We can ask our governments for freedom, but the ultimate experience of freedom comes from within. This is a hard pill to swallow when we are currently witnessing so many atrocities, suffering and infringements on people’s freedom on the planet. But one must first come to understand that we are the co-creators of our experience. So, our only path towards healing the planet becomes to heal ourselves and integrate all those broken pieces.

We cannot help but start out a bit broken. It is few the number of people who come into this world completely whole and remain unbroken throughout their lives. Bodihsattvas exist, I’m sure, but the majority of us come into this body with lessons, desires and karmas. For if we hadn’t, why else would we have chosen to incarnate? There are a few embodied masters and jivanmuktas out there, and I would dare say that it takes a high degree of discipline and practice to achieve those states, but most people are still in the process of becoming whole, integrated and ultimately- free.

A wise teacher once said to a group of us in a yoga class that we are like a glass of water. We all appear to be clean and pure when undisturbed, but if you take something and stir up the water, that’s when you’ll see sediment rise from the bottom. It is at that point you have the opportunity to really see your own crap and deal with it. Once you’ve seen it, you can clean it out. That’s life itself, stirring the water in the glass.

So, if we use this metaphor for the planet, we can really see that She’s really cleaning stuff up. It’s a process of purification. On a social level, we can waste a lot of time becoming angry or bitter or worried at all the social injustices, wars, violence..etc.. perpetrated on mankind, but this is futile.

A whole and free person is too busy being the change they want to see in the world because they know that ultimately that is the only way to really change things. You can be a true warrior and stand in the front lines with the like of NODAPL protesters or GreenPeace or a Doctors Without Borders, but really all you have to do is be yourself being the highest version of you that you can be. Be entirely you. Maybe you are more a Clowns Without Borders type, or maybe your highest human potential is just to be the best parent you can possibly be to your kids, the best teacher to your students. The best partner. The best farmer. The best nurse. The best accountant. The best person in every situation. Get my drift?

Don’t misinterpret me. Being the best doesn’t mean that others are worse. This is not a competition. We are only competing with ourselves, with all those other less kind, less caring, more selfish people that exists within us. That if we don’t deal with and heal (to heal means to become sound, to reconcile) then we oblige them to be reflected in others who interact with us. We cast them out into the world onto other people who act as our mirrors for all those things that we don’t want to see in our own reflection.

I leave you with one of my favorite affirmations by Lousie Hay.