Tiffany consulted with me because she was unable to control her anger. Anytime someone told her what to do - someone she was in a close relationship with like her mother, her husband, or her best friend - she would instantly respond with anger. She was struggling with serious marital problems when she first consulted with me.
At one time or another everyone experiences the modern version of fear, which is anxiety. Our ancestors experienced physical threats that made the fight-or-flight response useful. That’s no longer the case. In modern life, largely thanks to increased stress, we endure a low-level pressure on the nervous system. When this chronic, nagging response rises to the surface of the mind, a person notices the telltale signs of modern fear: worry, insomnia, an absence of happiness, distraction, all of which can build into chronic anxiety.
The way we deal with modern fear determines to a great extent how creative, fulfilling, and contented daily life is. Many billions are spent on tranquilizers, which can reduce the symptoms of anxiety, but they are only a stopgap. Take away the drug, and anxiety almost always returns.
We all need something to keep us humble. Everybody needs to struggle somewhere, and that’s a good thing because it reminds you why you are here and that we are all in it together. That’s why life is the way it is. Plus, we are human. Isn’t it beautiful being a human being?
Freedom is showing up who you are and going through everything and not needing to hide anything. That’s freedom. The day I can’t be myself is the day I stop showing up. Had I not gone through everything I’ve gone through in life, I would be unbearable. I love this version of me.
When you let go of the need to be approved of, when you let go of the need to be understood, when you let go of the need to be liked, all of a sudden there’s an even greater freedom in the transmission and in the communication. So beyond ancestry, beyond generational patterns, what you are is a conduit. You’re a vessel and a vehicle.
Freedom in its totality and the totality of its expression is being a trapeze artist without a safety net, which means in every moment, surrendering to God. And in every moment, allowing God to express through you. Sometimes there are no words, sometimes nothing’s happening and that’s great. You don’t need to always be in action. You don’t always need to be communicating. You don’t always need to be doing something. Sometimes in the silence, everything is communicated in a greater way than you ever could through words.
It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter what your level of education is. It doesn’t matter what your life has been like, how you’ve lived your life. All of that was the unconscious manifestation of every pattern and every decision that was made before now.
We have all lied to ourselves and others at some point in our lives, about who we are, what we think, what we have done.
Deep down our fear is, “If you really know who I am or what I have done, then you won’t love me.”
We are afraid of losing love or losing the life that we have. Living in fear is not freedom.
The truth will set you free and open you to receiving all the bigger blessings that life has in store for you.
It requires real courage. It requires the willingness to not compromise your heart, even if it means being alone.
It’s true that in the process of speaking your truth, you may lose people, relationships may end, old structures might crumble.
Know that you are clearing the space to be open to what is right for you.
There’s a spiritual concept that seems to create a good deal of confusion. It goes by the name of freedom or liberation, both terms referring not to political freedom but inner freedom. The reason that “freedom” has a spiritual meaning is that a state of total freedom is possible. The confusion arises because at first glance we already feel free inside, most of the time, at least. Our thoughts and feelings are our own. We can be persuaded or coerced to change our minds, but in the end we decide for ourselves.
In reality most people experience only a taste of inner freedom. They exist in a state of limitation that is far removed from total freedom. I discuss the desirability of total freedom in my new book, Total Meditation, and I’d like to offer a preview here.
We cannot be free inside if some experiences frighten or distress us. We shut out and deny them, and as a result many if not most experiences get edited, censored, forgotten, and pushed aside in favor of a narrow band of experience that feels safe. Limited freedom is based on what you can reasonably expect from life. Total freedom begins by looking on life as a field of infinite possibilities. It takes some persuasion to make total freedom seem like more than a pipe dream, however. Is it even desirable to feel totally open, unbounded, and free of boundaries to keep us safe?
A key issue here is spontaneity. Spontaneity is without rules, which seems like a recipe for anarchy. Rule enforcement is the surest way to keep people in line, or so the rule enforcers believe. Consider the extreme example of applying to the bank for a personal loan in China. If you want a loan there, you can use your smartphone, and online lending agencies check you out electronically, using data stored in the cloud. An applicant gets accepted or rejected for a loan in one-tenth of a second, after the lending agency has checked out 5,000 (!) personal factors, including how firmly your hand moved when you filled out your application and how low you let your phone battery get before recharging it.
