The Difference Between Freedom and Suffering

Early on in my transformational journey, I came across a phrase that perfectly described my access to the breakthroughs in freedom, love, self-expression, peace of mind, and enjoyment that I was experiencing:

“A profound relationship to reality.”

We seldom see things as they are. Instead, we see them as we are: our stories, beliefs, fears, and judgments.

What we see when we look at ourselves, others, and the world around us is a reflection of our inner world. We see reflected back to us the judgements, fears, stories, and beliefs that we’ve projected out there.

There’s a term I use in my coaching to moving towards a profound relationship to reality: accuracy.

Accuracy is looking closely at what’s happening. It’s slowing down, quieting down, and witnessing the inner dialogues, the inner feelings, and the inner desires at play in our lives. 

Accuracy is the difference between freedom and suffering. The more accurate we are in our seeing, thinking, speaking, and listening, the more power we can access to create and fulfill our intentions (or perhaps the Divine intentions wanting expression through us).

In a call earlier this evening with a client, I asked a couple simple questions that led us to a much deeper and more accurate understanding of her and what’s been at play for her. That kind of accuracy is immediately freeing. It’s a hit of awareness that creates a palpable space within us. 

That space within us is the space of infinite possibility - and new openings for being and acting arise, new opportunities for agency awaken, and the fundamental current of inspiration and wonder moves us through what moments before felt like an immovable barrier of stuckness. 

Accuracy is knowing where we’re really coming from. Accuracy is knowing what we really intend.

The information is all right there, it just usually feels much safer to deceive ourselves.

That’s one of the very refreshing things about working with adolescents. Many of them see (or at least feel) the inauthenticity of the adults around them. They’re much more open to accurate conversations. They’re much more able to tap into the space of infinite possibility. In fact, they crave it. 

And we’re training them to get better at deceiving themselves and others too. Why? Because most of us adults have never learned to dip back into that refreshing, beautiful river of infinite possibility from which our thoughts, beliefs, judgments, fears, hopes, inspirations, personalities, and ways of being all spring from. 

One of my daily practice to tap into my own agency in accessing that river is how I start off my self-creation process:

“I am the space of infinite possibility.”

It is from that space that I intend to live each moment of my life - and what an amateur at it I am!

It's also a space that I’m committed all our teens (and us adults too) learn to live from. My commitment to the transformation of education continues to pulse inside of me.

It’s a game of accuracy I’ll playing the rest of my life in one form or another.

Much Love. ❤️