Her Declaration of Independance

“She gets up unusually early this morning
Sits on the veranda and sips ginger tea
Takes a long hot shower and takes time to choose her outfit
Dresses slowly and deliberately
Attends to every detail of her makeup
Stands poised at the doorway and collects herself
Walks with assurance and ease up the boulevard
Smiles at the people passing by and feels invigorated
With each step there is a lightening up
With each breath there is a sense of ease
Up and up she moves into the experience
Her thoughts are clear and centered
Suddenly in a moment of tremendous shifting
Her pinball life rolls in ready to strike her down
But this time she stands silently
Calmly refocuses her view
Salutes the six-sided day
Reframes the world into the shape of her Beloved

Creation cannot roll over such a powerful woman
It offers everything wholeheartedly to this new design
Every sweet desire is expressed and fulfilled
While she breathes in the ecstasy of this romance
She celebrates the first day of her freedom
She celebrates her release from the clutches of conditions
She takes her place among the architects of the world”

Ganga Fondan, 2009

What would I do for love? Love of my ideal life? This is the motivating question burning in me after this last Wednesday’s invigorating and “wisdom-soaked” web seminar with Tulshi Sen. In the visioning process itself, we cannot try and find the ways to fulfill our dreams. We must be able to feel them, interact with them as though we are already alive in them. We must know they are already a done deal. If we are seeing the ideal life and worried about how we will attain it, then we are still struggling through a painful “to-do” list. The last step in trusting your vision is already accomplished is to stand poised and be willing to challenge that “rolling over” mentioned in the poem. It is the final stand and sacrifice we make for what we believe in. All the greatest heroes who embrace(d) an ideal and face(d) whatever comes in the name of a dream know that final step of self-dedication.

Since Wednesday night I have been able to think of little else than the word "freedom". Many years ago, I packed up my little blue Pony and left the west to find my dreams and live in the freedom of accomplishing them. I could not think like those around me and desired to find what it was I wanted to dream about. All I wanted to do was get away from there and move to another place. Then eventually in that other place, my insecurities caught up with me and I found new ways to run away. I lost myself among friends, suffocated any pain in "mind numbing recreation" and still thought I was living a free life. When circumstances would bowl me over and run me down, I never knew how to face that which limited my freedom. I had no strength and no tools to challenge my suffocator and began to realize that I had no skills to break out of this dilemma.

That is where what I have learned from my Teacher has made all the difference. Over the years, by learning visioning and meditation techniques, I was introduced to the most gruesome taskmaster and slave driver known to man, his own mind. With repeated effort, I began to recognize all the behaviors and voices of judgement from my past. I had been shaped and formed in a world that told me who I was. For the cheap price of someone's love and approval, I would often turn myself inside out and deny my deepest feelings. How many thousands of ways my mind has tricked me into seeing the smallest version of myself. But why? What is the payoff for the mind? Wouldn't the mind benefit if I became a much enhanced version of life? Ahhhhh, it is then I discover for myself over and over that the mind cannot take me there. It is like a processor and can only be a tool to measure and mete out life's grander ideals. Where do these grander ideals come from? I've been paying homage to the computer instead the intelligence that runs the computer.

The intelligence beyond the mind calls to me to design a larger version of my life. Why not trust something greater than my own ability to rationalize and philospohpize the meaning of my existence? "Logic and Love do not mix" reverberated throughout the entire call. My mind buzzed with excitement. The call took us on a journey from the inner intensity of poets to the sacrifice and passion of freedom fighters. From Keats: My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk"... to the visionary heroes who signed the American "Declaration of Independence". For the love of another being, the love of a nation, the love of an ideal, the intelligence beyond the mind calls upon all mankind to wake up and declare our own independence from the self-preserving mind and to dream of a life we really want to experience.

This week's webinar was a calling out to feel the romance of life. Those who build magnificent empires accomplish the dream first and then use their mind to expedite the details. They risk their lives for the love of an ideal that calls to them to challenge their current circumstances. This madness of trust made me fall in love with a man who had just come out of remission and love for love's sake alone. This madness of trust continues to carry my life to the most unexpected places while I stay poised in the dream and direction of my heart. In this exhilerating process, I repeatedly pay homage to my Teacher and his tireless capacity to vision a world where people are free to think the thoughts they really want to think and not the thoughts they are forced to think by their environment.