FREE AND BEAUTIFUL

  

Freedom is like beauty and love—it is difficult to define

but you know it when you experience it.

(Myles Munroe)

Life is beautiful

To those who are beautiful.

What is life all about? What really is the be-all and end-all of life?

Permit me to offer my contemplative commentary on this.

Life is about knowing, loving and glorifying God with our lives and growing progressively in our experience and expression of our God-given graces and gifts.

In simpler words, life is about knowing God and fulfilling God-given purpose in life.

Life is about living with purpose - not just existing but living life to the full, although different people have different concepts of this. Different strokes for different folks. Thus, life means a lot of different things to different people.

However, the basic thing about life, as simply put as possible, is this: know God for yourself and find out what you were put on Earth to do. 

 

Now let’s ask this all-important question: Who are you? Do you really know you?

Listen up: “who” you are, is different from “what” you are.  “What” speaks of what you do, or simply put, the name by which what you do is called. For example, you can be a student, a graduate, an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, a banker, a president, an ambassador, a pastor, a musician, an artist, a businessman, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, even a male, a female, young or old, and ultimately a human being in contrast to being an animal or wildlife. These all refer to “what” you are currently, are becoming or can become in future.

But to let get down to real stuff, I can ask you questions along these lines:

“So you say you’re a president, but tell me who a president is?”

“OK, you claim to be a father, who is father?”

“You think you are a man already? Do you know who a man is?”

Do you get the gist?

“Who” here speaks of the actual qualities, the characteristics, or the character, of the “what.” It’s the person at the core, the one on the inside, the deep-seated fellow, not the surface-lying one we can all readily see. That’s who you are.

It is the very “fabric” or core of our individual personalities, the “content of our character”, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, that informs “who” we really are. It includes our inner values system, our heart-felt persuasions, our personal mental conditioning, our deep-seated motivations, our perception, our in-built character, our internal quality of heart and mind, our thought processes, which all make up the life within us that’s really the significant factor in our day-to-day living. This is the soul of our existence, our “personal operating system.”

Now, you must understand that these are the factors that really determine the inner satisfaction and sense of fulfillment you will experience in life. They decide the sense of worth or meaning we have in life.

There are a number of inherent qualities I can mention here that can make a person beautiful on the inside, possessing what I refer to as the “eyes of beauty” or the paradigm of goodness and thus have a beautiful life. They are love, faith, wisdom, peace, joy, justice, kindness, integrity, humility, honesty, maturity, gentleness, faithfulness, gratitude, patience, optimism, discipline, responsibility, to mention just a few.

Mind you, these beautiful qualities or inner beauties, will make you beautiful as a person at your core, on the inside, but may not absolutely keep ugly things from happening to or around you.

As stated earlier, it is not the ugliness on the outside that should determine your destiny or drive your happiness. It is the beauty on your inside that should propel, fuel, energize or animate you. That’s what should inform your attitude and decisions, even in the face of apparent tragedy.

If your inside is beautiful, soon what’s on the inside will get on the outside. If your “eyes”, viewpoint, paradigm, perspective, mindset or mentality is beautiful, you’ll readily see, think and express beauty. You’ll more easily notice, acknowledge and thus focus on good rather than evil. Then you’ll be prepared to enforce true beauty and good all around. 

You can be beautiful in your core, in your heart. You can be lovely deep down in your soul. You can be free in your spirit. If you are, then life will be beautiful to you.

Dare to be truly beautiful on the inside! Go beyond outward beauty and pursue inner beauty even more.

Now, I know that some bad things have happened to you. Perhaps a lot of very unpleasant, totally devastating events. However, you can do something, not to change the circumstance but to control your response to it, thus, its effect on you. It won’t be easy, especially initially, but it will be possible. You can choose to relax your mind and calm your nerves. You can take your mind off the negative things and redirect your mental focus on the positive things.

Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right.

Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

(Philippians 4: 8)

It may take a while and a fight – mental battle and psychological warfare. It will require persistence, patience, courage and faith. But you can literally choose the beauty of love and freedom.

 

You can choose radiance over and above deterioration. You can choose to be happy instead of devastated. You have the power. Human beings have been blessed by God with the power of choice. 

In spite of whatever has happened to you, you can breathe in and out, freeing yourself of mental and emotional toxins. Really, toxins can either be physiological in our bodies or psychological in our minds and emotions. They may have come as a result of our own mistakes or the hurts, wounds and damages inflicted on us by others. However, if we get into the flow of true Love, we’ll be completely free from every toxin. I’ll show you how, as you read along.

Just let yourself go free! Let yourself loose. Free yourself. Only you can do that for yourself. Give yourself the permission to be free, to be yourself and to enjoy life every day. Freedom, though grossly misunderstood like love, is one of the greatest forces in life for the realization of your true potential as a human being on planet Earth.

Love is freedom. Freeing yourself and freeing others.