Get Free - A Meditation
So the phrase, get free popped into my head sometime over this last week. I don’t know exactly when, but it has slowly begun to present itself as larger and larger over the last couple days. I was with a bunch of different high schoolers, kids and families in unconventional art making scenarios around Massachusetts this week, and saw people on a gradient from too shy to touch a paint brush, to wild animal with a paint brush (and soon abandoned the paintbrush completely opting to run back and forth using his body as the brush.
I also spent a lot of time by myself this week when I wasn’t with people. I went out at night onto this island I’ve been going to where I feel completely alone with the place; unseen and unheard by other people. I go at night, in storms preferably, and can sing and dance as loud as I want or need.
I’ve watched people discover poems they had hidden within them, made manifest on the paper in their hands. I’ve witnessed kids go from frustration that they have to be there, to glowing like a lamp not wanting to leave.
On the other hand, in those same workshops, I saw a family having a great time making art together, only to spiral into frustration with each other for reasons not known to me. As they left the room I was curious, what the different elements in their current life were that led them to have the experience that they did - their family leaving the room frazzled, while the family next to them left enlivened.
What factors, genetics, choices, stereotypes, prejudices, intentional practices (mental, emotional, spiritual, etc), experiences influence this get free-ness that I believe we as human beings all have a right to? What affect do our surroundings have on our inherent ability to feel free? What health conditions keep us seperated from simply following that advice of, “just take a deep breath,” when you literally can’t.
There are a lot of things that keep us from being free, annnnd there are a lot of things that can help us find ways to embrace our brokenness, flaws, self judgement, health circumstance etc that can help us reach a wider wholeness of self that embraces everything together. They can’t necessarily change your circumstance or how the world treats you, but I believe you can choose how you react to all this.
If Rachel Naomi Remen were here, she might talk about the difference between fixing and healing (Listen to this interview with Krista Tippet) or if Parker Palmer were here he might take a deeper dive into that Hidden Wholeness that potentially exists for all of us. If Thich Nhat Hanh were here, he might offer us insight into No Mud No Lotus.
Get Free
Just two words sitting on the tip of my tongue. Hoping to be embodied in all of us.
May the power of these two words resonate with you today.
May they empower you with awareness to clearly see your own life and become an elevated version of yourself, while paradoxically being rooted in the ground of your own existence.
May you offer and be offered freedom in the way you treat yourself and others.
May freedom be yours.
May wholeness be yours.
Get Free…
