This week in my yoga classes we have been discussing ways to gain personal freedom from our negative thoughts. For many of us, we find our mental tape recorders playing the same messages over and over again. This makes us feel unsettled in our hearts and our consciousness is not aimed towards peace. Rather it is in a state of turmoil. Does this sound familiar? Sometimes when I try to erase my messages they only get louder and louder! So I have learned that instead of continually hitting the delete button, I accept these thoughts and let them go.
Here is a great article from Daily Om.org that really explains how freedom is a conscious effort.
Even those who have little freedom physically, perhaps because of incarceration or health limitations, have a kind of freedom that can never be taken away. In fact, that kind of freedom is often discovered in instances of extreme physical limitation. When we are prohibited from living our life as we would like to, we discover what is forever and always free: consciousness.
Our consciousness has never been bound by a body or by anything. Our consciousness–or Consciousness, which is what we really are–is only temporarily identified with our particular body-mind. That body-mind and the life it is leading isn’t particularly important to Consciousness. After all, Consciousness, or the Oneness, has manifested in every possible form and non-form for its own exploration and pleasure. How your particular form looks, what state it is in, and how your life is going is not an issue for Consciousness. It created it all and loves it all, just as it is. It intends to have exactly the experience you are having within your body-mind.
The joy that Consciousness experiences in being alive isn’t simply theoretical. That joy can be experienced by you, no matter what your circumstances are. If you aren’t experiencing it, it’s only because you aren’t paying attention to it, but to the complaints and discontentment of the egoic mind, which tries to define our life and our experience for us. Consciousness defines all experience as good and worthwhile. That is its truth, and it can be your truth, not just in theory, but in experience.
We have the freedom to choose what we give our attention to and what we believe about ourselves, our situation, others, and life. This is a tremendous responsibility, as it determines to a great extent what our experience of life will be. No matter what our circumstances are, we have the freedom to accept them, which simply means to not argue with reality, but allow ourselves to have the experience that we are having–because we are having it!
Happiness is under our control more than we may realize. We have more power than we may think–we have the power to not think, to ignore our thoughts, and to experience the gift that this life is.
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you are craving a day of decompressing and freedom from your thoughts, come to one of my yoga retreats. My retreats are one day events and cost $60.00. You will get 2 yoga classes, a hike in nature, and a vegan- gluten free lunch. Below is my yoga retreat schedule for the rest of the year and the flier for my August retreat. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Namaste
