How Do I Respond From Interior Freedom?

EPISODE 83 | HOW DO I RESPOND FROM INTERIOR FREEDOM?

If we're not aware of the unfreedom in us, we do a lot of these things without our awareness, right? We may manipulate, try and control, try and possess. If we don't feel that our love is reciprocated, if we don't feel that our sacrifice is appreciated, then what happens? In our hearts, there is a build-up of resentment and bitterness and anger, and it's like all the opposite of joy and peace. Those are big red flags that we're not in a good place.

[00:00:31] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:01:08] Good morning and welcome to day eight of my 30-day IG Live challenge. Okay, so, today I thought I would do a bit of Q& A, or I should say today's Live is in response to one of the questions that I have received about making the interior journey.

[00:01:30] And it just so happens that I wanted to also make this one of the topics of my life, to talk about freedom, okay, and specifically interior freedom. Because interior freedom is such a big part of the journey into integration.

[00:01:47] Okay, so, I'm going to share the question that I received. So, I'm going to try and break this down in my response, okay? 

[00:01:54] RESPONDING FROM A PLACE OF FREEDOM
So, the question was, as awakened Christians - I guess kind of like enlightened Christians - we are often called to respond from a place of freedom. What exactly is this freedom? So, what is this freedom? Who defines the freedom and the brokenness within us that leads us to respond from a place of unfreedom?

[00:02:18] Okay, I think she means a different point, you know? So, like, can I talk a bit about the brokenness within that leads us to respond from a place of freedom, which is opposite from what we're called to, right? Which is to respond from a place of freedom. And then a practical question; how do I navigate the in between? 

[00:02:36] So, this process of recognizing the healing that I'm going through, knowing the cause of my unfreedom, seeking healing and redemption, and waiting. Okay, so, there's a lot contained in this paragraph of questions.

[00:02:54] And I'm going to try and respond by breaking it down. Okay, so, the gist of this, how do I respond from a place of freedom? What is freedom? And she asked, who defines this freedom? First of all, I would like to say I'm not going to respond from a place of trying to give you just an intellectual definition of freedom.

[00:03:19] There are many places in which you can find discussions, arguments, explanations of what this interior freedom is or can be. And sometimes, I think we can get very stuck or caught up in just that intellectual understanding of what freedom is like. And for the interior journey, because our concern is actually making the interior journey, right?

[00:03:45] I know some of you may be watching, some of you who are watching this video may still be at the point of, I want to find out a bit more about this interior journey; I'm kind of curious about it. Maybe some of you are growing in awareness of what the interior journey is and what is it that you lack and what is it that you need to do.

[00:04:04] But the most important thing about interior journey is that we walk it - is that we make it right? There's a place for thinking about it. There's a place of for pondering and praying and talking about it. But where the rubber meets the road, it's always where I'm most interested in and that - so, I'm going to answer this question from the perspective of what's the experience of unfreedom? What's the experience of growing in freedom? How do we practically speaking, define this freedom?

[00:04:40] Okay, when we say how can I respond from a place of freedom if let's say, as the questioner put it, as an awakened Christian - we're often called to respond from a place of freedom. Now, why is freedom important?

[00:04:55] It's implicit in, or even explicit in some of the videos I've already made so far. Freedom is necessary for there to even be the possibility of love. Okay, freedom is necessary, a necessary condition for there to even be a possibility of love. Those of us who desire to love, whether it's loving God or loving others, our efforts to do so, to act rightly, let's say for the good of others, are hampered when we are acting out of unfreedom.

[00:05:33] And I want to match unfreedom, experientially, to fear. Okay, all kinds of fears and anxieties that are actually hidden or maybe not so hidden in our hearts, in our subconscious, it's at an existential level. And many of us, we grow up with this kind of subconscious anxiety and fear because of the wounds that we've experienced.

[00:05:59] Because if I'm going to get a little bit technical - you know, of complex trauma, of relational trauma - because we've never really experienced the grounded and rooted security for being absolutely loved for just being who we are. So, there's always this fear of abandonment, of rejection, that we're not going to be worthy of love.

[00:06:21] We are always seeking some way to either earn that love that we need or to run away from the pain of the feeling of not being loved or run away from the fear that we'll never be worthy of love. So, as long as there's this fear that is in operation within us, we are not totally free, right?

