On August 28, the world marked the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s stirring “I Have a Dream” speech.
Perhaps the reason this timeless message touches people so deeply is that it expresses what all of us long for, and need, in order to be whole and happy: dignity, something greater to live for, and the freedom to achieve it.
Sages throughout time have conveyed a similar message of our need to be free, as shown by the following inspiring quotes…
Humanity was free from the beginning. For God is freedom and humanity was made in the image of God.
— Irenaeus of Lyons
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
— Nelson Mandela
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
— Henry David Thoreau
Man is the highest being in creation, because he aspires to freedom.
— Paramahansa Yogananda
Freedom… to walk free and own no superior.
— Walt Whitman
Perhaps you know of similar quotes about true freedom from your own tradition. Please share them by submitting them to the OneJourney Living Book.
This Key Unlocks the Door to a New Kind of Freedom
The basis of freedom throughout the world must lie in the inner freedom of individuals — freedom from self-judgment, from negative internal voices, and from self-limitation.
OneJourney founder Guy Finley has been writing about how to attain inner freedom for more than 30 years. Guy is offering this article, providing insight you can use to free yourself from inner shackles:
The next time you run into some familiar blockage or begin to feel unsuited to face some new and difficult personal challenge, don’t do what you’ve always done before. Don’t try to think your way around it. You no longer want a way around your troubles because what goes around, comes around! What you want is to grow beyond the level of that disturbance. And to do that, you must not act from it.
So don’t allow yourself to be pulled down into any anxious concern or confusion over not knowing what to do about your present condition. What you really want is an insight into your situation, not a fight with it. The two have nothing in common. So make it clear to yourself once and for all: nothing that hounds you can help you.
Draw yourself back from your usual thinking. Quietly observe it race around looking for the shelter of a conclusion it can recognize. Have nothing to do with its frantic motion.
You’ve gone as far as you can go with what you know. Now it’s time to know that, so that you can let what you know go, and let something unthinkable occur to you. Just relax.
Pressuring yourself to come up with a happy ending to a sad or shaky situation only goes to show you still believe that you can resolve these troubles. But if you could have, you would have by now. Besides, your lower nature wants you to confuse these feelings of pressure for being some kind of proof of personal progress. It’s done its job well. After all these years you’re afraid to live without this feeling of habitually prodding yourself, for fear that without it, you might get stuck! The solution here is to see that, in fact, you are stuck! This powerful insight releases you from the pressure of wanting anything from yourself.
Now you’ve done what you can do. You’ve prepared the stage, your own mind, for the arrival of a higher nature and a new kind of freedom. But learn to expect it in the unexpected. To paraphrase the New Testament: be ever watchful for you don’t know when — or how — something higher will make itself known to you.
There may come a flash of insight, a clear glimpse into some self-created cause of your own continuing inner captivity. Or, perhaps, a sudden and sweet deep sense of wholeness will sweep through you, a quiet but profound intuition, wherein you know yourself, for that moment, to be one with all of that life pulsating around and within you.
However that Light breaks into the darkened room of self, consider each brief illumination as an appointed messenger, a heavenly herald sent in advance of a greater freedom to come. Learn to embrace each appearance, for regardless of what may be revealed — to you or about you — these insights are not unlike the sound of the shouts of liberation heard always just before the arrival of the liberating forces. A new freedom always follows. Now, follow it.
Share Something Special with Your Friends
Your friends will appreciate receiving a gift that will open their eyes to their own true possibilities. A sampler of the book at the heart of the OneJourney Project, The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred is available here on our website. Click here to download it for free.
Best wishes,
Dr. Ellen Dickstein
The OneJourney Project
P.S. True freedom will ring for any individual who first finds self-freedom. And it is only when we throw off our own chains of self-punishment that compassion and understanding for others is possible. As more individuals do this, the world will change. Watch the OneJourney video and share its message throughout your social network, and the world can become a brighter place.
