FREEDOM MONTH: DAY 18: “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.” ― Jim Morrison
Being a huge Doors’ fan, notwithstanding, I love this quote. Probably my favorite for the month. What is funny is that I knew all of these things in the 1960s.
Sadly, so did Jim Morrison. But wisdom only comes to us when we can live what we know. Knowing isn’t enough. I love when sponsees tell me, “I know…I know…I know” when we are talking about spiritual changes in behavior. Of course, we know! Knowledge has nothing to do with lifestyle. Knowing and doing are the longest road, from head to heart, or maybe from head to feet. Walking it, walking it. Jim Morrison stated this wonderful information, then died of a drug overdose. So much for what we know!
He was a very brilliant young man who never lived to practice what he knows.
If we go to school and gain all the knowledge necessary to become a brain surgeon, but never perform a single surgery, what good is that knowledge?
The same with life. Life doesn’t give a flying flip what we know. It cares only for what we do and how we do it.
We can gain all the knowledge and information in the world, read all the spiritual books we can get our hands on, and study until we die. If we don’t LIVE like what we know, we are no closer than we ever were.
And it isn’t about sitting with others to prove how spiritual we are and talking about it, it is in the way we give of ourselves, serve others, and walk through the world without harming the people we love and the ones we don’t know.
There is no spiritual path that allows us to be nasty and mean to others, no matter who they are or what they are doing. We are here to care for each other in healthy ways and to accept each other on the journey.
That means we must learn, also, to get out of the way of their journey. Helping others means to step aside and greet them on their journey, but to let them have the journey on their own. And we are here to teach others what that looks like.
No matter if they are your co-workers, strangers on the freeway, someone in front of you in the grocery line, your children, your spouse or long-time friend; the point is to show them how we have taken off the masks, stopped pretending to be someone else, feel all my feelings (but not let them run my life!), and to be authentic and real.
When I do that and let you do that, I keep a safe boundary for myself with you and you and you. I am teaching the only lesson I am here to teach ANYONE…that is how to love my freedom, claim my freedom, and give it back to everyone else. Amen.
Dolphin Hug 