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COMMITMENT & FREEDOM, CAN YOU HAVE BOTH? – Rev. Darrell Jones
OVERVIEW
In the context of any relationship, you can’t have freedom without commitment. However, oftentimes what we are committed to, whether that is social norms, family patterns or other ideas, aren’t great commitments for freedom. They are often commitments of manipulation, inauthentic behavior and control that only lock us into a way of relating that doesn’t feel good and allow growth. Let’s explore the commitments we can make to ourselves and one another that can expand freedom in all our relationships.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Darrell Jones (00:06):
Give it up one more time.
(00:14):
It’s so lovely. So some of you may or may not know my first love. I actually have a T-shirt that says My first love was music. That was my first professional interest and passion. It was actually the way that I found my way into these teachings and into new thought was through the music community. So it’s always so lovely to just have music as a part of everything that we do. And with that part of, one of the things I want to invite us to take a look at is the music that we listen to and the lyrics that we consume. So we’ll circle back to it, but so this song that was just sung was Ray Lamont, right? You Are the best thing that ever happened to me and our focus this month here at Cityside is on love and conscious relationships. And today I want to explore this idea of commitment and freedom. Can you have both? And I believe you can’t actually have one without the other. You have to be committed in order to be free. But what are you committed to? And most of us are not really committed to freedom. And
(01:29):
Does everyone have a song that’s like their jam when it comes on, you just go, oh, right, whatever it is, go home and look up the lyrics for it, especially if it’s a love song and see if this jam of yours is committed to freedom. Does anyone know this song by Ray Lamont? You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It is such a sweet sentiment, but can you imagine the pressure that you put on someone if you tell them that you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me? Holy crap,
(02:10):
That’s a lot. Now, I don’t want to make this song wrong, but obviously point of view and consciousness is everything. What if this was a song that you sung to yourself? Can you imagine singing those lyrics to the most important person on the planet? The one person that shows up in every single relationship that you participate in? You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me as you walk into work, not the job, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. As you come into the spiritual community where you seek to get something, you are bringing something the best thing that’s ever happened to you. As you wake up next to a lover or a partner or you go out on a date,
(03:00):
They’re not there to complete you. You are already complete. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to you. I’m getting so far off track. Let me come on back. Those in the virtual realm, please give yourself an opportunity to let go of multitasking. You’ve got the rest of your life to do it. Give yourself an opportunity right now to be present to the best thing that’s ever happened to you, not me, you and the wisdom that’s going to wake up in you as a result of today’s practice. Conscious relationships is our focus for the month, but there’s this other thing that happens in February called Black History Month. Anyone ever heard of it? Okay. It’s an important thing. And today, February 4th, 2024. If we go back almost a hundred years to 1913, do you know who was born today? Rosa Parks.
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Rosa Parks was born in 1913, the Montgomery Bus boycott. She is said to be the catalyst that started that whole thing that really shifted the commitment to freedom in this country. Yes, so I’m not just saying it because it’s black history month. I was like, whoa, I got to bring it in somehow. And I was like, who was born today? And I was like, you got to be kidding me. Spirit works in lovely ways. We are talking about commitment and freedom. Can you have both? And the answer is yes, but what are you committed to? The general blurb that I offered in terms of thinking about this was in the context of relationship. And I’m talking about any relationship, not just romantic, but especially in romantic, but in every single relationship, you can’t have freedom without commitment.
(04:49):
You can’t have freedom without commitment, which is this weird thing because there’s this setup in our world that somehow if you’re committed to someone, then there’s a ball. And what chain does that sound like freedom? No. So we get things a little twisted, but let me get us untwisted. Oftentimes what we are committed to, whether it’s social norms, our family history and other ideas, they aren’t really commitments to our freedom or anyone else’s freedom. They’re often commitments to manipulation, inauthentic behavior and control that only lock us into relating to one another in a way that doesn’t allow growth and it actually doesn’t feel good. So we’re going to explore today the commitments that we can make to ourselves and to one another that can expand freedom in all of our relationships. Does that sound good? Yes. Is there anyone not in a relationship in the room?
(06:00):
You’re full of it. You’re here. You’re in relationship to every single person in this room. Gotcha. So everyone that’s checking out a little bit and they’re like, oh, well I’m not really in a relationship, so maybe this doesn’t speak to me. No one wakes up next to me in bed. I don’t mean to make light of that. I know some people really desire it, but I want to tell you, you are in relationship to life. That’s just one special aspect of it. I’ve been married and divorced and married again, and one of my best buddies, I called him my divorce guru because I didn’t know where to go. He definitely walked me through a lot of dark hallways only because he had gone through it as well. And here was a little gift that he gave me that I want to give to everyone, whether you’re in a relationship or not, instead of you complete me or you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. What if your significant other was gravy?
