Principles of Self-liberation

This is a set of psycho-spiritual guidelines for healing your past and recovering your personal power & joy, based on my lived experience. YMMV, of course. 🙂

1. Love yourself fiercely. Develop a relationship with yourself based on genuine love and support rather than fear, criticism, and forcing yourself to do things. Be your own best friend. Inner peace comes when you end the inner war.
2. Learn how brains work. Brains become conditioned and can be reconditioned (changed). See your thoughts with neutrality and your feelings with detached compassion. Don’t believe everything you feel, but honor the part that feels it. Don’t take your mind too seriously, because when you do, it makes it harder to change it.
3. Hold beliefs lightly. Both beliefs about yourself, and about the world. Have “best guesses” and “working theories”, not beliefs. Nobody really knows what is going on here, and the more humility you can bring to everything, the easier it is to be flexible, adapt, grow, learn, and enjoy life.
4. Practice radical forgiveness. Everything you have done was your best guess at how to meet your needs at the time, given your subjective context. The same is true of everyone else. You have no idea what anyone else is living with inside their own minds, and they don’t know what you’re living with. So just walk your own path in peace.
5. Honor your coping. Don’t rip off any bandaids that are holding you together. Rather, strengthen yourself until you can remove them safely. Face everything you can, as soon as you can (but no sooner).
6. Never give up. There is always a better or worse direction you can go in, that you can feel with your intuition. Even if you don’t know how to get out of your predicament, set your sights on whatever Light you can see and commit to following it.
7. Ask for help. If you have a hard time asking humans, ask God, angels, your Higher Self–whatever works for you. Just ask. Spiritual help respects your free will and can’t help unless you ask. Asking and surrendering to help also neutralizes your ego, which is probably the  thing that is blocking you from moving forward anyway. If you can’t do anything else, you can always hand it over.
8. Set intentions for what you want, even if you have no idea how they will happen. There is power in our intention, and you just have to practice doing this for awhile to see it. I can’t convince you, but life can convince you. Let life show you the spiritual power you possess by trying it out.
9. Don’t hide from the world. As fucked up and painful as this world can be, we came here for a reason. And the pain is part of that reason. It’s baked into the experience and is part of the learning. So don’t run and hide in a bubble of familiarity. We all need comfort and safety, but work to both expand your bubble, and get outside of it.
10. Decide to be happy anyway. Happiness is a state of mind that you can choose any time, despite your circumstances. You have that power, and you can develop it through practice. It’s worth the effort to learn.
11. Recognize FOG – fear, obligation, and guilt. If you are acting from it, you are not free. Figure out the source, and work your way free.
12. Take 100% responsibility for your life. You are the only one who can decide what is right for you and choose that for yourself. Whatever has happened in your life, it’s up to you to learn and grow from it. Release any need or desire for rescue or revenge, grow yourself up, and develop your own inner power and strength. Your life is up to you.
13. Trust the Universe. Try out the idea that everything that has happened to you has been for you, on some level. Choose to learn from every experience, no matter what it is.
14. Be neutral about outcomes. Life life passionately but with no expectations. Commit fully to the present, release the past, and let the future unfold as it will. Set intentions, but release attachments to how you want it all to go, and let life surprise you.