FREEDOM 4

p. 15-23

In simplest terms I guess we could say that we are either controlled by our history or we are willing to let go of all preconceived notions that we have used to define ourselves and to be willing to go beyond the intellectually known into what the personality thinks of as being “uncharted waters.”

Much of our history is like an iceberg, only the top is obvious, the deeper more ingrained portions are practically invisible and hardly ever touch the realm of conscious awareness. Without even realizing it, many of us think, “Well, I am Irish therefor... I am Catholic therefor... I'm an abused child... I come from a family of alcoholism…” And the list is practically endless.

This might sound like heresy, but I will say it anyway, in our recent racial history, we have decided to take many of these aspects of life that we have labeled as dysfunctions and create a whole history around them. So we gather together as a group of people who share the same dysfunction.

Now we realize the ultimate purpose is healing. We can, you see, that quite often we simply become lost in labels we have given ourselves. We might have recreated our history, but we've also created an attachment to it or an identification with it.

I remember Ram Dass pointing out that “every spiritual path is simply that, a spiritual path and that at some point it needs to have a self-destruct button because when the path becomes an attachment it is no longer leading us, it is holding us prisoner..

Those of you who know me, know that I am a working member of a 12-step recovery program, and you might wonder how I navigate the predicament that I described above. I hope this is not a cop out, but I essentially believe that the process of surrender, which is embodied in the first three steps of a 12-step program are a different or deeper process every time they are approached. Each time I claim the powerlessness of my ego and my awareness of Divine Consciousness within and my willingness to be guided by that Divine consciousness each time I performed at act of surrender, it is never the same as the one that has gone before. My perception is never the same as it was, my awareness of my divine nature, whether I am conscious or not is always expanding.

I believe we have reached a point in our growth and our conscious awareness wherein we could become aware that an idea or pattern of thought and behavior no longer serves us, that we quickly become willing to release it and let it go. That does not mean it disappears, it's still there, but often, as we examine this old attachment, we find it has become either meaningless or irrelevant, and when that occurs the old is replaced by the new.

“Those of you who say yes—who say, “Yes, I may, yes, I may choose, yes, I may know, yes, I may agree to the truth of what I am” so that this truth may be expressed in fullness—may claim a new world. Those of you who say, “No, I will not, I cannot, I am too afraid to let go of the ideas I have held to encounter myself in a higher way” will learn in other ways, and that is also fine. Humanity itself makes its choices, and the agreements that will be made now, in the years to come may well change the course of humanity in a high way. If you all agree, it can be made so.”

Now please do not make this a struggle. Struggle is simply another aspect of resistance that  the mind or the small consciousness throws up before you. Right now it might seem that this process of staying awake or staying aware feels tremendously heavy and almost a burden. Even though we tell you this is not so, we understand that through the perception of your limited self it certainly seems that way.

So let us give you a simple example that might have been used before. imagine yourself out in nature and on the outskirts of a beautiful forest. You look around you and you say to yourself “Those oak trees over there are very nice, but they should be maples. Now you realize the ridiculousness of that kind of statement and yet we would suggest you do this with people all the time.

So what we are offering you right now is the awareness of when you stick a label on another you can become quickly aware and take it back. And it might be perfectly significant to say to yourself “I do know you are a Divine Child of God; I am having trouble seeing or perceiving you that way, but in my heart, despite all of my history and all of my past prejudices, in my heart I do know who you are and I bless you on this journey you have chosen even though it is not mine and even though it is beyond my understanding. 

“Each encounter you have with any human being gives you an opportunity to know who you are, and perhaps know who they are as well in a higher octave. In order for this to occur, you have to stop identifying them as you think they are. Your idealizations of who anybody else is decides for them who they are, and decides for them means in small ways. The truth of who and what you are seeks realization in a new way, and the old way stands before it as a doorway that must be passed through and left, finally, once and for all.”

Although much of this focus concerns the awareness of putting labels on others, the deeper awareness must always be about the labels we have put on ourselves. Each day it might be helpful to be aware, even later on, of some of those moments of sleepwalking or unawareness where we had allowed ourselves to be on “automatic pilot” and to begin to discern what values or ideas or patterns of behavior were leading me at those times. Again, we would remind you this is not about self-judgement so much as it is about self-awareness. Judgment entrenches us in the past, self-awareness allows me the ability to transform and to choose differently.

“Take a moment now and think of four things that you were taught to be fearful of—what your mother said, or the church said, or your teacher said, or the married partner said—what you agreed to in fear. And then ask yourself another question: “How has my life manifested by agreeing to these things?” You will be very surprised at what you see. Some of you still don’t talk to strangers. Some of you still fear that if you step on a crack on a sidewalk, your mother will be broken. Some of you still think that if you tell the truth, you will be hurt, and that it is safer to tell a lie to protect yourself. But you don’t know that the repercussions of these choices are actually informing your lives and teaching you through the repercussions of them.”

It might be easy right now to become afraid of your fear or to be overly energetic in attempting to root out all that you think that is in your way. As we have said previously, we are not disappointed in you and you must realize that the expectations of the mind are simply another attachment, the creation of another illusion. Your soul will grow as your soul needs to grow, and even though this might be shrouded in mystery for the intellect or the thinking mind, the growth of your soul is also embraced by and through the love and guidance of the Divine.

We are here working together. It is only your thinking and your rational self that becomes impatient and exasperated, and even though we do not deny the reality of those feelings, we do suggest that the feelings themselves are a response to an illusion a response to a construct of who you think you should be. As you are learning, that is probably the ultimate label you might put on yourself as well as on others.

“Now as you begin to operate as the what that you are, the Divine in form and field, how you choose begins to transform as well. Because you are not aligning to habit out of recourse, because you are not choosing in fear, because you are not doing what’s expected of you—and while you understand reason, you also understand that the small self thinks and the True Self knows—you begin to bypass the history that has claimed you and claimed your choices for you.

The alignment you hold does not take away choice. It simply aligns choice in the vibration of truth. Understand what this means, friends. To be in alignment to truth informing your choices means you don’t choose in fear, you are not operating in history, you are not operating in a reliance on reason, but in alignment to the True Self, who always seeks expression and will say yes to that which it requires to realize itself through.”

In love and gratitude..

I’m also attaching a reflection that Bob prepared titled Different perspective on Ego