Independence as a Thought Form
I am writing this post as most people are out either celebrating or protesting Independence Day. To keep it relevant, let’s discuss independence or more specifically independence as a thought form. Independence as a thought form right now is very complicated.
From a social and/or national standpoint, independence is what most of us in the United States celebrate marking our independence as a nation from European governance almost 250 years ago. Celebrating our independence this year, however, has become more of an openly controversial issue. To be clear, it has always been a controversial issue for many people but now I use the term “openly controversial” to acknowledge the wider circumference of it’s impact on individual lives thanks to the BLM movement. After the untimely death of George Floyd and many others, the Black Lives Matter movement reached a pinnacle in its existence, a heightened racial awareness that was unprecedented since perhaps the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. The fervent renewal of this movement has catalyzed a renewed awareness and focus on human inequality issues and social injustices everywhere. Thankfully, the whole world is joining in. So here we are at a time in society where we are all struggling to come to terms with these longstanding social injustices and inequalities that have oppressed so many different people for so long. And there are so many different responses and emotions to these issues. Most of us want to do the right thing. That’s great at face value, however have we asked ourselves what other motives we have for joining social causes in addition to wanting to help? Perhaps there is a part of us albeit a small one that feels bad about ourselves, so we join a cause not only to take right action but actually to feel better about ourselves. So that we can say we did that. No judgement here, we all need to begin somewhere. I admit it, I have done that in the past, which begs the question as to whether I did it to look good and not be criticized or if my decision was truly from a place of conscious independence of thought, simply because I was following my heart and my mind. I wonder if I would have taken up a cause if no one else had before me. I’d like to think I would.
From a personal standpoint, Independence as a conscious thought form is what connects us to our wholeness. It is a form of thought and speech where we are allowing ourselves to be truly authentic and independent in terms of our hearts, minds, and spiritual growth. We are speaking and acting our truth.
This means we are not just following along but instead we are really taking a step back to see what’s true for ourselves. What really FEELS right. I think we often mistake being in touch with our feelings as being emotional and vice versa. Being in touch with our feelings means being grounded while having these feelings (this can be interpreted as feeling safe), while being emotional comes with the challenge of staying grounded while feeling these emotions instead of acting out on them. Lack of being grounded while feeling intense emotions is what’s causing more problems for all of us, especially in our society, because it makes us act out in anger, or fear or both and we all know the pendulum can swing really wide.
So my friends, the work here is to educate ourselves to notice the difference between knowing our truth and being in touch with our “true” feelings, versus simply having an emotional response to something that is NOT grounded in the knowledge of our truth.
That knowledge and the attainment thereof is the knowledge of your own truth. Knowledge is freedom, which is true independence. The truth will set you free.