to them. In one case, a man felt his girlfriend was demanding far too much from him in the way of time and space. He en­joyed his many hours spent working alone, and her need for companionship was far greater than his. As he began to examine the demands she put upon him for more attention, he realized that in all of his long hours of work he was not paying attention to himself and his own greater needs. He discovered he was not paying attention to his higher self which was wanting sleep and rest and more attention. He was instead working long, hard hours, ignoring his physical needs and the needs of other parts of himself.

The woman who felt she was not being given the at­tention and the time she wanted from this man began to look at this as an inner message. She felt they did not play or spend quality time together. On deeper reflec­tion, she realized that she was not giving herself quality time, that she was rushing around all day, responding to the needs of others, and that she was not allowing herself to play and have fun. Everything she blamed her partner for withholding from her was something she was not giving herself.

Freedom is something you create for yourself. It is not given to you and it cannot be taken away. You can choose to give it away and you can choose not to claim it, but others cannot take it. Only you can give it away. There are many areas of freedom in your life you know nobody would be able to take away from you. Perhaps you have a favorite place to eat and you feel free to eat there. You know deep inside that no one would be able to stop you. Perhaps you have the freedom to watch a favorite show on TV, and you know no one will stop you. You may notice in these situations that nobody does try to stop you.

When you put out a definite and clear
message to the Universe, you rarely
have to fight for what you want.

Have you ever rehearsed something in advance, gotten very clear about what you wanted, and then discov­ered you didn't even need to ask? Struggling to get what you want most often happens when you are not certain you deserve to have it.

Many of you who work feel that you are not free, that in some way or another between the hours of nine and five you have given up your freedom. Freedom is an attitude. To experience freedom in this situation, it may be necessary to look at the larger picture. Why are you in this job? If it is for the money, remember that you freely chose this job to make money and that you are free at any time to find another way to make money. You can create a sense of freedom from moment to mo­ment by realizing you are free to respond, act and feel any way you choose. You are free to speak and take action within the framework of your job. There is al­ways a level of freedom in everything you do. Look at where you are free. Focus on that freedom, and it will increase in your life.

The greatest barrier to freedom lies in the way you think of the world. Lack of freedom does not come from other people, but from your own thinking processes. Many of you take away your freedom by not allowing yourselves a choice of how to react to a given situation. For instance, say your friend always criticizes you, and you always respond with hurt or anger. You can gain freedom by finding new ways to react. Perhaps you can say, "Oh, this friend of mine simply does not know a better way to act." Or, "Perhaps this friend of mine is very critical of himself and he is only criticizing me because it is the way that he talks to himself." You can choose to come from compassion and not take it personally. You can choose to remain centered and balanced even when others around you are not. This is the ultimate freedom, the freedom to choose how you will respond and be, the freedom to act in a way that elevates your energy.

Most people respond in habitual ways, rather than examining their responses. Realize that you can choose how you react and respond to everything in the uni­verse. When some people have deadlines they begin to hurry, rushing everything in their lives. Other people respond by procrastinating and finishing at the last mo­ment. Others respond with depression, feeling that the task is overwhelming, their inner voice telling them they can never do it. You are free to choose—do you want to react to something in a way that makes you feel unhappy or bad about yourself, or react in a way that promotes your self-worth and self-esteem?

Other people respond to you in whatever way their programs and beliefs dictate. Power comes in knowing that you have a choice. You do not need to change other people; you can change your reaction to them. When you choose to feel good you are not dependent on other people acting in certain ways to make you feel good. Before you can attract people who will support, appre­ciate and acknowledge you, you must choose to do that for yourself.

The degree to which you support and
acknowledge yourself will be the degree
to which you receive support .

Each time you choose to feel good about yourself, even when someone is criticizing you, putting you down, or acting in a way that you used to respond to with pain, you are choosing joy. Each time you do so you create freedom in your life. You are free from hav­ing to have other people act in certain ways for you to be happy. You are free from your own expectations.

Frequently a feeling of pain comes from getting caught in details rather than seeing the larger picture. For instance, a woman became very disappointed in her boyfriend when he did not bring her flowers. She had the picture in her mind that being given flowers meant she was loved. Every time she thought about him not bringing flowers, she felt pain. She was not free to choose joy because of her own internal pictures. When she began to look at the truth and the larger picture, she realized that this man loved her deeply, was very committed to her and did not view giving flowers as a statement of love. As she looked at all the good things that existed between them, she realized she was getting caught in her own expectations; she was choosing pain out of habit.

To have freedom
be willing to give freedom.

You cannot own another person, nor can you have a relationship of equality when you are taking freedom away from someone else. All people have the right to do what is enlivening and growth-oriented for them. Many people have to leave relationships because they are not given the freedom they need to grow. Some are threatened by the need for freedom in their partner or mate. They interpret a request for freedom as pushing away from them, rather than others' attempts to seek out their own higher selves.

Ironically, the more freedom you give people the more they will want to be with you. Do you demand things of others that you would not want them to de­mand of you? Do you expect them to report in to you, live up to your pictures, and be there whenever you want? Whatever degree of freedom you take from oth­ers is the degree of freedom you take from yourself.

Imagine a prisoner sitting in a cell with a guard who must guard him twenty-four hours a day. The question is, who is really the prisoner, the guard or the prisoner? If you feel that you must watch over others all the time, that you cannot trust them or give them freedom, you are just as much in a trap as they are. Many of you lose your freedom because you are so closely guarding those things that you do not want to have taken away from you. You may guard your mate, your possessions, your children or family in such a way that you are spending more time protecting them than seeking your own growth.

If you experience jealousy, it is often based on a fear that others are giving something to someone else that they are not giving to you. If you look and examine the issue, it is usually something you are not giving your­self. If you are jealous of your mate giving attention to another person and you want to curtail his freedom so that he cannot do so, look again. It may be that your higher self is not being given the attention it is requiring.

Jealousy takes away the freedom of both the one who is jealous and the one who is possessed. If you give yourself what you need—be it attention, love, or some­thing else—then you will not experience jealousy. You will find that you can get satisfaction from many sources, not just from the one you love. Jealousy im­plies scarcity, that there is not enough. Freedom implies abundance, that there is enough.

Determine now that
you will give freedom
to everyone close to you.

Let them make their own mistakes and discover their own joys. I can guarantee that anytime you give free­dom to others, they will turn to you with even greater love and respect. It takes a centered, balanced and se­cure person to give others their freedom. It is a great gift to them and to yourself, for the prisoner no longer needs to be guarded and thus the jailer is also free.

You are free when you can choose how you want to respond. If you can choose to react with joy and plea­sure, if you can choose to react by seeing the positive, making yourself right rather than wrong, then you have gained the ultimate freedom, the freedom to be and act in a way that reflects your deeper truth.

FREEDOM IS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT

PLAYSHEET

1. List at least three areas in which you allow yourself freedom.

2. Are there any areas in your life you do not feel free? Example: I am not free to go back to school.

3. Do you think it's possible that you could have free­dom in those areas of your life? If it's possible, give yourself permission to have freedom in those areas. It may take a while for that freedom to appear in your daily life, but freedom must start with the thought of it. Turn every statement above into a positive affirmation in those areas you feel freedom is possible. Example: I am now free to go back to school.