My Redemption Song

My Week #40 Submission

It’s funny how this prompt has come full circle for me. I began writing Redemption Song almost a year ago, long before I started the Jukebox pub. And while I’ve known for a month or so that this prompt was coming, this morning is the first look I’ve given it. I do recall getting stuck, and abandoning that essay…

I so often find myself bound by the chains of mental slavery. And I’m working hard to free my mind—partly through studying, and partly through sharing my thoughts through writing.

Calling all Poets, Fiction, & Non-Fiction writers that love music — Share your prose of 1500 words or less, using the prompt, Redemption Song.

I said in my blog reintroduction post that will publish this Sunday, that I hadn’t always sought to be friends with, Self. That I was still working on that relationship. But, that he and I are “good” now.

I also mentioned that my world came crashing down in 2018 — everything I knew got turned upside down, and the faith I depended on was unable to sustain me.

Well, after listening to Redemption Song for the past couple days. And this morning’s quite intense metta meditation, I see it much more clearly.

I often practice metta — Loving Kindness — meditation. But today was different. Where I have always projected those thoughts towards others in the past, today I was prompted to wish them upon myself. Which proved to be much more difficult.

Maybe I didn’t believe I deserved that same love? But why?

What makes it easier for us to wish loving kindness towards others, before ourselves? Is it because we are slaves of our own mind?

How does one, “Emancipate oneself from mental slavery?”

I believe that we can only gain mental freedom through harnessing our attention. We must pay better attention to what we are thinking, doing, hearing, seeing, and studying.

We must respond intentionally, instead of reacting.

But to be able to do this we must practice it, and rehearse it over and over again. Small steps. Little by little, it is possible to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery — to think and respond with intention.

And while the first step to this is to accept that we are solely responsible for our own lives — there is not some outside force inflicting good or bad on us or deciding what we do or don’t deserve, that it is only our opinions of such things that make them so — we also cannot come to this place of realization solely on our own. We are a product of our environment. The people that we surround ourselves with, and the things that we give our attention to play a major role in our existence.

So we must pay attention to these things. Evaluate them, and drop or distance those that do not serve us well.

Ask, who or what are the pirates that are currently robbing me? Not the people or governments, but the thoughts.

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit

While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book

But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly

As I listened to Bob sing those words to me this morning while I worked on this week’s Redemption Song newsletter, I heard echoes of something else…

“Religion today is far from reaching its objective. There is an inversion of natural order. The Self is being made a slave to the ghosts of old books.”

A. Parthasarathy continues later, “The well-meant efforts have retarded rather than advanced human progress towards God-realization.

“Therefore you must approach religion with your head and heart. Be free to think. Use reason to arrive at your own conclusion.”

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”

I think that the reason this morning’s meditation was so moving, and this essay is now coming full circle a year after it was started, is because I am making progress. Slowly, sure. But surely.

Now I’ve still got a looong way to go, this morning proves it. While I certainly have been able to look at where I am today, and how I’ve gotten here in a different light.

Today was the first time I have actually been able to truly wish peace, happiness — loving kindness — onto that little boy of forty some odd years ago. And realize that everything, all of it, is the reason today is today.

“Thus, your happiness increases as you delve deeper into your personality.” -A. Parthasarathy

The more we look inside ourselves, the more we pay attention, the more control we gain over our own thoughts and subsequently our world.

Don’t just stand by and look. Don’t follow blindly. Get active, for none but ourselves can free our minds. Participate in your own emancipation.

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I am a firm believer that daily reflection and study are important to this process. And while I am not the best example, I can point you towards those that are. The quotes within this post are from this morning’s study in, The Vedanta Treatise, by A. Parathasarathy.

If you’re interested in a further reading list and clarification of my opinions On Religion, you can find them in the following blog essay bearing that title.

On Religion

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I don’t often send my Jukebox submissions out to subscribers, so here’s the last couple.