By Chris Bourne
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
How much does life’s conditioning, expectation, sense of responsibility and obligation subtlely control what you end up doing? For most, even when we’re awake, it’s a good deal. I remember guiding a firewalk once and saying to the group, dare to feel it, dare to be you, dare to express yourself. At which point, one lady stripped off all her clothes and walked naked across the fire. For the whole group, it was a breath-taking, inspirational expression of total freedom…
There’s a YOU inside all of this
There is a YOU inside all of this. There is a YOU that is totally free. At a soul level, we are not governed by taboos of what we should and shouldn’t be. Laws, regulations, contracts and popular opinion, are all constructs of thought forms solidified like flowing water long since frozen.
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Oh sure, there is a part of your soul – a characteristic – that respects others and their truth. I’m not talking about riding rough-shod through other people’s energy. Not at all. But in all of us there is something that yearns for the total spontaneity of the moment. Life can’t flow when where loaded with obligatory baggage. Even in relationships, the true self of each person is yearning for the other to be totally liberated…
“I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.”
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer
So if we allow it to, the path of the soul will cause us to walk directly into each of life’s taboos. Then we have an opportunity – a priceless possibility – to say “no more! I’m going to be free and express me, at whatever the apparent cost”. When we do so, we peel away that which limits, and just like the metaphoric firewalk lady, the real YOU begins to unveil itself.
Less is more
Possessions of course can also be a heavy constriction on beingness.
In society, personal sense of security often comes from what we own, what we have in the bank and the insurance or retirement policies. Myself I remember thinking this way, that is until benevolently the universe invited me to give everything up. It was a compulsion I felt strongly in my heart and couldn’t deny. Pretty quickly everything went, every treasured possession that I’d collected and earned over the years. It left me blessed with a little old hatch-back and what I could fit in the boot.
Contrary to the fears we might have about such vulnerability, I found it totally amazing. I could literally go wherever I felt to go. In so doing, in really going into my feelings and committing totally to following, it was then that I discovered how when in truth, the universe supports our every step.
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
– The Alchemist
I discovered that when being me, and in expressing me, I always had something to give. And when I gave, I always received in return. I discovered how giving and receiving are folds in the same garment. How priceless is that?
Free flowing golden stream
And I discovered the power of the ‘golden stream’. Society conditions us to hoard money and resources. It’s a consciousness that’s saying to the universe… “I don’t have enough, I need more for that rainy day”. And sure enough, that fear based consciousness creates the very circumstances we’re afraid of most – always the experience of lack.
What I noticed, was that if I truly followed my heart and what I was being invited to do in the moment, which of course involved confronting and peeling back my fears, then there would always be enough. I would always have just enough money – or resources which I could trade – to get the things I needed. Money didn’t stay in my wallet, but ran through it like a free flowing golden stream.
Now I am blessed to be living in a wonderful micro community: souls that have gathered together to support one another, to learn, evolve and grow. We have pooled our skills and resources. We are bound together by a common thread – to express and share light – a sense of freedom of being. We are daring to be us. And when a project comes up to do or develop something, somehow, we always find what we need to complete it. Maybe not in the ways we could have imagined, but as we feel our way forwards, the next step always reveals itself. It’s just like walking along a carpet of golden light.
A very relaxed grip
Before I close, I should add as an adjunct to my sharing, that I’ve observed not everyone necessarily needs to give everything up to find total freedom. It all depends on our karma of course. Sometimes we may have something, yet totally know in our hearts that it does not hold us. We don’t have to give it up to be free. And we don’t have to leave everyone behind to find freedom of expression.
Ultimately, it’s about expressing internal freedom in every eventuality and circumstance. As ‘possessions’ – temporary gifts from the universe – build in my life once more, I’m watching that I have a very relaxed grip of them. So I feel for everyone who might feel burdened by the sense of insecurity that our society has created to control people. Having felt the same way for forty years of my life, I can greatly empathise. I know the constricting inner pain it can sometimes be. Yet I’ve also been blessed to meet many wonderful souls who are courageously working through their stuff, bit-by-bit releasing their baggage and as a result feeling the upwelling freedom that gathers strength through their being. These are extraordinary ordinary people just like you and me.
And when we dare to be free, we find ourselves daring to be us.
About the Author
At the age of 40 Chris was involved in a life threatening car crash in which he thought he would certainly die. This precipitated total inner surrender and a rapid reconnection with the conscious life force through all things.
He found himself suddenly able to experience and contemplate through multiple dimensions of reality to see the deeper purpose of life itself. He began to remember his true reason for being here.
He explains…
“During the crash, time seemed to slow right down and I was guided back through key moments of my life. I was realising that every moment in our lives has but one underlying purpose – to reveal an aspect of truth about ourselves to ourselves. I was beginning to dissolve every belief and value our society had conditioned within me.”
“This was my initial awakening to the magical unifying consciousness of the soul. Over the eight years that followed, I was guided through four other inner ‘Gateways’ of consciousness. I have since come to know the process as the five key expansions on our journey of Enlightenment and ultimate Ascension into multi dimensional living – our divine birthright”.
Prior to the crash, Chris had a rich an varied professional career in industry, in teaching, as an Officer in the Army and finally as a web development entrepreneur before being initiated on his spiritual path. With a Masters Degree in Natural Sciences from Oxford University, participants in the work are finding his integration of grounded scientific understanding and profound spiritual realisation deeply engaging and transformative.
Openhand Foundation
Catalysing our Spiritual Evolution
openhandweb.org
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