In the beginning, there was the Light. The Light came from the Source, the Great Mystery, Creator, God – all terms for the World behind the world, the Reality behind our reality, the Sun behind the sun. It seems that if we sit with any great aspect of life for long enough, we come to a place of more questions than answers. Even science, with all its facts and figures, is only a snapshot of information, an interpretation of Reality and Truth.

Creation is simply too vast, too multidimensional, and ever-changing to be defined by any definition or way of existing. Our attachment to the need to know how life is and who we are has driven us through time. We humans find a sense of safety and confidence in the belief that we “know.” We have been on a great journey of learning by experience, education, definition, projection, and reasoning. We use these tools to take in all that goes on within and around us, and we process our journey into a story of life that works for us.

We create identities and roles to which we give all our attention and in which we put all of our faith. My incarnations in this life have been rancher, commodities trader, musician, father, husband, son, addict, recovered person, teacher, CEO, and on and on. They were all roles I played in my story of life – some great and some not so great. As I have evolved in my life, I have come to realize that who I am really is the one who has lived through all of these phases and stages. I am the one born into the form of being human, and I am the one who has learned and grown, experienced, and taken on the beliefs that defined my perspectives and identities.

None of my beliefs or identities were actually me; they were what I believed about who I was. They were aspects of my life’s evolution and experience. I am that Light, that consciousness, that came into this world in the form of a baby boy. From that time on, I have lived this journey one day, one choice, and one experience at a time.

To return to me, the Light, the Spirit, and to be free to live my life without all the attachments I had accumulated in my first 40 years of life, I had to find a way to let go of my belief in what I “knew.” I had to find a way to put the past behind me, rather than live with it wrapped around me like a well-worn security blanket. I had come to confuse “comfortable” with “familiar.” I found refuge in the predictability of the familiar, mistaking it for comfort. The unknown of a bigger, more open life, was unfamiliar. I had been taught that I should appreciate material things and not expect anything beyond my basic comforts and needs. If I wanted something more than the cultural norms, it meant I was ungrateful or selfish.

I lived within these rules until something snapped, and I saw myself as a programmed character who had lost an authentic connection to my Self. I was not happy or content. I would not buy into the official story that something was wrong with me because life wasn’t good enough for me. I had a choice: to either live by medicating my discomfort with food, drugs, money, gambling, sex, excessive working out, diet fads, religion, on and on (all of those options our culture offers up as solutions to our feelings of disconnection) or I could find the way back to me– to who I am really.

In looking for answers, I learned some basic tenets to healing and reconnecting to my Heart and Spirit. I learned that I had to develop a practice of forgiveness. First, I had to forgive myself for all the ways I had sold myself out. I had put my faith in a great matrix of beliefs and stories about life that, as a child, I had no idea might not be true for me as a unique human being. My truth is mine; it is not necessarily something that fits into a blanket belief system.

In forgiving and learning to release my attachment to the judgments that were interwoven throughout my beliefs, identities, and experiences, I began clearing my mind’s view of life and myself. Forgiveness was the key to cleaning my perceptions and uncovering my reality. In many cases, I simply had to forgive others for not living up to my expectations. That was a big one. People are who they are and do what they do, not because of me, but by their own free will. I have no right to demand that others fit into the role I might want to cast them into.

The other side of forgiveness is to free myself from the energetic connection to the objects of my judgments. When we project judgment, we attach ourselves to the objects of our judgment. When I looked at it that way, I realized I didn’t want any connection to those things. I began the practice of not indulging in the beliefs that held my judgments in place. This is a practice. It takes time to undo our attachments, but we can do it because we are the ones who created them.

By taking responsibility and shifting our attention away from the loop of thoughts that support the judgments, we shift our attention to thoughts of Light, freedom, running water, whatever works for you. By taking 100-percent responsibility for our life (owning our part in all of it), we can re-create what we have created – our relationships to our Self and the world around us. That’s a key to a richer life: the power of personal responsibility and the practices of freeing our Self through forgiveness for the sake of living our authenticity.

The essence of this article is drawn from the book, Dreaming Heaven: The Beginning is Near.

Lee McCormick is the co-author of Dreaming Heaven: The Beginning is Near (Hay House), the powerful JourneyBook, DVD and meditation that take you on a journey to your authentic self by following the pathways of the great mystery school at Teotihuacan, Mexico, first created by the Toltec masters thousands of year ago. Lee is the founder of The Integrative Life Center in Nashville, The Ranch Recovery Center in Tennessee, and The Canyon Treatment Center in Malibu, California and has been a creative force in the Mental Health and Recovery scene for more than 15 years. He is also the executive producer and has a leading role in the documentary Dreaming Heaven. www.dreaminheaven.net or www.spiritrecovery.com..