What we really crave is not more stuff, but the inner experience of abundance and beauty . . . There is nothing inherently wrong with material things when they are allowed to be pure experience. The distortion arises when there is craving and need, a belief that “I am less than or wounded without these things”. . .

The material world is not the only way you pursue fulfillment. Seeking out the adoration, acknowledgment, and approval of others keeps you settling into the comfort zones that fit the parameters of others’ lives. By using them to fill you up, you choose to stay as small, standing in their shadow, which is why you often meet their shadow side. From obviously codependent relationships to those that appear the most spiritual - where there is a belief in teacher and student, guru and guru-groupie, leader and follower - these attachments are holding you tightly. As you stand behind these relationships, following their lead, notice what you are bound to. You are empowering their experience instead of creating your own. You are in bondage to another’s life and cannot be free to live your own.

You may ask, “If there are no teachers and students, no leaders and followers, what is to come of the world?” The answer: we would have a world of masterful beings creating to full capacity in their freedom. That can only result in abundance and a true display of power and presence. Belief in the need for a teacher or guru is only an affirmation of incompleteness. It is the structure of hierarchy of which there is no end. This is another pathological or path-of-logical thinking, and logical thinking got us where we are.

Notice how you are turned when following another; you are facing a back. Herein is the message: Turn “back” toward yourself, to the you that thinks you are less than you are, less than you’re worth. Lead and guide yourself. When you look down at your hands, you may discover you hold the ropes of your own hanging, your bondage, your enslavement. You need only create a new bond that leans toward your powerful truth, letting go of the ropes that bind you. In that moment, you will see that you have been “bound” for freedom all along. Free yourself from the inside out. You are the freedom your world is asking for. When you live free as the example, you create the space and permission for others to step into theirs.

It is within your attachments, in and to each passing season, that you become lost. In that space, the mystery is no longer a mystery but a maze, one in which you meander aimlessly, seeking to find the escape, yet longing for the center, your center. In actuality, the maze is you.

What is it that you wish to escape? Yourself, your beliefs, your limits, your life? You desire escape from the beautiful embellished prison you have created: your identity, your job, your relationships, your collection of things, and your pain. Yet, God forbid, you admit this to anyone, especially yourself! It becomes easier to wander aimlessly, creating all of the excuses and reasons, the ample justifications, why it must be as it is…

The crumbling that occurs around you is the revealing of those hidden secrets. Desires can only come in “perfect order,” and that would also mean in the order in which they serve the greatest reward. That Divine Order may mean the tearing down of all structures that hinder the greatness of Self-realization, of Divine Mastery. That order is an ordained path of divination. You are not to be in a maze, you are to experience “a-maze-meant” of the Highest order, into the center of the unknown, but up and out of the limited fantasies of the fragmented false self. Only the rebel can support the complete unveiling of this multi-dimensional experience.

Unless you recognize how you engage the bondage experience, you will be challenged in creating clear, conscious choices. Expressions of restlessness, boredom, or frustration will cage the self. True freedom can never come from these types of expressions. You are either the slave or the master. You cannot be both. You cannot have a foot in two worlds. You are either out-ofline or aligned. You are either ONE or separate. Who are you? What are you choosing? What will you now have as your experience?

True freedom is the willingness to feel all things, in their fullness, allowing them to pass through. Feelings are the way humans attune experience and express sound. We are to synthesize the world, which means bring into oneness. Experiential integration increases the Light quotient and harmonizes wholeness for the cells. Freedom is the responsibility of creating choices that provide a benevolent universe, one filled with the highest expression within both the inner world and the outer world.

The only one that truly controls the degree of freedom you have is you. The degree to which you free yourself and express the essence of freedom is the degree to which your world will reflect that back at you. You are the journey.

© Simran Singh. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New Page Books. Your Journey to Enlightenment: Twelve Guiding Principles of Love, Courage, and Commitment in the New Dawn ISBN: 978-1-60163- 300-2 List Price: US $16.99.

Simran Singh is a creative visionary, transformational catalyst, author and rebel humanitarian in the realms of metaphysics, spirituality and motivation. She is the award winning publisher of 11:11 Magazine and hosts #1-rated, syndicated 11:11 Talk Radio – Voice America 7thWave and The Rebel Road TV.