(06:59):
Anyone like mashed potatoes? Do you like mashed potatoes without gravy? Not at all. I love mashed potatoes, but if you put gravy on it, dang, like that’s a whole other level. Your relationships. Ideally the person in your life is gravy. You’ve got some mashed potatoes that taste good. Put gravy on top of it so you can live without gravy and maybe be like, how can I live without my partner? You can live without your partner. Absolutely. You came into this world without your partner and you’re going to leave this world without your partner most of the time unless you’re doing something interesting, you go to the bathroom without your partner, you’re eating food. I’m just saying you’re eating food without your partner. They may be in the room with you, but you are eating the food. You do all this stuff by yourself. They are literally gravy.
(07:56):
They are an add-on. They are not the thing itself. Are you tracking me in all my silliness? Okay, let’s get back the seven secrets to healthy happy Relationships by Don Miguel Ruiz and Heather Hamara. If you are not familiar with Don Miguel Ruiz, there is a specific word that I’m going to bring in that is a part of his teachings. But let’s come back to the reading. Relationships thrive when both partners feel free and when there is room to grow and stretch in a new and fascinating ways, freedom and a relationship means both parties are responsible for their own wellbeing, yet each chooses to share this fascinating journey of life together. Each party continuously makes conscious choices free of domesticated ideas and societal influences. So if you think this is only about romantic love, I love that they use the word party Here. I’m going to read this definition and as we move into our election time, what if everyone approached elections and politics with this idea in mind? Relationships to the government, to the parties thrive when both partners feel free and when there is room to grow and stretch in new and fascinating ways, freedom in a relationship means both parties are responsible for their own wellbeing, yet each chooses to share this fascinating journey of life together. Each party continuously makes conscious choices free of domesticated ideas and societal influences. What if our political parties
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Have the freedom to choose and be in a fascinating journey together? I will own my bias right now, but there is nothing in the behavior, in the words that either party speaks that says we want to be in a journey together. It is all languages of othering. So this idea of freedom and commitment. Now people may be saying, well, what about him and the way things that he says, okay, you can have an opinion. You don’t have to like everybody, but are you willing to allow people to be who they are? If you’re not, then you are committed to manipulation, control, and conditional relationship. Relationship is relationship is relationship. So I can’t harp on this enough, this is the key. If you have or you want romantic love in your life, this principle is true, but it is ever present. It is in every single relationship, whether personal or professional. When each party is in a relationship continuously making conscious choices, free of external pressures, domesticated ideas or shoulds. These are thriving relationships. So just check in with yourself right now. Some of you are already deep like, oh my gosh, what’s going on? I can see you scanning through the Rolodex of relationships in your life, whether they’re old romantic relationships or maybe they’re work relationships or maybe they’re family relationships. But just take a moment and focus on, when I use the word thriving, where do you see and feel and experience thriving relationships?
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Hopefully you can connect to one and maybe it’s not even you. Maybe you’re just kind of caught in the mire of a little bit of suffering. It’s okay. Somewhere. There’s an ideal that you see, and it’s not that you need to become someone else, but there’s something in the essence of a thriving relationship. Both parties consciously choose to be themselves authentically and to the best of their ability. Let go of the shoulds, the domestication as Don Miguel Ruiz and the societal norms, the two chapters that I’m focusing on today, since we’re going to have the rest of the month to get into this, it’s Reverend Jackie next week, right? Talking about awareness. So hopefully I’m going to set her up with a nice love that she can smash it and bring it home in another way. The first two chapters are titled The Secret of Commitment and The Secret of Freedom.
(12:45):
Now, I declared an intention, those of you who maybe aren’t here every week or you haven’t been a part of the setup. So we set this room up and then those of us that are really holding the space for the community, we go when we meditate, we get anchored in consciousness. And what I spoke and intention of in our opening prayer together was that this book, these seven secrets, are no longer a secret. They don’t need to be a secret. We all need to know them. So the secret of freedom and commitment, this is what we are exploring today. Don Miguel Ruiz says, we first want to take note that there’s two stumbling blocks that keep us from experiencing unconditional love or healthy and happy relationships. The first is domestication, and the second is conditional love. How many of you’re familiar with Don Miguel Ruiz?
