Freedom in Restriction

(c) 2011 Joan M. Newcomb

I think there's a quote by Nelson Mandela, who spent most of his adult life imprisoned in South Africa, that you are only as free as your mind.

You can be under enormous physical restrictions, but you as Spirit are always free.

This morning, someone on Facebook who lives in Israel, posted a link for 25 ways to tie a scarf.*  I was giving myself some down time.  It led me to looking for boots and then discovering an older post on a protest at the White House next weekend.  I'm currently 10 miles from the White House!  I could go there in my fashionably tied scarf and my yet-to-be-purchased boots!

Except that I couldn't leave my mother unattended for that amount of time.  She'll go scampering around her kitchen without her walker, fall and break her hip, and we'll end up back in the hospital, this time with something operable on top of recovering from radiation treatment for lung cancer.  Shoot me now.

This reminds me of when I was a new mother at 27.  I was used to dogs, but having a small person dependent on me was a tough adjustment.  Many times I wished I could have left the baby on the kitchen floor on newspaper with a bowl of water.

But as many people know, new motherhood is more than the lack of sleep and dirty diapers.  Elder care is, too.  There's a deeper, spiritual experience going on, whether you're ushering in a new life and helping that Being inhabit a new body and incorporate into the physical, or ushering them our as they're slowly (or quickly) dis-incorporating.

I'm only as free as my thoughts.  Maybe I *can* leave my mother for a few hours on Sunday and she'll be okay.  Or maybe being in LaFayette Square isn't as important as looking through family photos that afternoon.

Whatever your restrictions are, they don't define you.  If you're unemployed, if you'rer divorcing, if you're grieving, that isn't who You are, it's the rich and juicy experience you're going through.

No matter how small or constricted you feel you are, you are always INFINITE.  --I just wrote that sentence while sitting at Starbucks on Connecticut Ave. in the District, and a little toddler in bright pink stopped slurping her apple juice and stared intently at me.  Yup.  INFINITE.

When you remember You are Infinite, then you no longer struggle against you're restrictions, since You created them.  Nothing is happening to you.  "They" aren't doing it deliberately... although it is deliberately happening insomuch as you've popped it into your reality.

Your freedom is how to react or respond.  You're freedom is your inner repose. 

Many years ago, going through my divorce, I stood on a beach and intensely grieved the loss of my house and land, where I'd given birth to my children and buried my pets.  I'd felt like I was a Steward of the land, I'd grown a co-creative garden with Nature there.  Instantly I flashed on the realization that I'm a Steward of the whole *world*,  every tree and park is Mine.

I'd lost my property and gained the world.

What restrictions are you bumping up against?  What impositions are you resisting?

This week, turn it around and turn within.  The conflict out there isn't Real.  Those that seem so powerful are actually powerless.  As Essence you are creating it all. 

Give yourself moments, mental mini-breaks.  There is infinite freedom in a moment staring out the window or enjoying sunlight filtered through autumn leaves.

Try this, whenever you think of it, for this week.  And see what happens!

*BTW, nothing is ever what it seems on the surface.  After watching the scarf-tying video this morning, I looked at a 'tutorial' given, and imagined that Wendy was raised by people who recognized her specialness, she reflected such joy and ease in her videos.  Nothing was further than the truth - Wendy was a foster-care kid, carrying her belongings in a plastic bag and fearing she'd be homeless on leaving the system when she reached 18.  Freedom comes out of restriction, too.