Hi, I’m Judith Ashley, author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, romantic women’s fiction with light paranormal elements. My stories show you what life could be like if you had a place like The Circle where you are unconditionally accepted, supported and loved. And where, with this support, you make choices to overcome the darkest nights and choose love and light.
In writing this post, I have two trains of thought.
1. We always have choices, thus we all have freedom. That doesn’t mean we like our choices, but they are there. I have a Give Away on the Pitfalls or Myths of Choice. Contact me via my website and I'll send it to you.
2. When we forgive ourselves and others, we attain a level of internal freedom that provides us with a way through the challenges, the dark times that occur in everyone’s life. Tied to this concept of freedom is my mulling over the concept of resiliency. People I perceive as being more resilient, appear to me to be able to forgive even heinous crimes.
How? My observation is that they have a strong connection
to their Higher Power. That strong connection allows them to release judgment,
giving that over to their Higher Power and that releasing is a key component to
forgiving and forgiving is
essential to attaining that level of inner freedom.
Forgiveness isn’t necessarily easy and forgiveness isn’t about the other person or people, it’s about us.
About our being free of the darkness, the
hatred, the anger, the fear and thus able to look forward in our lives, to see
what we can add to the collective whole to make it a better place for all of
us.
It is, for me, a journey. I can say I’ve reached this
place of inner freedom in some
areas of my life. I’m doing better now that I’m not watching news.
Whatever I see as my limits is shifted as I watch these men and women compete with determination and joy. Fear? I doubt any of them can even spell the word. Determination? Oh Yeah! It’s etched in every movement they make. Freedom? They experience freedom to the utmost of their ability.
Blind athletes playing GoalBall and not only throwing
balls down court but blocking them with only their sense of hearing, air
movement and perhaps a sixth sense? I’m not sure I could block the ball being
fully sighted! And don’t get me started on Wheelchair Rugby aka Murder Ball!
Determination is only half of it. Courage is the other piece.
We all have choices whether we like them or not and our choices do create our tomorrows. These athletes have chosen to move forward in their lives, to use what is still present and to do so at a level of excellence.
While I do not know this for certain, I do believe
somewhere along the way their concept of Freedom
shifted if not totally changed. Our world is the better for them showing us it can
be done.
If you are not yet on my
mailing list, you can sign up for Choices here. I’ve
created a new free offering that includes the novella Sarah’s
Ankh along with the first chapter of Lily: The Dragon and The
Great Horned Owl. I hope you
enjoy them.
Look for my next non-fiction Yes, You Can Create The Life You Love this fall.
All of my books are available at your favorite e-book vendor. Be sure to ask your local library if
you’d prefer to read my books through that resource.
Learn more about
Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series on her website JudithAshley.net
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Judith’s Windtree Press author page.
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find Judith on Facebook!
© 2021 Judith Ashley
6 comments:
Interesting post, Judith. I like the idea that we can alter our concept of freedom with our choices. I will give that some thought.
I'm glad you found these ideas interesting, Lynn. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
Judith, this is such an important post for our world right now. I've had three quotes near my computer about forgiveness and the choice I have in using it regularly. They are similar but slightly different.
One is by Confucius "To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it."
The other is not credited, so I don't know who said it, "Surrender to the freedom of forgiveness. Forgiveness may cost you your pride, but not forgiving them will cost you your freedom."
And the final one is from Nelson Mandela, a man who was imprisoned for 27 years and certainly had many good reasons for hating the people who put him there. Yet he knew how resentment harms you.
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Choices are always there. We can live in the prison of hate or in the world of "my life would be different if only X didn't happen or X didn't do this to me." Or we can choose to let go and move forward. We can let bad things that happen in our life define us or choose to define ourselves despite whatever happened. Your comparison of the competitors in the Paralympics is a great example of choosing how one wants to be in the world.
Thank you for this reminder.
Thanks for sharing these quotes, Maggie. I've admired Nelson Mandela for decades. The Confucius quote is also one I've heard. The uncredited one I haven't heard before.
This is such an enlightening and powerful post, Judith. The comments add to the experience.
Abdul-Baha said, "The reality of man is his thought." If we think in terms of choices, we claim our personal power and freedom to shape our lives, given 'the hand we're dealt.'
Thank you for this post.
Sarah, thank you for sharing Abdul-Baha 'thoughts'. Yes, the comments and especially sharing additional ones has enriched my original post.
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