Chapter 9
Freedom is release from the bondage of great expectations. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it, folks. This is the real thing. Spirit and flesh are already united. Any perceived duality between them exists only in the mind.
What we do matters, and yet it is also meaningless. We are already free. We have the power to chose each step we take forward or backward. We have the power to go nowhere. Inertia is different from being.
The meaning we project onto life generates a litany of expectations. Expectations are the air that fills a bubble waiting to burst. Let them go. Life is meaningless, expectations are endless, and you are invested with the power of choice.
Expectations are the essential ingredient to disappointment. If you expect life to be meaningful, you are destined for disappointment.
Life is. You are. Be. That is the secret ingredient to freedom and happiness.
Drama is a poor substitute for love. Drama serves love by boldly providing a panoramic representation of what love isn’t and where love is not.
Surrender to the emptiness within to discover fullness. The hollowness you feel inside is the essence of joy waiting to be discovered within you. It is meaningless. Joy is meaningless, but it feels good. Goodness is meaningless, but there is pleasure to be found within it.
Drama is a mask that conceals emptiness. Beyond the comedy and tragedy, stillness lies waiting for your discovery.
Free will is always yours to express. You are always expressing your free will. Your quality of life has everything to do with the choices you are making. Chances are, if you are choosing to let outside influences make your decisions for you, you don’t feel free. Nevertheless, you are free.
You are free to choose imprisonment. You may not enjoy the quality of life that imprisonment brings you, but it can give you the false comfort that the decision was taken from you. If you believe that you have no choice, then you can assume that the responsibility for your unhappiness is not really yours. If you believe that you are not responsible for your own happiness and you are unhappy, then you can pretend that someone else is to blame.
Blame is addictive. It comes with the high of self-righteous anger. Self-righteous anger is a poor substitute for love.
Freedom is accountability for your own happiness. Most of us claim that we would like to be happy. Very few of us are willing to accept the accountability to realize it fully.
Blame is a natural high. Happiness is the result of genuine fulfillment. Blame seeks external validation for a temporary fix. Happiness is the internal realization that nothing is broken.
You are free. Even if you allow someone or something external to make your choices for you, you are still making the choice to give away your power. It is all up to you.
If we are accountable for our own lives and responsible for our own happiness, then we have no one to blame but ourselves for our perceived unhappiness. In that light, blame becomes a bummer. It is no longer a natural high. It becomes a hot potato. We want to throw it to or at someone or something else.
You have the power to transcend the power of blame by putting it down now. Accountability has nothing to do with blame. Accountability has everything to do with awareness of the choices you are making now. If you don’t like what you are choosing now, choose something different.
The choice is up to you. That is what free will is all about. Free will is a precious gift. Free will is a fact of life.
You are free.
Blame is hollow. Blame is meaningless. Let it roll by the wayside. Move onto bigger and better things.
Loving yourself isn’t blaming yourself or anyone else for your problems. Loving yourself is an honest assessment of the choices you have made and choosing differently if you want something different.
It is all very simple. Our perceptions project the illusion of complication onto the bubble that is bound burst. Let it the bubble burst. Choose differently.
The power to choose is yours. You are the master of your own creation. Live masterfully.
Emotional masturbation is meaningless. It carries the illusion of meaning. It creates a clear and present drama designed to distract you from the emptiness you feel inside. Surrender to the silence within you. Let the music of that silence carry you to your bliss. It is possible. All things are possible. Even you are possible.
Believing in yourself is consciously acknowledging the god and goddess invested eternally within you. You are made in the image of love.
You are free.