(13:43):
The first really popular book that he wrote was The Four Commitments or Four Agreements. Thank you. And through all of his writings, this word domestication is a theme. It is the core, I believe, of the awakening and awareness that he brings in his literature. If you look up the word domestication, it is in reference to usually animals or plants that we bring something from out of their wild nature and we domesticate them. We train them to be able to live within a civilized environment. Yes, call it our home. We take a cat, we take a dog, we take something and we put it in a yard, we put it in a cage, and most importantly, we have this thing called praise and punishment. That’s how we train. That’s how we domesticate as children. We are domesticated the same way as animals. Anyone go to school, whether it was homeschooled or in a large institution, you learned primarily through punishment and reward. Even if you went to a school that had no grades, there was some way that you received affirmation and reward for getting it right, and if you didn’t get it right, there was some sort of reprimand. Yeah,
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Anyone experienced that in their family life as a child.
(15:18):
Punishment and reward. This is the domestication process. Anyone listened to lyrics when they were in like junior high, high school? You listen to songs that they make you cry. Sometimes they make you scream, sometimes they make you feel real happy sometimes. So there’s no conspiracy here because everyone’s got a conspiracy theory. There’s no music industry conspiracy theory, trying to make us domesticated in love. But if you listen to what the music industry promotes when it comes to pop music, it is not unconditional love that’s in the lyrics. It is conditional love. And if you’ve ever been in the presence of someone between the age of 11 and 18 and their hormones are kind of going left and right and up and down, and then you throw into the mix some of these songs and the lyrics which are beautiful, but just think about the chemistry that’s happening, the literal and figurative chemistry, right? Ernest Holmes, one of my favorite, favorite quotes, we are living in the laboratory of consciousness. What shall you produce the thoughts that are repeated over and over and over again? So when we’re 13 and we’re listening to some of these love songs about conditional love,
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You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We’re looking for that. That’s what we start thinking is that love is all about in order for me to experience love in my life, you must be the best thing that has ever happened to me or we flip it. And in order for me to be love for you, I have to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Yikes. Can anyone see the possible stumbling blocks and obstacles that could happen in our relationship to one another if this is the domestication that most of us go through? Ouch. It’s all right though. What we really only learn is to manipulate ourselves or to train others and to manipulate themselves, and the reward is our love. Anyone ever withhold love before? If you say, no, you are lying. I love you, but you’re not telling the truth.
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Someone has called you at some point in your life and you’re like, I’m not going to answer the phone. They don’t deserve my attention on the phone call that is withholding. Or someone said, please call me as soon as you can. You’re like, I’m not calling them. It may seem simple, it may seem like a little trite, but that is the thing of withholding love. That is conditional love in some way, shape or form. We’ve done that, and I’m not pointing fingers and making it wrong. If I point this way, there’s a bunch pointing back at me. I’ve done it too. The only reason I can stand up here with such excitement and fervor about this is because I know what conditional love is. I have embodied it. I have received it, and I have given it 100%. And the journey that we can commit to in order to be free with another, whether it’s in love or in work or in community or in friendship, is to say, Hey, I am committed to freedom in our relationship and here’s ways that I have been holding you hostage inside my heart. Anyone willing to be that bold? Take some courage.
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Ruiz goes on to say that in our first forays in relationships, for better or for worse, many of us make a series of commitments that can set the stage for serious difficulties later on. Any of you who have studied a course in miracles know about special relationships. The fact that we tag on special sets us up for all kinds of mischief. He says that we commit to keeping someone special, happy in our life. That’s one of the first commitments that we learn. We commit to telling our special someone what they want to hear. We commit to looking and acting a certain way all for the benefit of that special someone we commit to being the person we imagine that special someone wants us to be.
