Hello friends,
As we resettle ourselves after a period of nourishment of carefree times and sunny days. Easing ourselves into late summer and heading towards the fall, you might be asking yourself ‘how can l maintain this elusive feeling?
Well this week we’ll take a deep delve from two different perspectives one from a neuroscientific and one from a more spiritual eastern point of view, so prepare to nerd out and feel enlightened!
Six Potent self-enquiry prompts to kick start our exploration:
What does freedom mean to you?
What does freedom look like to you?
When was the last time you truly experienced freedom?
Do you remember when you last felt truly free?
What can you let go of into the flow of life?
How are you honouring your choice of freedom?
Inspired by a great summer so far and my recent paddles out on the water. Freedom is a subject close to my heart as a Sagittarius. An often yet elusive feeling especially living in our over stimulated and fearful world.
Personally speaking, l find the essence of freedom through being in nature, on my yoga mat and travelling, but how about you?
How did you respond to the first six self enquiry prompts?
So let’s open up the exploration into what freedom means and how you might achieve it even in the most difficult of circumstances from a Spiritual, and Neuroscientific perspective.
Whilst l was out on the water, l got to thinking is Freedom just the lack of fear that we can experience moment to moment?
So let us start by looking at some definitions.
FREEDOM
Liberated, non-confinement, self-determination, self-rule, flexibility, openness
the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants (mindfully)
#EDITING YOUR FREEDOM
After doing a recent closet clean up, l decided to also go through some old jewellery. In the process finding one of my first pieces from Rock and Raw Jewellery when l was one of the first ambassadors for the brand back in the day. Also one of my favourite pendants handed crafted from a beautiful little store in Main Street, Venice, CA.
Memories re-emerged of an simpler and more free existence. Amongst the decluttering, old wedding bands and pieces with memories made their appearance. Jewellery holds imprints of our experiences some good, some not. So with that being said l decided to say a thank you prayer for the experience and then throw them into the flow of life.
Thank you Pixie Lighthouse for the following words and lighting the way in your beautiful guide ‘Prayers of Honouring’.
Bless our paths as we leave a season of our lives behind and declare new footsteps, once again, as you have blessed us so many times before now. Bless the Wheel that keeps us turning and learning. Guide us to autonomy as we learn to make spirit-stuff our first priority and the closest matter to our hearts. Let us allow this in others, honouring their way- knowing that we each have our own sweet language with you.
Guide us to true freedom by showing us our part in everything-everything beautiful and of creation, as well as that which is unseemly and destructive.
Understanding the Neuroscience of Your Brain in FREEDOM mapping
Think back, when you experienced great moments of clarity, creativity and the overall feeling of being free.
Did you also feel fear or predictability in your feelings or actions at the same time?
And if so is the concept of Freedom just an illusion? A holiday away from the predicative mind? And furthermore can we just free will freedom into existence?
So let’s take a quick whistle stop tour of the the Brain areas that play they part in Freedom.
The Cerebral cortex is the largest site of neural integration in the central nervous system, divided into four lobes: frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal. The CC plays a key role in mapping attention, perception, awareness, thought, memory, language, and consciousness. Your brain’s surface’s outer layer of protected tissue.
Back in 2013 Professor Joaquin M. Fuster’s research documented that “the liberty or freedom to choose between alternatives is a function of the cerebral cortex, under prefrontal control, in its reciprocal interaction with the environment.” Furthermore he lead a fascinating inquiry into the cerebral foundation of our ability to choose between alternative actions and to freely lead creative plans to their goal. Nerd out on his research below.
Click here to download the file here
Other contributors and their roots that play their part in Freedom
Trust - A belief and learned behaviour. A brain process that binds representations of self, other, situation, and emotion into a neural pattern called a semantic pointer. Affecting behaviours.
Values - Similar to attitudes and beliefs encapsulating cognitive, emotional, and behavioural parts all affecting behaviours.
Speech - Emotional and behavioural.
Free Will - Cognitive and Volition, can also be connected to emotions affecting behaviours.
FREE WILL
I also wanted to touch upon the philosophical and scientific debate on Free Will to help you understand a little more your brain in the process. So you can access my presentation l gave at Cambridge a few years, pre pandemic below and come to your own decisions.
The Spirituality of FREEDOM
Whilst there any many great books on Freedom, in recent years the topic Freedom has somehow taken a back seat. However, that being said in J.Krishnamurti’s ‘The First and Last Freedom” (one of my go to books), whom is quite controversial in his views.
In his soul seeking book ‘The First and Last Freedom’ he makes mindfully clear that FREEDOM ultimately LAYS within YOU. Understanding Freedom can only be achieved from knowing your self, your mind and your body, exploring some of the following areas:
Awareness, Actions & Ideas, Beliefs, Fear, Desire, Death, Effort, Self-knowledge, Discipline, Loneliness, Suffering, Surrender, Love, Simplicity, Hate, Gossip. Self-centred Activity and Spiritual Teachers.
Expanding further on how habits effect freedom
The Book of Life, May 31, Harper Collins, 1995
Without freedom from the past there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent. It is only the fresh, innocent mind that is free. Freedom has nothing to do with age, it has nothing to do with experience; and it seems to me that the very essence of freedom lies in understanding the whole mechanism of habit, both conscious and unconscious. It is not a question of ending habit, but of seeing totally the structure of habit. You have to observe how habits are formed and how, by denying or resisting one habit, another habit is created. What matters is to be totally conscious of habit; for then, as you will see for yourself there is no longer the formation of habit. To resist habit, to fight it, to deny it, only gives continuity to habit. When you fight a particular habit you give life to that habit, and then the very fighting of it becomes a further habit. But if you are simply aware of the whole structure of habit without resistance, then you will find there is freedom from habit, and in that freedom a new thing takes place.
It is only the dull, sleepy mind that creates and clings to habit. A mind that is attentive from moment to moment—attentive to what it is saying, attentive to the movement of its hands, of its thoughts, of its feelings—will discover that the formation of further habits has come to an end. This is very important to understand, because as long as the mind is breaking down one habit, and in that very process creating another, it can obviously never be free; and it is only the free mind that can perceive something beyond itself.
The challenges of cultivating FREEDOM in an overstimulated world
We live not only in overstimulated world but also a fairly repressive one made worse by the world’s media. Fear, violence, repression, depression and negativity are all regular features of our daily news cycle. Breading unhealthy habits, reactions and copping mechanisims. Therefore, to even have a chance of experiencing feelings of any type of freedom we need to take matters into our own hands!
Hacks for helping cultivate Freedom
Have regular check-ins with yourself on what your doing, what you want to do and feel?
Simplify, edit and reedit (as many times as you need) in terms of how you are living.
Be honest with yourself and others in terms of happiness and joy, as well as what you are finding hard to accomplish or deal with.
Allocate mini pockets of time to rest and recharge and step away from technology regularly, so that you may start doing one thing a day to take your nearer to where you want to be. Maybe it’s a phone call, an email, time to write, paint, create, learning more about what you can do to facilitate that progress to honour your vision and ultimately your freedom.
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