How to Find Spiritual Freedom and Empowerment

I have always been a spiritual seeker. But I became a religious rebel.

You see the problem was, from my earliest memories, I had a real sense of the Divine — in Nature, in life and even a little bit in myself. But I was immersed in a dogma that beat it right out of me (figuratively and literally).

The notion that we ought to praise and fear some “Out there God-Being, watching over us waiting to punish or reward based on our behavior that day” was pretty awful and terrifying.

Thank GOD I couldn’t just go along with it!

There is a much more peaceful and empowered approach to living the truth that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Here are a few of the most powerful dogma-flips:

• God is not a human-like being “out there” somewhere. God/ Source/ Creator is life, is a principle. It is everywhere, in everything, including in you. You are literally an extension of God and all the creative force, power and beauty that is God is also You.
• God doesn’t reward or punish. We punish ourselves by choosing against peace and by choosing to believe we have no power over our emotions. You can get pissed off at the guy who just cut you off in traffic if you like. You can waste those moments in anger and frustration. Or you can spend those moments in peace and warmth. That’s your choice. Just give it a try – try letting something formerly irritating slide off. Just try it out as an experiment. After all you can always choose to go back to your old, irritable, fuming ways! It’s YOUR CHOICE. ALWAYS!
• There is nothing wrong with having desires, with wanting more. God doesn’t require “sacrifice”. The key is getting clear about what it is we truly want. I don’t believe we just want more stuff, more money for the sake of it. What we all want, more than anything else, whether we know it or not, is to awaken to who we truly are, to awaken to the power, and beauty and love that our consciousness sometimes brushes up against and then darts back from. Over a century ago, Dr. Harriet Emilie Cady (one of the first female doctors in New York), wrote Lessons in Truth. This little book is a gem of empowered spirituality. Dr. Cady wrote:

We want a revelation of God in us as life … We no longer care to have somebody just tell us from the outside. We want a revelation of God as love within us, so that our whole being will be filled and thrilled with love – a love that will not have to be pumped up by determined effort because we know that it is right to love and wrong not to love, but a love that will flow with the spontaneity and fullness of an artesian well, because it is so full at the bottom that it must flow out.

Man, that’s so beautiful I wish I had written it!  I do indeed want it and sometimes, when I clear the inner clutter, I remember that I already have it.  Dr. Cady went on to point out that our desire to become more, to experience more creativity and success, is actually God’s desire to manifest more of Itself. She wrote, “Let us not at any time lose sight of the fact that our desire, great as it is, is only God’s desire in us.”

So don’t shrink Violet. Don’t feel bad for desiring more of life. Drop the old dogmas and teachings of not-enoughness and powerlessness. Open your petals. Let your radiance show. Remember who and what You Are. You are a piece of God and absolutely essential to the fullness of Creation.

And if you’re facing challenges, what feel like limitations in your work, family, finances, health, whatever, just remember that as your outer world contracts you have a powerful opportunity to allow your inner world to expand beyond measure. I shared a bit about my own experience of this in my recent TEDx talk titled, “Who Do You Think You Are, Really?”

Here’s to YOU and to LOVE like a deep and overflowing well!

Cylvia Hayes

 

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