freedom – A Dog and Her Girl

When I say grief,
what I really mean is Love.
When I say pain,
what I really mean is my perceived absence of it.
When I say fear,
what I really mean is that I have forgotten.
When I say dog,
what I really mean is Love.
When I say Love,
what I really mean is that I have remembered.

***

Fear was created when we first felt separate from our parents or caregivers. When our needs or emotions weren’t met with care and compassion. To an infant or child, our earliest caregivers represent Love, or God. This is to stay it is during this time we truly felt separated from Love, which created fear in the body. Through developed mental processes, that fear materialized into stories of unworthiness and not enoughness. This created shame in the body, and further perceived separateness from Love.

To remember who were are is to connect back to Oneness, to Love. We have to let go our stories, free (allow) the stuck emotions to be experienced, and surrender back to Love. Which takes Trust, because most of have forgotten a time when it was there. (Dogs and other animals can help remind us.) So ultimately, your trust fall is letting go of fear and falling back into Love.

I have been on the search for freedom for nearly my whole life, intensely for the past two years, with a balanced measure of both dedication and desperation.

Yet I live in a privileged country, am of white ethnicity ,pretty enough, able-bodied, and grew up solidly middle class. I’ve also been somewhat rebellious in conforming to societal norms.

So why did I feel so trapped, like a bird in a cage? Or like the elk I saw with a fishing net trapped in his antlers? Or the cows I see trapped behind wired fences that surely aren’t there for their safety?

Last summer, I read an Instagram post that said “You can’t find freedom in the same place twice*.” I simultaneously felt a resonance with the message and with an internal “fuck.” Again I had been going to the mountains to find freedom and to my dog for happiness, with a painful Achilles heel that said “You can’t keep going to what’s outside of you to experience what’s within.” The gateways to the experiences you want to have are not the experience themselves. I had caged myself in the wide open, and trapped the being I love the most. Pacer is meant to be my teacher and the Love I am guardian of, not a need to fill what I feel I lack.

But of course, when going on any inner journey with a destination “in mind” (freedom), contrast is usually first experienced. I had to come face to face with all the things that held me down, that kept me from flying: my thoughts, my past, all my old beliefs that cause anxiety, depression, grief, and deep fear. The scariest thing about going into those depths is feeling the impossibility of getting out. It wasn’t long ago that I tearfully told a friend, “I feel so trapped.” I write about this so openly and vulnerably now because I believe this is the dark side of the human experience.

While this part of my journey isn’t quite over, I sense perhaps a shift. A shift in perception. A slight release. A willingness to see and choose differently. It’s taken journaling, meditation, shadow work, allowing life to reveal to me what’s unconscious, tracking my emotions, parts work, friends, books (rec: A Course in Miracles) an almost constant stream of positive messages through podcasts and channelers, and holding on to the belief that “only love is real.” I look forward to recounting my journey as hopefully a guide for others to become (remember) free too.

Tag: freedom

When I say dog, what I really mean is Love

The Search for Freedom