Notes from the Freedom Trail (11/10/05)

Thanks to the many of you who responded to my last Notes from the Freedom Trail. And there were many! If I didn't respond to you personally, know that I always appreciate your comments, stories and personal experiences.

I know that many of you also shared my last e-mail with friends. Thanks for that as well. My experiences on the Freedom Trail are not just for me (though it certainly feels that way at times!), and I am grateful when they, too, are free to travel.

Beginning, I hope, with my next newsletter, I will be graduating to a more professional way of handling these mailings. What with the outgoing-mail restrictions now in effect at many hotels, it's becoming increasingly difficult to send these through my computer.

Consequently, I'm in the process of switching over to an outside service. This will offer benefits to all of us...once it's fully up and running. One of those will be a web-based archive of past newsletters, beginning with the first one sent through the new service. Another will be a streamlined way of changing your address and "managing" your subscription.

Also, it will automatically eliminate duplicate e-mail addresses (but not duplicate e-mails if you subscribed under more than one address).

Unfortunately, it's also possible that a few of you may vanish from the list in the transition. If you don't receive another mailing from me within the next week or so and want to remain on the list, please resubscribe on my web site, http://markdavidgerson.com. A new subscription box should be appearing on my home page soon. Until then, the old method works fine.

Tomorrow (as far as I know), the Freedom Trail will taking me out of Connecticut and into Manhattan. I don't know what I'll be doing or where I'll be going on this 11-11 portal day. I know only that the 11-11 energies and Statue of Liberty energies coupled with the halfway point of the Liberation Portal should guarantee a powerful activation and initiation.

I don't know when I'll be where, but I invite you to tune in to this work whenever you think of it or are so called. It will be great to have you along!

Finally, I'm certain that much of what I experience tomorrow will find its way into the next Cosmic Initiation teleconference, scheduled for Tuesday, November 15 at 9:11pm ET. (See the end of this message for registration instructions.)

And now....on to the Freedom Trail...

Friday, Nov. 4 — On I-78 somewhere in New Jersey

Another "near-miss" on the freeway as a car hurtles out of my blind spot just as I'm about to switch lanes. I breath a deep sigh to recenter myself and repeat my mantra that I, my vehicle and its contents, and everyone around me are always safe. Still, I carry vague annoyance and vestigial fear around the number of close calls I've had recently.

Am I less grounded and aware? Are other drivers more aggressive as I edge eastward?

Whatever the answer, I'm angry....angry that I don't seem to be taken care of, that I'm being put at risk.

And then I'm called up short.

Are you safe? I'm asked.

Is everyone around you safe?

Of course, the answer to both questions is yes.

Then that's where you are being called to place your focus.

Ahh....

Like everything else these days, this is a paradigm shift. I'm being called to do nothing differently but to see everything differently.

Instead of focusing on the accident that almost happened, I'm to focus on the accident that didn't happen. Instead of focusing on feeling vulnerable and at risk, I'm to focus on the recurring evidence that I have been taken care of. Instead of focusing on the lack of protection, I'm to focus on its abundance.

Now, to the best of my ability in a given moment, I don't get angry or frightened in the wake of an almost-accident. Instead, I whisper a grateful thank you, see it as proof that I'm protected, and keep going.

So too with our freedom. We're taught to focus on lack, to spotlight the negative, to complain about where we're not free.

Notice, instead, where you are free. This is not about mindless gratitude. It's about obeying the basic Law of the Creation & Attraction: Wherever you focus your attention, that's what you create and magnetize to you.

When you place all your focus on your lack of freedom, that's precisely what you create: more lack of freedom.

To create more freedom in your life -- or health or abundance or safety or light or love -- start paying more attention to where those already exist in your day. By placing your focus there, you can't help but bring more of it into your life.

It's all about balance. For too long, too many of us have been focused on the deficit side of the balance sheet. It's time to shift that balance. We do that by shifting our perspective.

Nothing is going to change outside of of us if it doesn't first change within. That's true for everything. Every day on this Freedom Trail, I see that more and more clearly.

Monday, Nov. 6 — Lordship, CT

If you know the Lordship section of Stratford, you'll know where I'm sitting: in Marnicks Restaurant at the edge of the beach as the salty waves of Long Island Sound lap up against squawking seagulls.

As I eat my Manhattan clam chowder (I always have a seafood craving when I'm by the ocean), I watch the water and notice how free it is. The Atlantic water droplets that touch this shore today could, next month, be part of a Pacific wave crashing against a New Zealand reef. A month later they could have evaporated into a cloud blown to the far Canadian north, where they are released as fluffy snowflakes that, eventually find their way back to the sea and, perhaps, back to this very beach.

Like all of us who surrender to the journey, they go where they're called. They go freely. For they are free.

But it's not just the ocean that represents freedom. There are few, if any, aspects of our natural world that don't.