[00:06:45] SELF-INTEREST
And if we're not totally free, then even our most, our best attempts to love, to be loving, is in a sense, motivated - perhaps without us really knowing, right - motivated by self-interest, okay? Self-interest. This is not a moral judgment on self-interest. I think that's very important. I know that for a lot of you who are in my audience, if you have been very schooled and nurtured and trained to love others and all that, immediately when you hear the term "self-interest", you may think, oh, that's a bad thing.

[00:07:20] Let's put it as a morally neutral term at this point. Self-interest is a part of survival, okay? If you're not interested in making sure that your hunger is met, your physical hunger is met, you're going to die, you're going to die of starvation, right? And in the same way, your hunger, our hunger to be in relationship with others, our hunger to be loved, is as natural as our hunger for food.

[00:07:49] Okay, and it's just as important for survival, right? To not be abandoned, alone, is very important. Okay, so, self interest in this sense, in the way I'm talking about it, is not a bad thing. It's not a morally less praiseworthy thing. It's just a very factual thing. If we don't have the existential safety, security, that we are unconditionally loved - that's like a very basic need that needs to be fulfilled first.

[00:08:22] If we don't have that, then whatever we're doing is going to be affected by our anxiety, that this basic need is not met, right? So, when we try to love someone else to the best of our ability and consciousness, we think it's for them. But the build-up of the anxiety and fear in us may lead to things later on like possessiveness, fear of losing this person, trying to maybe manipulate the person that we love without us maybe fully being conscious about it.

[00:08:58] That's the tricky thing, right? That's a tricky thing because if we are not aware of the fear in us, of the anxiety in us, if we're not aware of the unfreedom in us, we do a lot of these things without our awareness, right? We may manipulate, try and control, try and possess. And when we can't control and possess the persons that we love or the persons that we are serving because we say we love them, if we don't feel that our love is reciprocated, if we don't feel that our sacrifice is appreciated, then what happens? We become resentful, angry, bitter.

[00:09:34] And when we begin to notice that in our hearts there is a build-up of resentment and bitterness and anger, and, you know, it's like all the opposite of joy and peace, those are big red flags; big red flags that we're not in a good place, not spiritually, not emotionally. Usually, that means that neither are we in a good place bodily and physically as well. Okay, because all that resentment and anger and pain and sorrow and all that often also leads to physical sickness, illness, issues, and all that.

[00:10:13] So, fear is one of the very easy ways - easy in the sense that I think we all know what it's like to be afraid. Fear and anxiety is one way to tell that we are not free.

[00:10:26] Okay, let me consult my notes. I wanted to make sure I hit certain points. Okay, so, it is our wounds that, in a sense, gave us the foundation of a lack of safety. Right, so, what does it feel like? It will feel like the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet. We don't have like solid ground to stand on.

[00:10:46] It may feel like every time we have to make some kind of a decision, like a big decision maybe between something, like we feel like we have to choose between what we need and what we think is better for someone else. We feel trapped, okay? There's a part of us that may immediately feel like, I need to protect myself, which is normal.

[00:11:10] For survivors of complex trauma who, in our life experience - you know, no one looks out for us, okay? Not so much the head, because our mind, our intellect can sometimes really try to rationalize that oh, no, we actually were loved. Oh, no, our parents were there for us, but our body and our hearts know things in a way that's different, okay?

[00:11:33] And sometimes what we rationalized and the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves kind of see reality in a more positive light, may actually not be entirely true. And part of this interior journey is in terms of growing in freedom is growing in freedom to see the truth; growing in freedom to see the reality. Okay, and that sense of self that we lack because of our wounds, often because of the levels of, again, the term complex trauma - go and Google that.

[00:12:06] Okay, I'm not going to explain this. I'm not an expert on trauma. But go and Google and learn about what complex trauma is and how that is different from like big T trauma. Okay, it's kind of like death by a thousand paper cuts instead of one big immediately fatal wound kind of a thing. 

[00:12:22] And many of us, in terms of the relational wounds that we have experienced since we were very little, we bear marks and experiences of complex trauma. Okay, and that kind of like prepares the foundation for us when we then now say, okay, I want to be loving. I want to be a good daughter, a good spouse, I want to be a disciple of Christ. And Christ is to be loving. We try and do all that on a very shaky foundation in which there is actually no existential safety within us.

[00:12:53] There is actually a hollowness in us. We are fearful of how our choices and actions will be perceived by others. And by others, I mean both other people - it could be the people that we love, it could be our elders, it could be the people in authority over us. But it could also be God, okay? When we are fearful, when we are not securely grounded and rooted in the truth that we're loved - bodily, okay? Not cognitively knowing that I am loved. That's very different.

