Freedom July

You are neither free nor bound, but ever-present.

~Adyashanti

Greetings to our friends and community,

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Photo by Christopher Michel[/caption]

One of the great and glorious things I appreciate about being at Paradise Found is being surrounded by the collective wisdom from many traditions. As I was pondering July, freedom, and liberation I was accessing some of those resources and came across the following by Alan Cohen from "A Daily Dose of Sanity: A Five-Minute Soul Recharge for Every Day of the Year".

Here is his entry for July 4:

Very few people know that the Founding Fathers of the United States and the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were very spiritual men—Freemasons, Rosicrucians and advanced Metaphysicians. The country was conceived and inaugurated not simply as a political movement, but as a radical step in living under higher spiritual laws.

If you examine the back of a dollar bill, you will find many mystical symbols, including the all-seeing eye of God; a pyramid; and the Latin phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning a “new order of the ages.” The front of the bill contains several Rosicrucian symbols.

The Founding Fathers were champions of political freedom, but they grasped a deep understanding of spiritual freedom, our power to rise above circumstances and bring the light of higher wisdom to our daily lives. If you are free politically but your soul is in bondage, you cannot say you are free. If you are liberated in your mind and heart, you are truly free.

Today would be a good day to consider how free you are. If you are living in pain, fear, resentment or conflict, it is time to declare independence. Are you tired of feeling enslaved? If you go to a job you hate, fight with people you care about, or feel shackled by economic stress, you are being moved, like the Pilgrims who left England to flee political oppression, to escape the emotional oppression of feeling limited by external circumstances.

We have all felt oppressed in one way or another, and we are all freedom-seeking beings. If we truly want to honor the United States and its Founding Fathers, today let us remember the kind of freedom they valued as men of higher thinking—freedom of the heart, mind and spirit."

May all beings be free of pain and suffering. May we experience and celebrate our interdepedence.

Teresa, Thule, Tucker and all at Paradise Found