Conscious Self-Evolution: Notice Flashes of Freedom
Conscious Self-Evolution: Notice flashes of freedom
#2 in a Series of 10
Code 3: Notice flashes of freedom and keep bringing your attention to them. ~Barbara Marx Hubbard, 52 Codes for Conscious Self-Evolution
In March 1995, I was lying in a hospital bed waiting for doctors to figure out what I already knew about my body. Diagnosed with an autoimmune condition a year earlier, I had been on a new medication for three weeks and was having an adverse reaction. The medicine dose started low and increased each week. I hadn’t felt well since I swallowed the first pill and now, I couldn’t walk.
A few friends stopped by to visit me during the week of tests and waiting. One of them brought me a Walkman and the new Kenny Loggins tape, Return to Pooh Corner. I played it over and over for 24-hours while it unleashed a cathartic purging of grief with tears and sobbing, from all the loss, heartache, and discouragement of the past ten years. Feeling this depth of emotion helped me reconnect to the child within me who had always been filled with hope and wonder and curiosity. The music helped me remember who I am.
“Somewhere out there, beneath a pale moonlight
Someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight.
Somewhere out there, someone’s saying a prayer…”
~Kenny Loggins, Return to Pooh Corner
As the sun came out and the clouds in my heart and mind cleared, I experienced a flash of freedom. I knew that I was going to get well and homeschool my kids. It wasn’t delusional, fantasy thinking. Something in my inner core had changed. I didn’t know how I would get well. I didn’t know when. I just knew in my bones that something had shifted in my “inner world” that would change my “outer world.”
A flash of freedom is a moment of insight and awareness. It is a preview of you “coming into a different state of being.” Flashes of freedom are new ideas and awareness, missing puzzle pieces, next steps, a vision that shows that something is possible.
You have big and little flashes of freedom all the time. Have you ever had an insight or idea in the shower or when driving down the highway or taking a walk? Once you have that flash of freedom, the next step is to bring your attention to it and do something that stokes the fire. You don’t have to sit by the fire and tend to it 24/7. Acknowledge it and remember.
A flash can be:
- It’s time to leave a job or change something in your business.
- An aha about something that is no longer working in your family or a close relationship.
- An idea for how to bring more joy into your business.
- A sensing that it is time to move.
The flash of freedom points you to a change that is coming. The key is to pay attention to them when they come. Turn your attention to it. Hold it lightly and see how it unfolds.
“To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.”
bell hooks: Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
When I arrived home from the hospital, it felt like something had changed in the house. The furniture in the living room and dining room were the same. It seemed that the room was glowing and shinier in some way. I was walking through a doorway to wellness and homeschooling our kids that would take 18 months to come into fruition.
A few highlights of the 18-month quest:
Homeschooling: I saw a flyer on the bulletin board at our local library announcing a Homeschool 101 talk. At that talk, I learned about a homeschool conference that was coming up in the next month (this conference happened every other year). It was filled with talks about different ways to homeschool, tips from parents and a resource/curriculum fair. When I told a friend that my husband and I were thinking about homeschooling our children, she connected us with a homeschooling group called Kaleidoscope where parents met monthly to plan social and educational field trips, share ideas and support. We joined a Yahoo group of 1,000 families in the Baltimore-Washington area. During the summer of 1996, we started homeschooling and that continued for the next thirteen years.
Health: I began a practice of meditation that I found in a book called MAP, researched at Perelandra and written by Machaelle Small Wright. For the next six weeks, I began each day, lying on the bed and meditating and asking for guidance. After an hour, I would get up and go about my day. A friend heard about a naturopath and shared the information with me. The naturopath taught a 12-week course on nutrition and supplements for gut health and better absorption of food and nutrients. A friend from church told me about Shaklee’s environmentally safe cleaning products and whole food vitamins. Within a few weeks, people were telling me they saw light in my eyes again. The final piece came a year later when I met a medical doctor who was also trained in homeopathic medicine. The remedy she gave me focused on Grief. During the summer of 1996, I was off all medication, had radiant health and the autoimmune condition was dormant.
A few tips:
- Notice when you have an idea, insight or hear words that light you up.
- Record them in some way: journal, write on a sticky note or in a word document.
- Notice the synchronicity in conversations, books, and anything that catches your attention in the outside world.
- Take baby steps and keep checking within to find the resonance with your inner knowing.
- Be patient and allow for the unfolding.
You are consciously evolving.
Andrea Hylen: Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner. Author of Heal My Voice: An Evolutionary Woman’s Journey. Creator of The Incubator: On-line Co-working Space for Cultural Creatives. Somatic-Intuitive Coach. www.andreahylen.com