[00:13:27] Just knowing that I am loved in my mind, if I say Intellectually, I assent, I choose to believe that - that's just like one layer, but it doesn't have the power of freeing us. Intellectual assent, just the cognitive understanding that we are loved, does not free us. It has to be the whole bodied, lived experience of being loved.

[00:13:51] When we don't have that, we are fearful of how we are perceived by the others, even by God and we are fearful of being punished. We are fearful of being unworthy of love and what's the biggest punishment? Usually, for us is to be not loved, to be rejected, to be abandoned for who we are.

[00:14:10] I think for so many of us, that's a very deep and maybe even subconscious fear - we are so afraid that we will be rejected for who we are. And that's why so many of us are afraid to reveal who we really are, or even to find out who we really are because we are probably scared that what we find out about our true selves may actually kind of like prove to us and confirm for us that we're not worthy of love.

[00:14:37] WHAT IS FREEDOM?
So, freedom then, if that were marks and experiences of unfreedom, freedom is the opposite of all that. Freedom is the experience of coming from a deep sense of security in God and in our sense of self. And instead of the ground constantly shifting beneath my feet, I don't have like a good firm foothold to stand on, to live from, to make decisions from. Freedom gives me a sense of like I'm on rock. I'm on solid ground.

[00:15:09] I know who I am I know I am loved even when I do the wrong things, even when I choose poorly, even when I make mistakes, I know I am loved. And because I am so confident that I am loved, when I decide something, when I make a decision, it is from solid ground in the sense that I can be even aware of maybe the remnant anxieties and fears that are pushing me or pulling me to choose a certain way. And I can become aware that, oh, actually, that's coming from a place of fear, right? That's coming from a place of anxiety.

[00:15:48] And let's kind of like wait and not act compulsively; to just go according to what the anxiety and fear is saying to us. Because, you know, when we are always in anxiety and fear, we just want to make a decision that hopefully will make us feel less anxious and less fearful.

[00:16:04] And oftentimes, that means we make a decision that goes in the direction of feeding the belief that we have to be the kind of person that we need to be, that other people want us to be. But unfortunately, doing that often just makes us feel even less sure about who we are, even more fearful that if we stop giving people what they want, that they will reject us.

[00:16:25] Okay, so, fear always feeds fear. Unfreedom, when we act from unfreedom, we become more and more unfree. When we begin to experience freedom and experience that sense of deep rootedness of being loved and we can choose from a sense of, this is the honest decision right now that honours both me where I am, not just who I am but where I am. And I am not a saint.

[00:16:54] For most of us will say like, you know, I'm not that healed or whole or that mature in love, that if I did something or chose something beyond where I actually am, I'm actually not being authentic I'm actually playing a role. I'm actually wearing a mask of being, let's say, you know, a very holy person or being a very loving and self-sacrificial wife, mother, child, whatever that is, okay? 

[00:17:17] It becomes inauthentic because that is not what I can freely do with the capacity that I have now, but I can own that and I can acknowledge that. I'm okay with saying that this is the best I can do now. And yes, there are shortcomings to that, and yeah, it may be not the most perfect solution. But then, also at the same time, how often do we have perfect solutions in life? Never, right? Hardly ever, okay?

[00:17:43] Freedom allows us to do that, and at the same time, surrender the outcome of the best choices that we can make right now. And also trust that things are still evolving. I am still growing. There's always the hope that as I continue to become more whole and more free, that my capacity to love will also continue to grow. That my ability to love in a way that honours both my needs and some other person's needs will continue to expand. That's the hope that we can have; that we can be in touch with when we are acting from a place of freedom, when we are grounded in the foundation of being safe in God's love.

[00:18:31] Again, it's helpful to see that the two opposites, okay, and how different they are. Freedom comes from a place of safety. It gives us space, it gives us hope and it allows us to see that even if my actions now are imperfect, it's okay, I'm on a journey. And God is much bigger than whatever I'm able to do and not do. And He loves all these people that I can't love far greater than I can. 

[00:18:55] Not in a way that abdicates my responsibility, but in a way that acknowledges my creatureliness. That actually is very powerful because it helps us to move forward. Versus when we are stuck in our anxieties and fears of acting perfectly, of being like very loving, or being very holy. In a very paradoxical way, we are often stuck at an earlier part of our journey and we cannot grow.

