I like to use a provocative title to draw people in. But it is quite literal.
I woke up sobbing, feeling the depths of my heart, the hard pieces falling apart, away. For good perhaps. This time I had a dream where I was yelling, telling my story and a person in my life telling me to be quiet, to be ashamed. In the vicinity is an array of people that have told me to diminish myself because even if they didn’t know it, deep down they are afraid to be themselves and seeing someone free means they are still captive.
I was crying in the dream, and when I got home my mom said I could no longer sleep there (meaning of rest) and that I must leave.
Sleeping in dreams usually means living in grace. The 5 years of wilderness for me was healing from the many wounds that I had somehow acquired in my life.
Growing up in a single mother home, I didn’t quite learn what boundaries meant. This meant I listened to people, I got a load of garbage because I thought that meant I was loving them. Of course it was all in detriment to my own well being.
I found God in bed.
In sleep, in rest, in bed rest. I started having long, intense, novel like dreams. I had them every single night and I could remember them.
And I stopped going to church. I found safe ways to listen to messages through youtube. I cut ties with people who were unsafe.
In this dream, I was wearing a coat to hide my bare chest. In dreams, bare chest usually means being unashamed, being completely wholly yourself. But I had to still hide my identity around the people who didn’t know how to be themselves.
Basically I wasn’t accepted as a human being. I was too edgy, too controversial, too much, too larger than life. I entered a season of solitude. During this time, I confronted my wounds and my heart. In a healing session I remember saying “to be honest, I was friends with people I didn’t even like” in reply to her question “it seems like you have a pattern of unfriending people and cutting them out of your life?”
I shocked myself there.
True, I was hiding myself, but to hang out with people I didn’t even like, that was extreme. But my final action told the truth. I actually found some people deeply annoying, obnoxious but I tried to be accommodating because I didn’t know how to say no or to explain why I felt how I felt.
Recently, I have started hanging out with people again. It is a slow process but I am now more mindful about what is mine and what isn’t. For example, when people have insecurities about being totally 100 percent themselves, they might project that unto you and try to control your freedom to be yourself.
They might say something like “why are you doing that in public? It is embarrassing (to me)?” or dismiss your opinion without trying to understand it “that doesn’t make any sense, shut up”….those are examples of things people might say because they are unable to accept you for who you are and are fearful of what others think of them.
The religious spirit doesn’t just exist inside an institutional religion, but anywhere. The religious spirit is a spirit of control, it tries to bully you. The spirit of freedom is I believe who God truly is.
Here are some examples:
The religious spirit tells you that there is only right or wrong, black and white.
The spirit of freedom is relational, it is like a friend, it listens to your opinions and heart. It is collaborative and allows room for mistakes and decisions.
The religious spirit is controlling, it seeks to dominate people, it will only accept people if people follows their rules or idea of who they should be.
The spirit of freedom is unconditional and allows people to be themselves. It liberates rather than controls.
I hope this post gave you some insight. Peace and freedom. XOXO
Where the spirit is, there is liberty.
Rebekka Lien 