Exercise 4: Be Free
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”
—Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Webster’s Dictionary (1983) defines “free” as “not determined by any thing beyond its own nature or being: choosing or capable of choosing for itself” and “Made, done, or given voluntarily or spontaneously” as well as clear, and unobstructed.
Free is a state of energy, of consciousness. It is unobstructed truth. It is the state of pure mind. To be free is to know oneself as truth, as energy, as pure mind. We are all free. When we are experiencing ourselves as free, we are allowing life to flow through us, and all are welcome to it. We give and receive without holding or attaching to anything. This is the only true freedom. This understanding is realized by many North American traditional native people, who often give away everything they have in a give-away ceremony. When we give all we have, we are free. We are holding on to nothing, we are obstructing nothing. We are “little hollow bones,” as Frank Fools Crow, Lakota healer and ceremonial Chief put it. He taught that when we empty ourselves completely, then we can be hollow bones for the creator to use. We can give away thought forms and emotional energies that we are clinging to. We need not give them residence within us. The energy in these thought forms and emotions is essentially life-force that is stuck, held between the worlds by our magnetism, and our grasping. We let go, we breathe, we return these energies to life. We are free. We are free to all life, we cost nothing. We are free. In this way, we affirm life.
“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
—Maya Angelou
"Give.
The greatest joy of life is in giving, in loving and in sacrificing. To give, we must have abundance in ourselves. We cannot give what we have not. Therefore, create fullness: good health, good emotions in plenty, good knowledge.
Then, give help to all; give love and sympathy to those who deserve them, give knowledge to all who need it. Give. To give is life…"
—Swami Chinmayananda
The first step is letting go of judgment. Absolute acceptance is the key. We accept ourselves as we are right now, in this moment. We have compassion for the thought forms stuck within us, for the emotional energy we cling to. When we hold on to anything, decay sets in. Cancer in remission, for example, is stuck energy becoming free. It has to go somewhere, create something. When we begin to truly know that we are very delicate, perfectly balanced manifesting machines, that this is our true identity, and that we bring energies into manifestation, we can see how unmanifested, non-resonant energies we identify with as part of us ends up stuck. It has to do something. So we manifest illness of the mind, body and spirit, in human consciousness and on the planet.
It’s okay. It is just a misunderstanding. We are waking up now. We relax into absolute acceptance, and the energies shift. We are free. It’s that easy. Life moves toward being free always. We just accept, stop clinging.
“Acceptance is best viewed as part of our total being that we give to our relationships, careers, and world. It is like removing a filter which blocks the heart's glow. Then our perception is transformed; we can see the reflection of our heart-light in others.”
—Steve Brunkhorst