Perhaps the best advice I ever received was delivered abruptly in two short words: STOP BITCHING.
The message was at once offending and liberating. It came from someone many years ago that I barely knew. While I have no recollection of what it was I was apparently droning on about, I have a vivid memory of what the admonition felt like. I was extremely grateful we were conversing on the phone, because the flush on my face would have certainly given me away. I had most certainly been stopped in my tracks, and even though I was shocked to be reprimanded by someone I knew so fleetingly, I also got that he was absolutely right. I recall hurriedly ending the conversation, and I must admit to avoiding this individual while we were still traveling in the same circles. Yet all these years later I am not only recalling the wisdom of this simple and somewhat salty advice, I am also sharing it with those of you who choose to hear it:
STOP BITCHING.
The greatest of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s own response in any given circumstance. As we celebrate this countries birth as an independent nation, I connect personally to the innate call to freedom and to the liberty that is intrinsic to not only Americans, but to all living beings. We all long to be free. While that may look different to each of us, I believe it feels much the same. The masculine principle is freedom, and the feminine quality is love. These comprise the very fabric of our being. They are the nature of our Souls and the dynamics driving our emergence. As we evolve spiritually, the ability to freely choose to respond with love to the circumstances and happenings in our human experiences grows and matures. The more we take responsibility for our own personal consciousness, with all its programming, wounding, triggers, and perceptions, the better able we are to respond to life rather than to react. We develop the capacity to remain free within, even when there may seem to be binding circumstances in the without. For all the New Thought bravado about co-creating our life experiences, there is also a great deal of complaining and blaming about things that seem to be happening to us. We really can’t have it both ways. Either we are responsible for what is occurring in our lives, if only at the level if the Soul, or we are living in a Universe of random occurrences. As much as we may try and control the externals of our lives, we are not at a collective point of evolution where we are very adept at this business of conscious co-creation. And yet we remain free as to how we respond to the situations and occurrences that comprise our days and sometimes trouble our nights. True freedom isn’t always getting our way in the world. True freedom is viewing what is happening through the lens of spiritual vision and awakened awareness. Spiritual maturity recognizes that though the personality self will always want to have its way, the Soul knows there is another way that is transcendent of our petty demands and insatiable wants. The Soul doesn’t need to wrong the antics of the self. It is the often awkward way in which we approach our autonomy. It simply takes the lead responsively as we begin to listen to the part of ourselves that is already free. This is the inner voice that instinctively blesses rather than bitches. That compassions rather than complains. That uses the power of the word constructively, rather than combatively.
Independence is the ability to stand strong in the decision to freely choose a loving response, regardless of what all those around you may be choosing. Free will is a gift of our Creation, and yet we mis-use this commodity each and every day. Though the critical mass may be joined in a chorus of how bad things are and how doomed we are yet to be, resist the temptation to join in the resistant rhetoric that only begets more of the same. Remember that the words that are descriptive are also prescriptive. Hear what you are saying, internally and in conversation. Feel the sensations in your body that let you know you are mis-using your words. Recognize when you are bound in the bondage of a false belief. Take ownership of the choices that leave you imprisoned in past perceptions. Actively court that inner call to freedom. The Universe is for us. In fact It is what we are. And yet we are forever free to choose our response in any given moment.
Perhaps you’d like to adopt a simple yet unforgettable mantra that frees the spirit and uplifts the Soul. It is a declaration of independence that liberates as well as it unites. It will undoubtedly set you free as it so often does for me. If I find myself lost in the drone of my own verbal meanderings, I hear the voice of a long ago Arab angel:
STOP BITCHING.
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