Take these plump seagulls and all their avian kin, for example. All they have to do is spread their wings, leap and they're airborne, guided more easily than we with our highly-developed minds. Or the wild buffalo herd I saw in South Dakota in September, following an imperative more natural than most of ours as they roam freely through the rolling grasslands of the Black Hills.

As I've traveled large parts of this country over these past 11 months, I've grown increasingly aware that the land itself is also a reminder of the freedom that is our natural state and birthright.

The ocean-like expanse of the Great Lakes...the endless prairies and skies of the Great Plains...the soaring peaks of the Rockies...the living free-flow of the Rio Grande, the Mississippi, the Potomac.

Yes, we humans have penned in, dammed up and altered much of this natural world. But enough of it survives to remind us that freedom is innate to all living things.

When I leave Marnicks, I walk along the beach, hearing freedom's song in the surf, feeling freedom's embrace on the wind, seeing freedom's flight in the gulls. And as I hear, feel and see the freedom around me, I'm reminded of the freedom in my own heart, waiting for me to resist it less, waiting for me to love it more, waiting for me to allow it to express more fully in my life.

Tuesday, Nov. 7 — Milford, CT

A dream of being drawn to a mountaintop capped by a rock of unparalleled power inspires me to this waking visualization.

I see myself at the base of a great, Sinai-like, pyramid-like mountain. Called to climb to the summit, I do. It seems as though it will be a long, arduous hike. But even with no marked path to guide me, the climb is surprisingly easy and quicker than I could have imagined.

Before I know it, I stand atop the great white rock that crowns the mountain peak.

There is no burning bush, but there is a message. For me, it's visual. I see 10-Commandment-like stone tablets descend from the sky. As they drop into my arms they sprout wings, the wings of freedom.

There is no text on these tablets, neither prescriptions nor proscriptions. Simply a blank slate for me to fill. I hold the tablets to my heart and feel them dissolve into me. Their wings are now mine and, like yesterday's seagulls, I spread them and leap...into freedom.

Allow yourself to climb your own mountain today and receive your own freedom message.

Wednesday, Nov. 9 — Westport, CT

Granted, I'm not fully grounded after my client session in Stratford. But when I pull out of the driveway, I'm clear (or so I believe) on how to backtrack to Main Street...which will get me to I-95...which will get me to Westport for this evening's live Cosmic Initiation event at Pymander Books & Gifts.

Four things are not in my favor:
1. It's only 5:30 pm but it's as dark as midnight
2. I probably need stronger glasses
3. It's pouring rain
4. Stratford is a spider's web of unlit windy roads identified by tiny street signs hidden behind mature foliage.

Needless to say, Main Street eludes me. And as I drive around in the dark, worried about not getting to Pymander in time, I grow increasingly angry and frustrated. A few phrases not often heard in polite society escape my lips, fueled by a certain degree of emotion.

Even as I recognize, once again, that I'm likely doing grid work, my anger doesn't dissipate.

And then the Aha! comes. I'm not angry, I'm scared. And I'm scared because, not knowing where I'm going and not being able to see where I'm going and not knowing how to escape this maze, I feel totally out of control.

This knowledge helps calm both my breathing and my fear...somewhat. But I'm still driving around blindly, as the clock ticks relentlessly toward showtime in Westport.

And then a phrase from my novel The MoonQuest begins to loop through my consciousness:
"You either trust or you do not," M'nor stated. "There is no halfway in between."

Do I trust that I'm being guided or not?

Do I trust that I'll arrive at Pymander in perfect time or not?

Slowly, I relax..somewhat...and ask to be directed out of the maze.

Moments later, somehow, I'm on Main Street heading toward I-95.

Everything is fine until I exit I-95 at Westport. To my dismay, I appear to be experiencing a replay of my Stratford experience.

Although the built-in car compass tells me I'm heading in the right general direction, I don't recognize the road as being US-1. Nor do I see any of the usual Westport landmarks.

Watching the time, I try not to panic. Remembering my previous experience, I ask for guidance.

And another miracle occurs: It's 6:30 p.m. when I pull into the Pymander driveway, the precise time I said I would arrive at the store to set up.

When I repeat this story during the event, I find myself noting that there can be no freedom where there is a need for control. We claim to want to be free. Yet we are not always prepared to relinquish the small-self controls we have put into place to help us feel safe.

Freedom is not a safe place. Let me repeat that: Freedom is not a safe place, at least not in the ways we would prefer to feel safe. Freedom is the open range, where anything can happen...and usually does.

We are being asked to relinquish control, fully. There is no conditional freedom.

I know I will need to remember this when I drive through Manhattan on 11-11 to do the Freedom Gridwork I have been called to do. I know I will find myself seeming lost in the energetic and traffic intensity of the city.

I know, too, that the moment I surrender control, the moment I let go of my need to know where I am and how I am going to get from Point A to Point B, that's the moment I will find my way. And that's the moment I will be free.

Blessings,
Mark David

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