Celebrating the Fourth of July, we learned at an early age, meant observance of our independence from another nation – our freedom from domination.
Now celebrating 232 years of freedom, let’s truly echo the celebration of life that has the side effect of aliveness, just as poetry is the outcome of mindfulness.
The more alive we feel the more receptive we are to involvement and the more willing to respond to meaningful pursuits.
Social action and spirituality are positive aspects of aliveness. The degree of a person’s aliveness depends on their degree of vision and commitment.
Seeing ourselves as connected to all of humanity is a concept accepted by most orthodoxies and non-religious as well. Respecting the dignity and diversity in each person is easiest for me when I allow for the faults and pettiness of others to be seen as a continuum of “aliveness” growing at different paces.
History reveals how we have carved ourselves up into nations with various ideologies such as capitalism, socialism, totalitarianism and monarchism that seem to overwhelm the importance of humanity itself. We have further classified ourselves on the basis of physical appearance and nationalistic identifications such Chinese, Indians, Norwegian, etc., and subdivided ourselves into economical, educational, racial and religious levels.
However, essentially the same life-giving blood, internal organs, emotions of fear, love, hate, jealously, etc., are shared by all fellow humans.
The more we seek to understand others the more differences we will discover. It is at times like these when seeing unity can pull us toward the openness of our own growth. We, in all honesty, don’t require the delusions of man-made, mind-made divisions separating the human family.
The tough work of unraveling hard-core prejudices that divide us over social, cultural, political and religious differences in communities across our nation is the positive action true emancipation addresses.
For what it’s worth, these are my reflections on freedom: it comes when we allow this “aliveness” to create true freedom and are wise enough to accept God’s presence and capacity to be revealed in others – all others without exception.
