Monday, October 3, 2011

Freedom from the inside- An experience told through tears, pain, and realizations.



10/2/11
          I am currently living on a farm in Hawaii.  There are dozens of chickens and ducks.  There are 9 goats total- 2 we currently milk every day...  and then there are the rabbits. 
          For the first time in my life I have experienced animals in a more RAW way.  I have experienced the birth process seeing newborns and raising them: chickens, ducks, rabbits, and goats.  I have helped raise these babies and feed them like I am their mom. 
          Well along with birth comes with death.  Death is something that has been put into my life as bad, painful, evil etc.
          So today while milking a mother goat I saw our community dog tossing what I thought was a mouse– in her jaws and shaking it around.  I went over to her to make sure it was a mouse and not a rabbit.  (The mice here carry diseases and are considered pests on this property and we actually told to kill them – I don’t kill them, but if the dog does I guess I am O.K with it although I have only seen them after they have died.) Well to my surprise I look down and not only is it a rabbit- IT IS STILL ALIVE.  At first I was angry and yelled at the dog to get away.  The newborn baby (born 2 days ago) was squirming around on the ground with a medium sized puncture on the side of his body. Even as I write this I feel sad and my eyes well up with tears- but this is not the point. 
          I held the newborn bunny in my hands and I cried hysterically for a minute.  The goat was still on the milk stand dog sitting feet away and I cried in the middle of the grass.  I thought “He didn’t deserve this” “That stupid dog was just playing around with it killing him slowly”, and my thoughts digressed into deep sadness. 
          And then I thought about hope.  I thought about God and Jesus,
Parmahansa Yogananda, Sri Amma Bhagavan, past experiences, mentors, love.  And then I decided to change. 
          I kept crying and I wrapped the newborn into a towel and had him rest on my lap while I finished milking.  And then when I finished milking I sat with him on the ground and I asked God “WHY?.” And I asked “What is the lesson?”
          The answer came to me “Let go of what I consider freedom”.  And then more information came to me to let go of the word choice freedom.  The word freedom has been manipulated and changed by so many.  “Freedom means free within yourself no matter what circumstances, experiences, people, or things are around you”.  We have been conditioned from the current stance of America that freedom is having the land you want because you want it.  Freedom is white men coming from Europe to take the brown man’s land because he wanted it.  Freedom is the ability to drive a car that guzzles oil.  Freedom is money etc. 
          Well what this new message told me is that true freedom is to embody the feeling inside you and true freedom doesn’t control anyone.  I feel that people think freedom is being able to “talk crap” about your neighbor or that freedom is being able to control others.  I hadn’t even thought about this until this moment. That means that even if the “government” is “controlling” we are not controlled if we are free inside.  Many are against the government and many are for it.  But in the end it doesn’t matter –both are trying to control the other to create an environment that THEY WANT. 
          And I realized the fuss and fight about who did what isn’t worth the effort.  It is not anyone else’s job to make you happy or make you free.  Only you can choose to feel free. 
          Even after this incredible message came to me I am still questioning it and my other side of brain has always thought “Turn the other cheek?” Well growing up it was” Kill or be killed” so which is it? And although I don’t reference movies a lot I give a lot of credit to the original Star Wars Trilogy.  In the third movie when Luke has to fight his father his lesson is to not give into anger and re-act, but instead take the hit and “turn the other cheek”.  The lesson is that the light side of the force is stronger than that of anger and aggression. 
          I felt this same battle within myself today while holding a punctured baby rabbit and looking at the face of the dog who had just violently shook him.  I decided to not yell at the dog- not just sit there and cry, but instead I needed to pray, meditate,  and breathe.  Being in that state, I imagined the Universe's light shining on this baby rabbit and asked the Universe to take care of it.  I sat there for a while breathing and feeling relaxed even though I was holding a resemblance of pure sadness. 
          Having the life I have had -I know to trust God.  God is nothing but love, compassion, kindness, and peace.  If you feel fear you are not feeling God.  If my  thoughts went to fear, I just re-adjusted each breath - only trusting God. 
          I was questioning what I should do.  There was no blood on the outside, and I couldn’t tell what had happened internally.  I thought "do I have someone kill him to make it less 'painful'?" (Just like many people do when they put their animal to sleep etc).  And I decided to just trust God.  Life and death is not my business... it is God’s.  I remembered a chapter in “Autobiography of a Yogi” where Yogananda is asked to heal someone’s loved one in a hospital.  He goes to the hospital and says his prayer and holds space for the dying person. The person ended up passing away, but Yogananda helped them in the direction they were meant to go by trusting God.  I think people have this belief that healing always means “back to life” or “back to wellness”, but healing is just being a channel for God and that person to connect.  It is that connection that determines if they revive or if they  transition. 
          So tonight I prayed, cried, and became a spotlight vessel for God and the newborn rabbit.  I would consider it healing what I did and I decided to put him with his brothers and sisters back in his fuzzy cove and allow him to either revive or transition in there.  
          The end.  

PS: All 3 images came up on google search for "Surrender to God" and all of which are completely relevant in my blog since I mention Star Wars and Yogananda.  

Meet Yoda  and Below on the right is the guru I mention  Parmahansa Yogananda.