[00:19:19] RECOGNISING HEALING IN OURSELVES
And one year, two year, five years, ten years later we may still be stuck in our scripts and our narratives of what being holy and being good and being loving should look like, when interiorly, we are insecure and fearful still, we are manipulative and controlling and resentful and bitter - all that. We can tell from the fruits if we are actually growing in freedom and if we are actually not growing in freedom.

[00:19:45] So, freedom then, is when we are grounded and rooted in who we are in our core. So, earlier in the question, I think there was also a question about recognizing healing. How do I recognize, let's say, that there is healing; that I'm in the process of healing? I'll say one quite surefire way to know that we are healing is when you begin to notice that you are less activated by fear when you need to make a deliberation between what is in your interest and what you think is the right thing to do; what your script, okay?

[00:20:21] We all have these scripts about how we are supposed to act in order to be a good member of society, a good member of our family, a good member of our church, for example. There are all these scripts and we are usually trapped by our scripts, okay? And so, when we're not free, at the earliest point of our journey, we're just acting out of our scripts without even knowing that those are scripts, okay?

[00:20:45] Then as we grow a bit more aware, maybe we recognize that we're fearful and we're anxious, but we can't help but act out of those scripts because we're too afraid to be different. Because when we belong to systems that are dysfunctional - and I think practically every system that we belong to have some form of dysfunction, whether it's our family, our workplace, our communities, our churches, whatever. Because human beings are wounded, right?

[00:21:10] And human beings are part of systems and systems are often dysfunctional. And when we grew up playing a certain role that the system accepts and we start to discover who we are and we begin to move into authenticity. Guess what? There will be pushback. You will experience some form of rejection.

[00:21:26] You will experience people trying to get you to go back to where you were before. All that is part of the journey. So, the tension between fear and freedom - okay, between fear, anxiety, and that sense of this is hard, but I know who I am and I'm going to make decisions grounded in truth.

[00:21:48] When I find that I am less activated by fear, when I know that what I'm about to do will make somebody unhappy, will make somebody maybe criticize me, could be somebody's important to me, right?

[00:22:01] So, I think day five of this challenge, I talked about growing in freedom from parental wounds and that's a very, very real thing. No matter how old we get, I think we are really affected by how our parents react to us, respond to us. I know I am. I know I am, right? So, for me, a mark that I'm healing is that I find that I'm less activated or even when I notice I'm activated like by some fear anxiety or how my parents react. I have more space in me to hold that fear in in myself, to acknowledge the anxiety in me, to care for my own emotion, to make myself know that I matter.

[00:22:42] I'm not just going to react in a way that my parents want without paying attention to my own needs, for example. And often, when I know how to hold these two in tension, and I can know how to attune. So, it's a gradual thing. When I grow to be able to attune to both my needs and the needs of my parents or whoever it is this other party is, I know that I'm growing in freedom. Because freedom gives us greater space, greater room to manoeuvre.

[00:23:13] Freedom makes us less reactive, okay? So, if you ask about how can I recognize healing, then one way would be that greater sense of space and being less activated, okay? Let me just check the question again. Recognizing the healing, knowing the cause, seeking healing, redemption, and waiting.

[00:23:37] Okay, I'll come back to that a little bit. in some sense, it's too big a question for just one Live. But knowing the cause, seeking healing, redemption, waiting, that's really referring to, the whole journey, okay, the ongoing journey.

[00:23:51] HOW TO CHOOSE FROM A PLACE OF FREEDOM?
There is actually a practical question that came with that one. So, an example. So, I think it's good to try and end with an example of how do I act from a place of freedom? 

[00:23:59] Okay. So, the question continues, can our dreams hold us captive when it conflicts with the reality of our lives or vice versa. For example, I'm a single caregiver to potentially many elderly, maybe relatives or family members - how do I balance gratitude, filial piety, and the same time focusing on my own desires.

[00:24:20] Okay. So, I'm going to sharpen this to just look at it from a perspective of okay, when my dreams and my lived reality seem to be in conflict, when it feels like obligation and duty and filial piety is asking me to go one way or choose some concrete specific thing, whereas my desires and dreams and my needs seems to be saying I need something else. How do I choose from a place of freedom?

[00:24:53] Okay, so, that's a very real question. How do I choose from a place of freedom?

[00:25:01] Okay, first I want to say, we can get very stuck when we think in very large conceptual - like big picture things. Okay. So, for example, in that question earlier, it wasn't about a specific decision that needs to be made. It's kind of talking in general. There's a general sense that I have elderly relatives, that I'm probably bound by duty in the sense that I should care for, but then I also have dreams that are unfulfilled and desires that are unfulfilled.