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And in his writing, he tries to call out the reader and says, you may be thinking that’s not me. I don’t do that, and he goes on. But the habit of altering who you are for someone else or something else I add can be subtle and hard to break even For those of us who have been doing inner work for years, look deeply into yourself. Are there ways in which you look to your special someone or your job or your family or your friends or a potential someone who’s special to you? Do you look to them for clues about who you should be and how you should act? Yeah, there’s some nodding heads. And here’s the thing, I don’t think it’s inherently wrong. Anyone ever heard the phrase Know your audience? Yeah, sometimes you got to know who you’re talking to, but it’s not manipulation. It’s intention that you bring. In that point, I put my hand up that I’m a recovering codependent. You may have heard me talk about this before
(21:13):
I even realize. So to transcend the romantic relationships even in my ministry, this work that I say is what life, what God has called me to do. I am codependent in my ministry work because that is kind of the nature of how Daryl shows up. That is the conditioning, that is the domestication that I received through my life. Am I shaming myself and making myself wrong? No. I am embracing Byron Katie and I’m loving what is. This is who Daryl is. This is how I show up now in that awareness and consciousness, I can commit to liberating myself every day, and that’s what I do to the best of my ability. Whether it’s the relationship with my wife, whether it’s the relationship with my mother, whether it’s the relationship with my dog, Charlie, whether it’s the relationship with my weight, whether it’s the relationship with my ministry as a codependent, I look to all of those things to find my inherent worth.
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So it sets me up to manipulate myself to try to fit into what I perceive. I don’t even check it half the time. I don’t even ask my wife, is this who you want me to be? I don’t even ask my mother. Is this how you want your son to be? I just think, oh, this is who I have to be to be a good son. This is who I have to be to be a good husband. This is who I have to be a good lover of a dog. I don’t vet that at all. Most of us don’t vet that because we think we know everything, especially as adults, right? We’re some of the most challenged learners on the planet in these codependent relationships. Whatever level inside that you may play on in it, we aren’t committed to the most important person on the planet, yourself, ourselves. We are committed to conditional love in that space, receiving it through manipulating ourselves or flipping it and trying to get someone else to manipulate themselves. There’s this phrase in order to sets up for condition, in order for something to happen, this, in order for me to love you,
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You need to do that. Or in order for them to love me, I need to become, I need to be. I need to change. I need to shift. I need to, whatever the story may be. If you are really desiring to experience freedom and any relationship, the first commitment that Don Miguel invites us all to explore is the commitment to yourself, because that is the common denominator in every single relationship. The only thing committing to yourself begins with dropping the ideas that you must change in order to be loved. Woo, are you willing to let that go? Committing to yourself begins with dropping the ideas that you must change in order to be loved by someone else, and that you need someone else to complete you. Jerry McGuire cultural reference. It’s a little dated, but some people don’t even know the movie, but they know a quote. What’s the line from Jerry McGuire? You complete me.
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You complete me. You complete me. It’s desperate. But think about it. If we are walking around thinking that I’m not complete, that there’s part of me, I’m a puzzle. I mean, think about it. Have you ever started to put a puzzle together and then all of a sudden there’s one piece that’s not missing that is just anxiety promoting for a lot of people, even just thinking about it right now, it’s just like, what’s the whole point of doing the puzzle if you can’t complete it? What’s the whole point of living if you’re not complete? And so you go into this desperate space of looking everywhere. Where can I be completed? Who is it that will complete me? And then we think, we find someone who’s done it and all of a sudden something doesn’t feel complete and we go, well, they must not be the one. And then we may even get resentful and be like, why are they come into my life? Why did I let you into my house? Why did I let you into my heart? I thought you completed me, but you didn’t do the job that you were supposed to do.
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Woo.
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This commitment to yourself continues by releasing judgment in favor of compassion, releasing judgment and favor of compassion, letting go of feeling victimized in favor of being honestly vulnerable and shifting your focus away from who you think others want you to be. And toward finding out who you are now,
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Not at the beginning of the relationship, not who you might be 10 years the road, but who you are right now. This is why mindfulness to me is one of the most important themes, practices, ideas, philosophical notions that the only place that you can be and live and have and do and change and shift and ask and receive is right now. And if you’re not here, you can’t do anything. You’re living out something in the past. You’re living out something in the future that hasn’t happened yet. In order to be the perfect child, I must, in order to be the perfect lover, I must in order to be the perfect partner, I must in order to be the perfect employee, I must in order to be the perfect sibling, in order to be the perfect parent, in order to be the perfect anything, if we have that language and phrase looping in our mind, you are setting yourself up for conditional living.
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So you are committed to conditions. Anyone know the triangle of drama? If you’ve done any sort of personal growth work, family dynamic, relationship work, there’s this triangle of drama, and in the middle of the triangle is drama. And there’s three points that make up a triangle, right? The triangle is one of the strongest mathematical things in the world. It’s strong. It holds things in place. So if you’ve got a strong, strong drama triangle, watch out. The drama triangle at its core is conditionality. Someone has to be a victim. Someone has to be a victimizer, someone has to be a hero.
