If you asked me what I most love about living in this sacred, little sanctuary in Palm Beach, I’d have to say it’s the peace. I’ve never known this level of peace before from a place. I am just steps away from the modern world and yet it’s so still here that you can practically hear the thoughts of the iguana sunning himself next to you.
In my peace today, on the eve of Independence Day tomorrow, I’m also reflecting on the gratitude I feel to be back home in the USA, which I won’t wax on further about as I’ve no doubt expressed enough on that happy subject. 
But it does feel like a big day for reflecting given the various options we all have right now in terms of where to go with our free will and precious consciousness.
It is up to us as individuals to choose if/how we will live our lives, independently!
Independence Day means more than being collectively independent from outside sovereign rulership. It also implies individually independence.
Can you operate Independently of the influences of others?
Can you chart your own course based on what you have found to be worthy of your sacred life?
Can you peel away from the group hive-mind? What does it mean if you cannot?
Are you independent if you cannot? Are you free if you cannot? If you are not free, then how can you be fluid and flow?
If you cannot move fluidly and flow but are attached then you are stuck. If you are attached and stuck then your energy cannot breathe, conduct and be renewed so you will be stagnant (the first stage of the decay cycle).
What happens to stagnant things? What do we know about stagnant waters?
What does this mean about perceived safety?
Answer: It is not safe to be stuck and yet, most people who are stuck and cling to the hive mind/hive actions do so out of fear.
Do you see how ludicrous that is? The more you hold to the group mind, the more perilous your life is because you will be steadily decaying like stagnant water.
So, yes, let’s raise the flag high and sing our beautiful national anthem and certainly deeply consider what our nation needs and does not need in order to be healthy and free long into the future. But collective freedom is only as good as the individuals harnessing that freedom.
It took individually free-minded people to even be able to envision the essential principles and structures required to create and sustain a free republic. Hive-minded people could not ever have done that!
I know there are choices you want to make and paths you wish to pursue that fly in the face of the hive-mind. My suggestion: do not suppress them out of a sense of fear. Your spirit, not to mention every other part of yourself will suffer for it.
We cannot have true freedom and true safety at the same time. Freedom requires taking the risk of being an independent thinker/doer. The kind of illusion of safety most people confuse with real safety isn’t ever ultimately safe. Anything that comes at the cost of remaining stuck is ultimately a destructive choice.
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This quote is typically referenced in regard to maintaining our collective sovereignty. It is a searing reminder at that level. But, I wish to apply it now to the level of the individual, personal independence for which it is equally poignant.
It will be an awakening of the spirit of individuals reclaiming their personal independent thought and life choices that will rebirth, restore and renew the values of our constitutional republic. It won’t be group thought and people who need group acceptance. Those things are antithetical to the essence of the American Way.
To find yourself is to remove all that is not yourself. Anything you cling to that you did not come into this world with is not yourself: ideas, habits, inclinations, perspectives, patterns, reactions, likes and dislikes – these are all conditioned and artificial. Who or what put these things on you?
To what or to whom do they belong? So why do you cling to them so strongly? Fun questions to banter around at your July 4th BBQ, LOL!
With so much love from my big, fat, independent heart to yours! 
