I am dedicating today's blog to freedom, and not some kind of nationalistic propogandized concept of it, but to the real and personal freedom that each of us who has the stirrings of life within desires.
My heart and humanity are connected with the brave unarmed protesters of all ages and walks of life in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and other places where the internal cry for this freedom is not going to be contained any longer. It is a momentum. Once you have tasted it or even dreamed you have tasted it, there is no going back to the chains. One second of the fresh air of freedom blowing on your cheeks as you stand upon God's green earth is all you need to feel you have lived a full life here. What did the separatist say at the time of the war with England in the Americas? "Give me liberty or give me death." And we see, as popularized in Mel Gibson's movie Braveheart, that William Wallace was driven by that desire. In the movie his last word at his torturous death was indeed "Freedom!"
Just before waking up yesterday, or maybe it was the morning before that, I was dreaming that I was in another country, in the Middle East actually, I saw a woman and there was a man walking near her, a car swerved by, the man was shot and killed. He was unarmed. I woke soon after the dream to the sound of a woman crying on "morning edition" on NPR, which my alarm has been set to since I moved to my new apartment last weekend. She was crying and saying "He was unarmed. And they shot him dead right beside me! He was unarmed!"
These protestors are unarmed. One government aide went to a town in western Libya the other day and announced to the people that they must leave or risk massacre. The people, for the most part, remained. The government has begun shooting and bombing. The mosque was bombed. As you may or may not know, the mosque is not only a center of the sacred, it is a center of the community in Muslim life. You go there to pray and worship and learn, but you also go there for services, sometimes for meals, for meeting with your community, there may even be schools as well at or near a mosque which are run by the mosque. It's the old "go for the heart" mentality in battle. If you disable that critical organ, you can kill your enemy. But here, who is the enemy? What is this government doing here? Biting the hand that feeds it, or worse killing the children at its side who rely on it for nurture and protection? It's hard to tell, but one thing I am sure of, and that is when I heard that the people of that town had raised on a pole the old flag, which is a symbol for the liberation front, I could not hold back tears, tears for their bravery, tears for that deep desire for freedom, personal and true freedom, that I also know deeply in my heart and desire.
We live in a land where our freedom appears present to a large extent, when making the sweeping comparisons across the globe. I feel it is as a religion may be for some. It gives you that which you seek to an extent, but if you rise even higher, beyond that upper limit of the offered freedom, you are no longer free, you become a threat, and there may be restrictions forced upon you. With some organizations this control game is more subtle than overt. Every nation, and every religion seems to have an upper limit of the freedom it will allow. This is a fear thing, it's a group control dynamic. It stems from "I can't trust others", which, someone who has reached a powerful level of personal freedom will realize stems from "I can't trust myself". Every perceived problem across the planet can be worked out on an individual level, when you are ready to embrace the freedom of full personal responsibility. The individual is stepping into more power and truth and desire for individual freedom now. There is no upper limit on the freedom an individual heart can experience because that would contradict the very essence of true freedom.
As I look and feel this momentum of desire in these middle eastern countries, I am proud but also concerned for my brothers and sisters there. Not only concerned for their immediate safety if their governments counter their unarmed protests with deadly violence, but also concerned for where this step towards initial freedom may lead. I feel concern that other countries may swoop upon them for their own economic or political gain, as we know of course there are still vast oil reserves in these lands and there are still populous and powerful countries, like China for example, who have built a reliance on gasoline.
My heart is heavy these past few days. I have a feeling of an immense situation arising across the planet, these are but the first few trickles through the dam. Can we tell the water not to feel such freedom? No, water knows its freedom inherently. If it were not free, it would not be. We can bottle it up, sell it on shelves in supermarkets, but there will come a time when it will no longer stand for that abuse. Being used for the profit of an elite few who keep a slave-class of worker bees in a just-enough/barely-enough place economically. Water is just one example of what has been done across the board with nature's bounty. Raped, packaged, and sold to conditioned masses who are kept just at a certain level where they feel free enough but not quite enough, and yet they turn on their televisions and apathetically forget their desire.
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