Celebrating Spiritual Freedom

Last month I traveled east to attend a wedding. In a way, it was also a homecoming. Twenty years ago, I lived in the very town I came back to visit.

In the days before the wedding, I did some exploring and caught up with some old friends from my former workplace, a job I had for more than a decade.

More than 10 years ago when I was downsized from that job and jettisoned from the security I derived from it, I did not feel free. In fact, I felt bound. Bound to worry about being unemployed. Bound to embarrassment about being out of work. Bound to the fear I would stay that way. Bound to resentment over not feeling valued for the professional contributions I had made throughout the years.

It was an unhappy time. I had lost my tether and along with it a big part of my identity. In time, my circumstances improved. I got another job and went back to work, but more important, I reshaped my life to better reflect who I was becoming.

On my trip back, I realized I had not been able to see how far I’d come until I had the chance to see where I’d been. As I explored my old town, I recognized it, but it felt different. It hadn’t changed, but I had.

“If we want to feel free, we must claim our freedom. The willingness to move forward from a setback, to release resentment through forgiveness, and to use our inner powers of faith and imagination to begin again are ways to live freely and joyously.”

Freedom Is an Inside Job

I didn’t see it at the time because I was so consumed with unwanted change, but I had been given a great gift. Set free from a life that was comfortable but ultimately stagnant, I was unbound from a limited vision of who I could be.

Reframing the past can be a powerful practice. On the spiritual path, we learn about our divine gifts—faith, power, and love, to name a few. We also learn about freedom, the understanding that as divine beings, we are meant to be free and creative, unencumbered by the limits of our personal histories, choices, and even our dreams.

It can be so easy to put limits on our freedom, to clip our own wings with thoughts of doubt, self-criticism, and undeservedness. But the power and presence of God is so much greater than anything that can happen in our lives. That awareness, along with the willingness to act from it, is the seat of our personal power and the key to transformative change.

If we want to feel free, we must claim our freedom. The willingness to move forward from a setback, to release resentment through forgiveness, and to use our inner powers of faith and imagination to begin again are ways to live freely and joyously. The choice to live spiritually free is one we must make again and again.

I am not the same person who lost my job all those years ago and was bound to feelings of rejection and unworthiness. I’ve let all that go and have found my freedom. If something in your life is holding you back, I pray you remember your divine identity and claim your spiritual freedom and know there are no chains that bind you.