The Freedom Ache

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose Nothing, I mean nothing honey if it ain't free, no no Yeah feeling good was easy Lord when he sang the blues You know feeling good was good enough for me Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

So said Janis Joplin in her song, 'Me and Bobby McGee'.

I am so enjoying reading Paul Anderson Walsh's book, The Bonsai Conspiracy. Such wonderful confirmation of the spirit's working within my own life.I want to share a few thoughts from his book, hopefully these will be found to be lovingly provoking as I have found them to be.

The insidious battle that goes mostly undetected on our radar screen is the ever working, scheming and conniving self-effort-reliance within us all. To the degree this is not happening, grace has become so much more than a new word along with so many others within our christianese vocabulary.

One thing that stood out to me was a contrast Paul used, for i.e., the 'lost/unsaved' man, believes he can live without god, but is that illusion any less disturbing than the man who has been re-birthed suffering from a very similar illusion, only in this case he is going to 'live for god'. Both have the same unknown problem, self-reliance.
We were created for freedom, but maybe freedom comes at too high a price, lets ponder some additional thoughts here from Paul.

"Now having undergone our period(s) of disillusionment (i.e.Dark Night(s) of the Soul), we emerge on the other side only to discover that we do not like the look of freedom. This is understandably so because freedom is a scary thing. How does one function in a paradigm where there are no alibis, rules, codes of conduct, ethics, structures or law?
How does one function in a world where morality has been surpassed and outclassed by the absurdity of grace? It is up to you to interpret freedom for yourself. Nobody is going to tell you what to do. All this new paradigm will do is to reinforce who you are. So, you can neither control nor be controlled. Freedom is truly frightening as it is alien and implausible structure to a bound guilt-stained soul".

"So, if we are too frightened to go forward but know too much to go back, what are we to do? Well, we will learn that as freed persons, we have a new responsibility and in this new paradigm, responsibility means that we, as freed men and women, have been freed and empowered with the ability to choose our response to the things which have previously caused us so much pain".

I hope these thoughts have stirred up more questions that answers, if so anyone reading this, I would love to hear yours.

Rich

The words on the picture above read as follows.

The true meaning of life cannot be found by strenuous self-effort. All attempts to establish contact with God via religious acts or good deeds are in vain.
Searching for God in nature or philosophy also leads to a dead-end. People can sense that they are hopelessly cut off from God.
This is why they have no inner peace. Consciously or subconsciously they embark upon a quest for him. Tormented by a yearning for paradise lost, they do everything in their power to overcome the separation between themselves and God.
The hand of God the Creator has left its imprint on mankind. We were created for him. The purpose of our life is not self discovery or self realization - it is to be found in God alone.
You cannot ask about the meaning of life without asking about God. It is a question each of us has to ask ... at some time or other.
God has planted eternity in the human heart.
(Ecclesiastes 3,11)