[00:25:29] Remaining in that space is never going to be helpful. Okay, we need to get very specific and very concrete. There has to be a next step, next move that I need to discern. Because discernment is always in the concrete. Right, it's always very specific, it doesn't look too far ahead. Because God never gives us the whole map at one go, okay? We make the journey by putting one foot in front of the other.

[00:25:55] So, I would ask this person, first get specific, what do you mean by your desires? The desires are very general. What are your unfulfilled desires? Can you list them out? That would be a first step. Okay, what do you mean? What is it that you feel that your life - you know that you've always wanted to do, that you've not been able to do, for example.

[00:26:16] Now, that's just a first step. When we haven't really integrated and healed, a lot of times, our desires, we only know them at the surface level, okay? What that means is, the desires are trying to express something from the deeper part of ourselves and from the core of ourselves. We need to make that journey inwards, and that's a journey too.

[00:26:41] Okay, but we begin where we are, we begin by asking the questions at where we are at right now. So, if it is, I feel like I have unfulfilled desires. Name them so that you can make them concrete, so that you can maybe process them and begin to pray about them and maybe ask those desires, "what are you saying to me about myself"? 

[00:27:00] I want to say that when we are not yet integrated. Okay, we're never fully integrated. But when they are still deep things within us that have not been digested, they have not been integrated, they can manifest as very strong desires and sometimes those desires shift and change when we get more integrated and when we get more healed.

[00:27:22] When we begin to stand more on solid ground, I think, in a sense, it's like we are less leaking all over the place in terms of what we think we want. We become more focused and more clear and more confident, even in our limitation, okay, about what is it, who we are and what is it that we actually need.

[00:27:41] Now, the question about balancing filial piety and all of that, right, filial piety and my desire and duty. So, again, it's that tension between choosing what I need and what is justly mine. So, it could be actually appropriate needs, but those of us who have very strong scripts that we shouldn't have any interest in our own needs, we will probably think that any need is inappropriate.

[00:28:03] Any self-interest is inappropriate. Now, that's where some correction needs to happen as well. Okay, but when we need to choose between let's say what is indeed appropriately mine and something that is just in the larger context, in the larger picture, then we need to look at what the experience is.

[00:28:25] Am I gripped by fear? Am I gripped by fear that if I don't do the dutiful thing, if I don't do the right, so called the "right thing", then again, I'm unworthy. I'm not worthy of love. I'm a bad role model. I'm a bad example. I would let my elders down. I will be criticized by people, that maybe, I think God will love me less.

[00:28:48] If I notice that I have all these emotions in me, then I know I'm not free. If I'm not free, then I can't actually make any kind of proper discernment. Okay, as to, is God calling me to take a very concrete step - again, it must be important that it's concrete and specific; to sacrifice something in my life to care for the elderly in my life. 

[00:29:13] Or could He be, equally possible, asking me to take a step in faith and do something that seems to go against, you know, committing, let's say, my days to looking after the elderly in my family. Both are possible, okay?

[00:29:29] I mean, they're always possible. The thing about discernment is we need to trust that at the existential level, that I am loved, that love that God has for me does not change. Even if I make a mistake in a decision that I make, that there can always be - that God would always meet me where I am, even after I make a decision, that He will always accompany me, that I am learning about who He is and who I am, and that I am growing in my capacity to love.

[00:30:00] In that way, I'm not frozen by fear. I'm not frozen by anxiety, that I'm not unfree. Okay, so, to this person who asked this question, first I'll say, if you notice that you're very trapped because you feel like this tension can't be solved, right? On one hand, there's this duty and responsibility that weighs very heavily on you.

[00:30:20] I would invite you to look a little deeper and say, do you maybe need to work on that freedom, the inner freedom first, which is the core wounds that you may have that make you not able to see that God could possibly really call you to go either way. And if He calls you either one way or the other, and you're and just thinking about, you know, each of these possibilities kind of fill you with some kind of anxiety or shame, there's a big sign there that there's more healing that needs to happen first, okay? 

[00:30:52] NAVIGATING THE IN-BETWEEN
Let me see. Okay. So, and then finally the question was, how do I navigate the in between? That's a very good question because we are always in that in between. Okay, we are never perfectly free. Even as we begin to embark on this journey, we are like in the progress of becoming more and more free.