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All of us have played all three roles in some way, shape or form. Some of them we like more than others. So there’s also a triangle of love. Anyone ever heard of that? Okay. Open your hearts and minds. Here we go. The triangle. Love is something that I present to any couple that I coach before we go into a marriage or any sort of unification ceremony. And I jokingly say that it sets up a menis. Anyone know what that means in French? Okay, so in a triangle of love, again, the concept of a triangle. The triangle is one of the strongest mathematical things on the planet. So a triangle of love. If you have a triangle of love happening, you’ve got strong love that’s not based upon condition. In the triangle of love, any relationship, whether it’s romantic, whether it’s professional, whether it’s family, whether it’s friends.
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The triangle is you, the other person. Does anyone know what the third is? Nope. The relationship itself, you the other person and then the relationship itself. That is a separate entity that needs specific attention, love, and care. That’s the menis. There’s three things happening in every single relationship. If you give attention and commit to yourself to be free. If you give attention and commit to your partner, your friend, your family member, your boss, your direct report being free, and then you give attention to the fact that there’s this dynamic called your relationship, you set yourself up for a strong, powerful triangle of love. However, Don Miguel Ruiz says in the book, in one of the sections, there’s this thing that we call attempts to control. Has anyone ever made an attempt to control? Okay, many of us believe that in order to get what we want in a relationship, we need to coax our partners into behaving how we think they should.
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We usually accomplish this by offering them some type of reward for the desired behavior, typically our love and affection. On the other side of the same coin, we may punish our partner for not behaving the way that we want them to. We may berate them in emotional outbursts or subject them to passive aggressive behavior such as withholding our love and affection. This is the domestication process continuing. So most of the time when we move into relationship with someone, we start domesticating them. I mean, it doesn’t sound pretty, does it? But that is what we do. So when you start to feel a little bit of tension happening in any relationship that you’re in, if you can take a beat and ask yourself, how am I trying to domesticate this person?
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It just makes me, it’s cringey language. But if we are honest with ourselves that that’s kind of how we move, it could be freeing. It could be liberating, because you can always choose something else. Part of the groundwork for having happy and healthy relationships is to notice all of your domestications and see which ones are true for you and which ones are not. So some of the domesticating that happens, it’s not necessarily bad, but we need to check it. Just if you’ve ever traveled outside, you don’t even have to leave the country. You go to a different region of the country and there’s a different culture, right? Culture is basically domestication. This is the way we do things here. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you take that, this is the way we do things here and move it across the pond to another country, it may not work very well over there. So we have to evaluate these domestications, notice all of your domestications and see which ones are true for you and which ones are not. In order to have a truly happy and healthy relationship, we must be willing to examine the ideas that we have been domesticated to. Because as you probably know by now, many of those ideas simply do not work.
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Even the aforementioned, and this is from the book Happily Ever After. Anyone know that phrase? Anyone aspire to live happily ever after? It sounds nice, but it sets us up for some conditions. Here’s some other phrases of domestication, happily ever after, one of the roughest. One in traditional men, women relationships. But it can happen in any happy wife happy. That is cringey to me. That is basically saying, if I do anything that I can to manipulate myself so that my wife is happy, then I’m going to have a good life. Uhuh, I’m manipulating myself to not be real. If you’re online and you can’t see my eyes, they’re shifting back and forth. It’s like I’m trying to process that. True love never fades. It’s just on 10 all the time. So if you have any doubt or anger in your heart, then you’re setting yourself up for a possible thought that this isn’t true love, and you start to do what? Walk away. We already heard Jerry McGuire, you completely complete me. This was another one I looked up. Online marriage is a relationship where one person is always right, and the other is the husband.
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I don’t know if this is conditional love or just weird and twisted. Check out. It may seem silly, but check out the lyrics of some of the songs that you love, especially love songs, and just be in a space of reflection. So I’m more of a kid of the seventies and eighties, but I came across the Backstreet Boys from the nineties. I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you, you love me.
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I don’t care about anything just as long as you love me. So I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure that that happens. Conditional love. So here’s the homework this week, folks. This comes from the book, and it’s not going to necessarily be an easy practice, but it’s a loving practice, and it is using the vibration, the frequency, and the intent of gratitude to begin opening up a space in your relationships for freedom. Anyone want more freedom in any relationship in their life? Now, you’re probably thinking, Daryl’s going to tell me I got to tell the truth and tell people what they’re doing is no. What if you approached and three things you told your partner, you told your boss, you told your colleague, you told your mother, you told anyone in your life in a significant and important relationship for no reason other than you want to bring freedom into it.
