The Pathway of Choices

By Leila Briggs

“What happens to a person if we don’t let go?

If we hold on forever, then we have misunderstood what love is. We have then confused it with a possession. And what happens to us if we hold onto someone too hard, we get scared and lose our freedom."

Odin speaks these words to Thor in the new season of Ragnorok. I had to back up the episode and listen to the words again.

Similar thoughts and themes have been swirling around in my mental space during the past year. Discerning the line between love, manipulation, and freedom can be difficult, even confusing at times. Especially when one considers his/her own fears, trauma, and inner beliefs sway or even dictate perception.

As we enter a spiritual cycle where the focus is on the misuse of power as well as manipulation and deception; it would seem the only journey that is forward moving within this theme is understanding of self. Part of your self-understanding journey is discerning where you are using, manipulating, and misusing energy/power. Then you have the choice about what to do with it. (You can bet as we move through this new cycle, the visceral response will be to hold onto love and hold onto it tightly! Holding onto love desperately though can strangle and tarnish the purity of love energy.)

In quite a few of our more mainstream spiritual teachings there are beliefs that one should eliminate his/her ego in order to move forward spiritually. Another belief is that anger and fear makes one "low vibration." Statements and beliefs like this limit our community and growth. Additionally, it gives the mistaken impression only those with ego, anger, and fear are the ones manipulating or misusing energy/power.

We have all been in situations though where the ego has helped us survive. Or where anger and fear were the only way to motivate ourselves or another to move...to change. Our ego is in place to help us survive the density of the 3D world. Our anger and fear are part of the human experience. Are we not both physical and spiritual? So, how can we deny our more base human emotions?

The next step beyond awareness is then choice, not elimination. To have conscious awareness of why you are choosing what you are choosing. Awareness of why you are manipulating or misusing energy/power, opens up the opportunity to intentionally choose another pathway if appropriate.

Another perspective: if all is love, then all emotions and all parts of self are facets of love. If we choose love, then love can have the possibility of looking many ways. And just like energy, love is then forever changing, adapting, and evolving.There is nothing more apparent when working from a collective or large scale perspective; what motivates, healthy or unhealthy, is love or lack of it.