Failing To Be Free
2020 Process NotesI’m willing to fumble for freedom. Something about this statement uttered by Courage who is on the board of Mother Mercy felt so personal and relatable. But was I really willing to fumble for freedom or did I just like the ideology behind it?
What are you willing to do? This is the question that guides our work in Call to Create (C2C). How have I fumbled? Let's start here:
January 16, 2020 I quit my job as a college advisor with no sturdy back up plan. I didn’t have any real issues with the job, I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I was at the peak of my life when I quit. I was in an euphoric state where I found myself crying tears of joy habitually; joyful, blissful, grateful, balanced and aligned. I spent more of my time focused on self development and spirituality and attributed my peaking experience to that. Quit your job randomly came to me on 3 separate occasions. Twice when I was in church and once in the midst of meditating. I trusted this was my intuition, and I was willing to take the risk. I also knew I was embarking on a difficult journey, and I had so much faith that I would figure it out.
Once I quit I began to habitually listen to self-development and spiritual audio books, as well as watch motivational youtube videos. I found myself following about 20 spiritual hashtags and instagram pages (it completely filled my instagram timeline). I studied spirituality religiously. I became completely obsessed with it. I made it my life's mission to reach mental freedom (there are other names for this, spiritual awakening, waking up from the matrix, self realization, and deconditioning).
No matter what happened in my life I wanted to be able to maintain a sense of peace, joy and love. This manifested into toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. Somehow freedom for me translated to avoiding engaging with anything that would cause me stress, not wanting to have desires and being happy with what I had. Overthinking set in and I started using spirituality as a lens to over evaluate everything in my life. I became lethargic to life, I was the furthest from freedom that I’ve ever felt. Spirituality turned into an addiction.
One of the primary reasons why I joined C2C was for the opportunity for spiritual growth. My answer to what are you willing to do? even became a reflection on my obsession with freedom. I’m seeking to use the medium of script writing and songwriting to capture my complex relationship to, and understanding of freedom. Previously, indulging in spirituality added so much value to my being but I began to develop a toxic relationship to it, hence the saying “too much of a good thing is a bad thing”.
My breaking point was when I spent $75 on a 7 day “Inner engineering” course, as you may have guessed, it was another mode of feeding my addiction to freedom. Almost all of the things in these lessons echoed all of the knowledge that I’d already acquired. But there was one line during the course, “Do you want to understand or experience life?” that turned on a light bulb for me. Intellectually I understood freedom and all the other spiritual teachings in general. I mean at this point I could probably create my own course on it. But I wasn't experiencing freedom. After the course I committed to limit my intake of spiritual related content for the sake of my sanity.
I've gained some clarity and began to ask myself “am I okay? What did I do to myself? Because reflecting back on it, I had completely FAILED. I fumbled, tripped, fell all of that. Why didn’t I think I was free? What was I trying to embody? I completely overwhelmed my brain with information. My poor brain, I’m sorry that I put you through that. I completely neglected my humanity for the sake of becoming free. Being in this cohort and having to participate in journaling, monthly meetings, readings, and even my project itself has allowed me the structure for reflection along this journey. These spaces enable me to see my process as it is unrevealing from a different perspective.
I am in the process of learning about myself, discovering things that I couldn't have even imagined to be true for me. There are three things in particular that I’ve learned in my pursuit of freedom. One, I am a perfectionist and two, I compare my self-development journey to others. I’ve discovered that I have overidentified with my need to be menatlly free and used spiritual teachers, and teachings as the standard to which I expected my freedom to look like. The third is, and I want to explicitly repeat this, that I have the capacity to F-A-I-L. For some strange reason there is something so comforting in understanding those aspects of myself.
I wholeheartedly tried to become free, I tried my absolute best. My pursuits took a harmful direction and I fumbled along the way. I adjusted my behavior and I learned. I hope that I got it right this time, but I also am of the understanding that I am willing to fumble for freedom 100 times over. As I’m in this reflection I’m realizing maybe it isn’t freedom itself that I’m chasing, or not at least soley what I’m chasing. It’s the potential bi product, love, peace, and happiness. Maybe it's the euphoric high.