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Tell them, here’s three things that I’ve appreciated that you’ve done for me today. I really appreciated that you went to the grocery store and I didn’t have to go with you. I really appreciated that you woke up early and let me sleep in a little bit. And when I got up coffee was made, I really appreciated the fact that you, whatever it may be, it doesn’t have to be huge, but just think if you started doing that every day with the significant relationships in your life, oh, my boss, I really appreciated the other day. I hit send on that email and I misspelled that word. I really appreciate that you didn’t kind of call it out in front of everyone. I’m sorry that I did that. That’s a more practical way in the works environment. But if you start bringing love in that way, it’s an amazing way to bring freedom into your relationships. Are you tracking that? Are you willing to try it? So we’re going to close today with some lyrics. Were you able to get them Dom again, A little Black History Month. Ricky Byers, if you are not familiar with this woman, she’s probably one of the core musicians to bring it back to music that has influenced new thought in the past 20 years. And she has this song I love myself so much, so I can love you so much that you can love you so much that you can start loving me.
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Let those lyrics sink in for a little bit. Think if you started singing this at age 11, ooh, what would love look like for you? I love myself so much, so I can love you so much. I love myself so much, so I can love you so much. Take a deep breath in and close your eyes. If you’re online and you’re multitasking, stop. We’re just about done. Hear these words and repeat after me. Put your hand to your heart. I love so much.
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I love myself so much. So I can love you so much.
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That you can love you so much.
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That you can start loving me.
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This is the freedom and the commitment that we’re talking about. Loving yourself so much that you can love someone else just as they are. If you can love yourself and all of your foibles and pimples and blemishes and successes and failures, it’s a lot easier to do it with someone else because guess what? They’ve got pimples, blemishes, successes and failures. They’re not going to be perfect. You are not perfect, but you are complete as you are. A last commercial here. There’s a workshop happening this afternoon, and what I love about workshops is that usually there’s some sort of model. There’s some sort of diagram. There’s some sort of archetypal system that allows you to be in relationship to yourself and to others in your life. And that’s what’s happening today with Kristen. So if you are looking for something to add to the fire of what’s been fanned today around love, check it out. One other thing that I want you to look at, the language in the book is a little dated for our current day, but the principle and the concept in it is very, very powerful. If you are struggling in a relationship and you are looking for a way to shift something, check out the five love languages. Most of us when it comes to our conditional love, we love people the way that we want to be loved, but rarely do we love the people in our lives the way that they understand it.
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If you’re kind of like, oh, okay, check out the book. I’ll give a quick example and then we’ll close. My primary love language is physical touch. Does it mean I want to jump everyone’s bones and have sex? No. It means that when I walk up to someone and shake their hand, that is a connection and a love. It fills up my love tank. When I hug someone, it fills up my love tank over covid. I realized that I didn’t even have to actually touch someone. There was a way of touching people through a smile when their face was covered up with a mask, all of a sudden my love tank started to go down. So to see someone’s face and just see them smile, that was a way that physical love came into my world. My mother-in-Law all the time, she gives everybody gifts for the littlest thing, gives a gift, gives a gift, gives a gift, and I like them, but I’d rather have a hug. So I go up to her and I give her a hug, which she loves. But if I really want her to know that I love her in the way that she understands, I’m going to go buy her a little trinket. That’s blue in particular because she loves blue, and I’m going to give it to her and say, I love you so much, and it’s going to melt her heart.
(41:50):
Alright, people, take a deep breath in. Bring your hands to your heart. Love yourself so much right now because there is only one thing happening in all of our relationships. And that is the divine. That is wholeness, that is love, that is possibility, that is creativity, that is freedom. And what I affirm today is that there is no obstacle in the way of that. There is no obstacle.
(42:18):
Love needs your love today. It needs your commitment to freedom today, whether it be at work, whether it be at home, whether it be walking down the street, may we be vessels, avenues, stewards to love knowing itself in a greater way as freedom. And what I affirm is that we are all committed to freedom today. And may we realize, may we awaken to all the ways that we consciously and unconsciously may be committed to something else other than that, so that we can consciously choose again to pick and choose freedom. I’m so grateful for the freedom that is already here and for the greater expression of freedom that will reveal itself as the result of our time together today. So I release this word into the action of freedom and the action of creativity into the action of possibility and celebrate what is here right now. Love loving itself. And so it is.
Paige Kizer (43:27):
Thank you.