Note: Before reading today’s tip, read Acts 16:16-36 from the Bible or watch all of Acts 16 from the Visual Bible movie, Acts.
Many people resist surrendering and following guidance, because they believe freedom is “doing what I want,” and surrender is giving up that freedom.
Today’s reading says:
If you leave all things to Me, I will guide you in all things. You will not need to give thought or care to anything you are to do or not do. … All that you are left to do is to willingly do as I ask and enjoy the freedom that is expressed through you.
If you pay attention to the thinking mind, you will notice it isn’t freedom. It worries. It spins and spins as it tries to figure out solutions to problems. It finds more problems in its solutions to other problems. When things do not go as it expects, it gets angry and blames others, or it decides that you are guilty and unworthy. Thinking is not freedom. It is “the prison you are in.”
When we surrender and follow guidance, we do have to give up “my way,” but what we discover is the freedom of being an empty vessel. Loves moves through and around that vessel, so that what we witness and experience is love.
Knowing love as the benevolent nature of the universe gives us a sense of freedom that we could never know with the thinking mind. It isn’t the mind’s idea of freedom, which is “doing what I want and doing it my way.” That only leads to conflict. True freedom is witnessing love, knowing the universe as love, and realizing, “I am that.”
When Paul and Silas were in prison in Macedonia, a great earthquake came, which opened the prison doors and set them free from the chains that bound them. It appeared that the earthquake set them free, because now they could go their way. Yet, that was not freedom. Their freedom was following the guidance to stay in prison—which freed the jailer from his sense of guilt and unworthiness—and welcoming their jailer into their hearts as a friend.
The freedom of befriending the jailer was greater than escaping and going their own way.
The point of the story is this:
If you go your own way, you may think you know freedom, but if you follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, you will discover what freedom really is.
Freedom is being an empty vessel, because an empty vessel is free to know the benevolent heart of consciousness through:
- Witnessing how the universe cares for us.
- Directly experiencing free-flowing love for all things.
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.
