Spiritual Awakening Journey: Pt. X - True Freedom
“To free your soul is to be truly free.”
It has been around eight months of an intense spiritual awakening process. I’ve undergone the initiation, the excavation, the processing, the shedding, the integration, and the reprogramming phases, along with undergoing serious soul and life force energy re-connection work. I have cultivated my connection to energy and divine intelligence. I have reclaimed my soul, ownership of my mind, body, and energy. I have shed and released layers upon layers of energetic grime, hardened identity shells, steel reinforcement walls, chains, and tons of baggage and trauma from past lives and inheritance from ancestors and family. I have freed my soul, freeing it from the dark prison it was once chained to.
During my process of reconnecting with soul, it took some time to identify and locate my lost soul within. But I knew it was there dormant somewhere inside of me. Until one day, I was able to free it from a prison at the bottom of an ocean. I was guided to dive deep deep down into the depths of the dark ocean waters. At the very bottom, I discovered a small child chained to the ocean floor. As if she had been there for eternity. I unchained her and I cried and told myself I would never abandon my soul again. Simultaneously, I was going through my healing and releasing process. I was also called to begin tilling the Earth within. And so with every meditation, I would clean and till the Earth, removing the waste that occupied the space inside. With time, the Earth within was purified and nourished and then eventually I was called to plant seeds in the empty, clean space. The light of my soul was contained in the center of a flowing ‘light fountain.’ Seeds around it were planted. Day by day in my meditations I would tend to the seeds, water them, and watch them slowly grow week after week. Until eventually, it miraculously began to grow into a beautiful garden of delicate spring white flowers. The small garden grew in size and I was then called to install a glass greenhouse around it to protect the growth. It would become a beautiful sun-filled garden with light shining on it, and a soul fountain in the center, with cascading white light. It would become my sanctuary that I returned to every day in my meditation. And I would admire how beautifully it grew and developed everyday. How peaceful, serene, beautiful and light-filled it was. Butterflies eventually came to flutter around in the garden. With time, the garden began to outgrow its glass greenhouse and one day I was called to shatter it. The growth spread out like wildfire and the entire space was covered in a wild forest of trees. In the center of the forest, an enormous, magnificent tree was present. The ancient tree holds the light of my soul, and around it is a small clearing in the forest with grass, birds and butterflies. I return to this sacred clearing in the forest inside of me whenever I go to reconnect with the tree and the light of my soul. This is my sacred place within. I rest here, I meditate here, and I seek council here. What is wonderful is that I had a vision of this special place long before I ever developed it inside of me. I imagined this place in the early days of my spiritual awakening and healing process. At the time, I never knew what it was or that it would hold such significance in my life.
True freedom does not come suddenly one day, or because someone has granted it to you. For me, true freedom was cultivated within. It came with time, internal effort, consistency and devotion. Freedom was a result of the hard work I devoted myself to for the last 10 months — work to undergo a spiritual awakening process, to heal, to learn, to reconnect with my soul. I don’t think I am free, I inherently feel and understand that I am free because I have freed my soul. And in freeing my soul, I was able to free my body, my mind, my ego, and myself from fears, false desires and illusions. I began to wake up and ‘see’ when I chose to commit to a quest to free my soul. Despite it feeling impossible and illusive in the beginning, I believed it was possible, and I did everything to ultimately achieve it.
It took me awhile to understand this freedom. And there were many times during the process that I did not feel free because I was undergoing a spiritual awakening. I asked, why me? Why am I going through this? Real spiritual awakening processes, if you surrender to the years of self-isolation and self-examination, while also being connected in supernatural ways, can in a way feel like a prison if you long to be ‘normal’, or relatable, or return to society. I started contemplating the concept of freedom a few months in after I began my spiritual awakening. It felt illusive to me. At the time I wondered, why did life feel like a series of battles for freedom? Why did freedom feel within reach and then not? What does true freedom actually mean and how does one obtain it? I started thinking about these questions when I was writing about fear. Perhaps because the desire for freedom is in a way connected to our fears. Perhaps one does have to fight for true freedom though a series of battles—to face head on their fears and challenges? To free themselves from what keeps them from feeling free?
