Freedom of the Mind…No Matter What
Songs about the consciousness shift for #FreedomMusicFriday
Well, I am not quite home from my working vacation yet.
I was halfway through with the 20-hour drive home when a road hazard (a nasty chunk of metal) tore an irreparable hole in my back left tire. I put on the spare and stayed the night at a motel in Virginia, and now I am just over the border in West Virginia getting new tires put on the back.
I still have a good eight hours left, and I’ll be lucky to get out of here before lunchtime. So it’ll be another long day. In case I don’t have the time tomorrow morning, I am using my time here in the waiting room to do up a quick #FreedomMusicFriday post. Nothing fancy—just a couple of tunes with a few thoughts.
I have wanted to do the theme to Firefly, by Sonny Rhodes, for a long time. The message of the lyrics is clear: No matter what happens, the singer will still be free in his mind and spirit.
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from meTake me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from meThere's no place I can be
Since I've found Serenity
And you can't take the sky from me
Obviously we want to be free from external coercion. We don’t want to have our love, our land, or our ability to stand taken from us. And God forbid they should burn the land or boil the sea.
But one must still be mentally free. Freedom begins with oneself.
I see the freedom-starts-with-oneself message more and more here on Substack. I think that is very important. The complaint that we are oppressed is legitimate, but if that is all it ever amounts to, then all we really have is a political and philosophical gripe. But if we start having a consciousness shift, we become a real movement.
And consciousness shifts begin with oneself. They begin within each of us.
I decided I wanted a little more for this subject, so I searched around and found the Freedom Song by Thin Lizzy. It’s a tale of a man who stayed free until his last moments:
Listen while I tell you the hard luck story
About a man named Jack McDuff
He believed in the God and the glory
But he just wasn't tough enough
I believe in the freedom song
Long live liberty
I believe in the freedom song
But I'll choose my own destiny
Well, they took him and they beat him
Underneath that old hanging tree
Saying, "Jack, you must die"
"What will your last words be?"
Jack, he hung his head back
"Long live liberty"
"I believe in the freedom song"
"Doesn't matter what you do to me"
With a rope around his neck they left him hanging
High on that old hanging tree
On her knees his wife was screaming
"Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy"
I believe in the freedom song
Long live-a the liberty
I believe in that freedom song
Doesn't matter what you do to me
Grim, yes, but it’s an important message.
So how about you—what are you doing to create freedom within?
PS: If you have any other song suggestions on this topic, please let me know!
I have chosen to stand sovereign in this world run by moneyed psychopaths who aim to take Our sovereignty away. I "preach" taking back Our sovereignty. I AM sovereign, heart, mind, and body, whether They choose to bully Me or not.
When We all stand sovereign, protecting One anOther from bullies, the bullies will be overpowered.
Freedom Of The Mind.
It’s something how things in life are connected. If we pay attention to just the things we can control we can change our life in a very positive way. There are so many times I find myself getting frustrated. I want my job to go perfectly smooth but inevitably I run into something unseen that slows progress. Trying to get to the job early and the traffic is terrible and I end up late. A worker doesn’t show up and sets my schedule back. Trying to change someone that just won’t change. If we think about it, we spend far too much time being frustrated or worried with things we can’t change. Living always worried, stressed out, trying to change things we have no control over shortens our time living our life focusing on things we should focus on. We should always try to do what is right but too often we waste our time focused on things out of our control. Stress and worry can shorten your life, and if we spend our life in this mindset it will. They say to cast our cares to the lord, put them on the alter. There are things in life that are out of our hands. We can’t make the sun shine or the rain stop. We can do the right thing, eat right, exercise, take medicine but we can’t make ourself get well. It’s not our job to heal ourselves we can’t control the sunshine. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond.
I remember many years ago my mother, my sister and I lived in the house I grew up in. My garage had been robbed of all the tools I use in my business and I decided to buy a German Sheppard. The dog grew so fast he began limping from leg pain because his muscles were stretching. My mother and sister were upset because Lucas was limping and kept taking him to the vet to have him looked at, they then would hand me the bill, he was my dog. For weeks this went on costing me a couple thousand dollars and I had, had it. The last time they took him, and gave me the bill, again, frustrated, I stopped talking to both of them for 2 weeks. Not long after this happened my mother got pain in her back and a very long horrible process began of heart surgery and then finding out the back pain was actually pancreatic cancer. After a short 3 month bout with the cancer my mother passed away. It made me realize how precious time is and how badly I regretted that two weeks of not talking to my mother. I so wished I could go back in time and cast aside my frustration with the dog and talk to her again. To this day I think about what happened with the dog and how I didn’t talk to my mother for those two weeks because of my frustration.
Next time you’re tempted to be frustrated, offended stressed out, remind yourself, time is precious. Living year after year frustrated with the same issues, the same people getting on your nerves try to remember every day is a gift from God. We’re not always going to be here. Once this day is over we will never get it back. Start to think about the 90% of how you respond. Our time is too valuable to let things we can’t control, control our time. J.Goodrich