“By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song
and celebration”
—Joni Mitchell
Fifty years ago, in August 1969, nearly a half million young people gathered on a farm in rural New York for “three days of peace and music.” Contrary to warnings about how it would all go wrong, peace and music are exactly what occurred. In spite of the huge crowds, rain, mud, and countless challenges, love and community prevailed. The impact of that peaceful spirit was felt across the country and around the world. Woodstock Nation, whether you were there in person or not, defined a generation. Its legacy continues today.
The path of awakening is not one where we are eternally feeling good. Along it, it is inevitable that we move through moments and periods of not feeling good at all. As unsettling and disconcerting as this may be ultimately, as the spiritual beings that we are, we have not come here to feel eternally good but to get eternally free.
Awakening is not about adding anything onto us. It is not really about learning anything new either. But it is about releasing, letting go and unlearning. Inherently, we already are all that we will ever be. We already are as awakened as we will ever be. We already are as spiritual as we will ever be. The Divine is already inherently within us, and nothing can ever be added onto it to make it more or bigger.
However as we incarnate onto this planet we learn to create stories and fantasies about reality. Some are of our own making. Some we have inherited from the world. From our parents, relatives, guardians, society, culture. These oftentimes are stories that keep us small and limited.
The ego's mantra is: I am not enough and there is not enough. And so, most of the stories we buy into, arise from that perception. It is a limited perception keeping the inherent Divine Light from shining brightly.
We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won’t do with their lives. If we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don’t want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the kind of person he is, our attention would be elsewhere. It would be focused fully upon being in the Now of our own life where we would be actively attending to what we must do to let go of old resentments that won’t let go of us!
A great part of our inability to release this conflict-bred sense of feeling ourselves to be a hostage of how others behave is born of a mistaken perception. In our ignorance, we believe we must fix those who have done us wrong, otherwise justice won’t be served. But, as we are about to thankfully discover, the truth is far from this popular view and the chain of victims it serves to create.
There are great Eternal powers at work around and within us all the time. And as we awaken to realize that these same perfect principles are already in place to empower us, this same understanding puts us in relationship with a whole new order of freedom. Freedom is not a creation of ours. It is not something attained by making life line up with our wishes; it is a system already in place, needing only our awareness of its abiding reality to realize its power as our own.
These same invisible laws hold true when it comes to justice for all. We’ve all heard the phrase, “What goes around comes around.” This principle of karma, that what we give, we will receive in return, is a mathematical law whose root runs through the heart of reality. Our present problem is that we don’t understand this principle in operation because we can’t always see with our physical eyes its unfailing fruition. But be assured, what is evil in nature never goes without its reward, just as what is good is always rewarded in kind. With these truths in mind, how many of us spend our precious time and energy fuming over what others may have done to us?
Want to know how free you really are? Good! You're about to be presented with a unique opportunity to learn all about your individual level of inner liberty.
As you review each of the inner liberties on the list, just note mentally whether or not that particular freedom belongs to you. Our intention is simply to learn what's true about ourselves, not to prove anything about ourselves. Allow these forty freedoms to awaken and stir that secret part of you that knows living in any kind of bondage is a lie. Then follow your own natural sensing all the way to the free life.
This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of truth, love and awareness. We look at the outer and inner aspects of each refuge, and then through guided reflections and a Refuge Ritual, deepen our commitment to the pathways that awaken our minds and free our hearts.
NOTE: Includes a Refuge Ritual at the end of the talk – if you’d like to participate, you’ll need some red string. We use “Classic crochet thread, size 10 in red” about 36 inches per person – available at craft stores. Sing along with The Three Refuges Chant sheet.
Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.
With gratitude and love, Tara
The main limitations for any human being are that you experience the following limited beliefs:
I am my body
I am my thoughts
I am my feelings
I am my concepts and beliefs
I am this separate consciousness
The illusion that this is who you are veils and hides your authentic, essential Self and causes you to live in a limited state of dis-connection from your full intelligence and power. The ego, creates the experience of a separate “I”. Universal I becomes limited, separate I. You see everything as outside of yourself and you create false stories, you see things as separate from yourself and judge everything as good and bad. This separation cause you to feel fear, lack and limitation.
This week, a good friend of mine reminded me that the world we live in is a world of mastering lessons, not to fix the world or yourself. Interestingly enough, we all come from a place that we are going to fix this and fix that when in reality, it’s actually just about the lessons to be learned.