Before my spiritual awakening, I never felt free. I liked to think that I was, but I wasn’t. Everyday I woke up with overwhelming dread. I wished I could stay in bed forever instead of starting the day to go to work. My body physically revolted but I pushed onwards, so much so that I would have reflux everyday on my morning commute. I operated in a constant state of repressed anxiety, worry, stress and tension. Everyday, I made decisions that violated how I actually felt and what I actually wanted to do. I forced myself to keep moving forward, to keep working hard, to keep smiling, to keep doing my best…to keep surviving. I thought I was free. I thought that because I had money I had choices. I had freedom to go on vacation (3 weeks a year), I had freedom to enjoy my free time (2 days a week), I had freedom to buy what I desired. I had purchase freedom but I was not free in time, energy, and free will.
FREEDOM: the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc. whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited.
Freedom is a human concept. Society implies that it is something external of ourselves. We have freedom as long as it is granted to us, or are born into it. We are made to believe that people are born into various levels of freedom. Some people are born with more freedom and privilege, and others are born with less freedom and privilege. We also associate racial and gender stereotypes with the concept of freedom. We are made to believe that people of certain races, genders, classes or socioeconomic backgrounds are born more or less free. And that if they desire to have more freedom, they have to fight for it. It implies they never had it to begin with. Born as an Asian-American woman, I have a social right to intellectual and economic freedom, but a limited perceived social right to freedom in voice and power. Asian women are expected to play a role of quiet capability, responsibility, and submissive. All of us are challenged in some way by the appearance of our human form. I’d like to believe these challenges should serve as motivators for overcoming the perceived limitations, but more importantly, push you to ultimately not believe what anyone thinks or believes about you. We are all pushing some socially perceived limitation of freedom. But ultimately, true freedom has nothing to do with any of those things (of race, class, socioeconomic background, privilege, etc). A slave and a prince can both be bound by feelings of control, social expectations, responsibilities, and restrictions. And if you let them eat you up and chain you down from doing what you really desire, you will always be a prisoner, no matter the material comforts. There will always be external attempts of control or restrictions on freedom to varying degrees in society. But the greatest form of control and restriction of freedom comes from within. Freedom is not something to attain or strive for or ask for, because true freedom cannot be granted externally. You do not need another person to grant you your freedom or tell you that you are free, when you can do that yourself. As long as you believe that you are not a free person, that you are not deserving of freedom, that you are powerless to make your own decisions….you will never be free, no matter what anyone tells you or what your social standing is in the world.
I feel free, because I operate from a place of personal power, truth, self-belief, self-love and trust. I have accessed my soul’s voice, wisdom and power. I have the ability to harness energy and generate power internally. I trust myself and see all the ways I am already guided by the Universe. I prioritize my health, growth, and well-being. I make decisions in accordance to what my soul desires and what I need. I actively face the fears and challenges that hold me back from feeling free. I give myself permission to ‘be.’ I am the leader of my own life, I take responsibility for myself, and I make decisions I desire.
True freedom requires an individual to be brave, courageous, and to face their fears and challenges ‘head on.’ Shifting your power source from the external to the internal is the key to realizing your truest sense of freedom. When you can generate power for yourself, you don’t need to try to get power and approval outside. You can break the cycle of external expectations and co-dependency. You won’t need permission to do something. You will take responsibility for yourself, care for yourself, and follow what your soul desires.
Our truest sense of freedom comes from a deep understanding of who we really are and what we really need at a soul level. True freedom is exercised and realized when we can be 100% ourselves, express ourselves 100% as we truly are, and live our truths in the world with joy and openness, not guilt or shame, no matter what other people may think. True freedom is reflected in how fully we can live in accordance to our own values, personal beliefs, unique desires, and our soul’s dreams. True freedom is felt with wild abandon, peace, and expansive possibility. We breathe freely, we see freely, we sense freely, we perceive freely, we speak and sing freely, we move freely, we dance freely, we express freely, we be ourselves freely. True freedom is the freedom to be yourself 100% in all aspects of your life.
“When you believe and understand that you are inherently a free person, and follow through with your actions as a ‘free soul’, you are free.”