[00:31:10] But it is not a zero-one thing, you know? It's not like, okay, I want to be free and so, now I'm free. Or I attend a retreat, or I go for some inner healing and now I'm free. I hear this so often, actually. Sometimes in, you know, in my circles, we think that, oh, I'm healed. Well, we're never fully healed.

[00:31:24] There's so many things that need healing and there's so many layers to healing and every time there's healing it is real, it is powerful. Amazing things can happen and we can really be liberated, right. But it's an ongoing process. So, because we are in this constant process, knowing how to be in the in between is a very important thing, right. 

[00:31:45] So, here's a tip. I think her question was how do we be in between you know kind of like - and also surrender and waiting and acknowledging that we need healing.

[00:31:55] Here's something that I've learned. Being able to give up our need to be perfectly loving, being able to give up our need to be perfectly loving. Because often that need to be perfectly loving comes from a place of unfreedom. Okay, it comes from a place of compulsion.

[00:32:10] Because I need to be perfectly loving in order to be worthy of love, to be good, etc, etc. Okay, that's something that we can relax into, ask for grace for. Help me to give up my need to be perfectly loving or perfectly holy. Not because it's not good to be perfectly loving or holy but because we all understand it in a particular way and usually the way we understand it is actually distorted and it traps us in our unfreedom, okay.

[00:32:42] So, giving up the need to be perfectly free, acknowledging that we have this desire, but giving up the need to have it right now, is another way of being in the in between. Navigating the in between. Recognizing that maybe right now, the lesson for me, it's about giving up this need to be perfectly free or perfectly loving and being able to let go of our ability to be seen as good and praiseworthy, even in the eyes of God.

[00:33:10] Why? Because if we still have that deep need to have God see us as only good and praiseworthy and loving and all that, it means that we are not secure in His love. It means that our experience of His love is still conditional.

[00:33:30] Not because God's love for us is conditional, but we've only been able to experience His love as being present to us when we are good, when we do what He wants, when we're not disappointing him, when we think we're not disappointing Him. It's impossible to disappoint God, by the way, because I think disappointment is only possible when somebody doesn't know it's going to happen, or they expected better of you.

[00:33:51] God never expects better of us, in the sense, He is clearer than we are of what we're capable of in the moment, okay? That, for me, has been one big source of healing. Realizing that, when I finally acknowledge, oh, this is all I can do, it's like, this is my limit. And I feel God celebrate that because it's like, congratulations! I've seen it all along. I've known all along. This is where you are. You're such a beginner.

[00:34:15] He says it not in a spiteful way, not in a condescending way. You know, it's like, this is where you are and I've known it all along. And I've never expected more from you at this point. But you have been pushing yourself and beyond what you're able to and hurting yourself along the way. That was never me.

[00:34:30] Right, and to then now be able to see the truth of where I actually am and to experience God celebrating me and God loving me that is not only freedom, that's a growth in freedom - that's a way of being in the in between, okay. Because that deepens our experience of being securely loved, unconditionally loved. 

[00:34:54] So, how do I respond from a place of freedom? I think for today, that's the best I can give you. You know, to kind of give you a sense of what are the questions to ponder. What are the experiences of unfreedom and freedom?

[00:35:07] And I'll just leave with this quote that I think - this verse in scripture that is often brought up when we're talking about freedom and fear. And that's from the first letter of St. John, chapter four, verse 18; that there is no fear in love. "Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love". Freedom, to be able to act from a place of freedom requires that we are securely loved. Because when we're not securely loved, not perfectly securely loved, there will always be that fear of punishment. Whether the punishment comes in the form of rejection, criticism, whatever - abandonment.

[00:35:53] Okay, so, may you grow in being loved instead of thinking how can I grow in freedom because that's a very difficult thing to think how can I grow in freedom. The more helpful question is how can I increase my experience of being loved of receiving love, whether it's from God, from someone that I feel safe with. I think even more importantly, from myself, how can I learn to love myself and receive that love better?

[00:36:27] Okay, be shameless about it. I've learned to be shameless when I've realized I'm stuck in my interior journey. I tell God, looks like I need to be loved more. I need more love in order to continue to grow. Lord, love me and help me to know how to receive your love. And that's the prayer I have for you. 

[00:36:45] May you know how to be loved, how to receive that love greater so that you will experience the fruit of that love, which is freedom. Talk to you tomorrow!

[00:36:57] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

[00:37:24] If you like what you hear on this podcast and would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me, as well as be updated on my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!