Melissa Reddick

One question that is on my mind today is: why are things acceptable when you’re being forced to do them but not when you’re choosing to?

Why does context matter, and why does “have to” provide more of a pass than “chose to with my free will”?

For example, I shaved my head recently. Bald, down to zero.

I wanted a reset. I was tired of my hair the way it was, I kept experimenting with shorter and shorter cuts (on my own, like I am my own Barbie) and then I just *bzz* buzzed it all off. I used a straight edge razor to clean it up, and then I kept shaving the top of my head bare for a few more days before letting it grow back in.

If I had said “I shaved it because I have cancer, and the chemo treatments are going to cause me to lose it anyway” or “I shaved it for a good cause, like raising money for kids with cancer”, then everyone would be understanding. I can’t think of a single person who would have a judgmental look or opinion about those two reasons. But when I say “I did it because I wanted to”, or I tell them the story I just shared with you, or I say “I’ve never shaved my head before and I was curious what it would feel like”, people start to question and even look at me funny.

Why is that?

Why is it okay for our employers to say “you can’t work today, it’s a holiday, and we’re either going to pay you or not pay you depending on your contract” or “we’re shut down for 2 weeks so you can’t work those 2 weeks”, but it’s frowned upon when we say “I can’t work this day, or these 2 weeks”? Or schools can shut down for a few months, which means school staff have to find another job that will accomodate them momentarily, which inversely increases the burden on the staff’s ability to schedule time off when the school isn’t closed. Why is everything so one-sided in our economy, in favor of what our employers need from us, yet everything we get from them is boiler plate, standardized to every employee even when we all have different preferences and needs?

Why is it acceptable and there is assistance when a job lets you go but not if you decide to quit the job because it’s not a good fit for you?

The other questions I’ve had on my mind today will be in tomorrow’s blog. Things like “how do you know if you’re finding stillness or if you’re stuck and stagnant?” “Can you be reverent and relaxed at the same time? Casual and respectful; centered and passionate; still, calm, and excited; exacting and accepting; diligent and realistic?” Also one more thing, “Are you being punished or are you just in a season of life; are you experiencing a natural state of cause and effect or are you experiencing part of a larger cycle?”

It can be hard to relax when you’re worried that things aren’t going your way, especially if you’re of the mindset that bad things only happen when you’ve done something horrible. This is where gratitude can help get your mind refocused on the Light.

But for today, I want us to bare down on this concept that “it’s only okay if someone else tells me to do it, or if I’m doing it for someone else, or because ‘I have to’, not because it’s my own choice.” This is a really disturbing mindset once you look at it for what it is. It is the belief that your choices aren’t as honorable, good, or valid as someone else’s.

That might be true, if you consistently make choices that harm you or other people. But for the most part, it’s simply a belief that all humans pass on to one another. It is part of our slave mentality, the way of thinking that makes it so we don’t think too far outside the box, disrupt the status quo, or look too hard at how we work against our own best interests daily. It’s the Pavlov conditioning that when you do what someone else says you get rewarded, or at the very least you don’t get punished, but when you think for yourself, it backfires. That only happens in a system that doesn’t want you to think independently.

A system that is built on independence encourages you to make your own choices, make mistakes, learn the natural consequences of your decisions. A system built on control and imprisonment manufactures consequences based on what they want you to do or not do.

No wonder so many free-thinking people feel afraid to be perceived. It’s because when people perceive you, they project their own limitations onto you and direct them your way. Part of moving beyond that state of fear and hyper-vigilance is to relax. Accept the reality that people are wounded, they’re hurt, they’re in a state of constant self-degradation themselves. They can’t help you grow beyond it, all they can do is provide you the opportunity to experience it again and again until you become desensitized to it. That is part of the mastery that comes with progression. Getting over your hyper-focus on where people are actively working against you.

One place where I experience this hyper-fixation on what other people think of me is in my career. This is because it is tied to my income, which is tied to my ability to survive in this world today. It doesn’t seem to matter though, because the more I fixate on it the worse it seems to affect me. So what is the antidote? How do we heal and overcome this?

Where are you hyper-fixated on what other people think when they perceive you? Do you have any areas where people seem to really misunderstand your every move and/or intention? Is it in your romantic relationships, friendships, at work, at home, at school, with your family, your clients, or elsewhere?

Well, healing doesn’t happen in the mind. And if you’ve been reading my blog a while, you know I do believe in spiritual healing or energy healing as a source of relief from the pain of being human today. I only endorse Healers, Life Activation Practitioners, Teachers, and Guides in the Lineage of King Salomon, as Trained and Certified by The Modern Mystery School International. You can find the entire database of actively certified Healers around the world here: www.modernmysteryschoolint.com/certified-professionals/

What can we do without healing? Well, we can start to examine. Take inventory, take stock, pull apart what is already in the mind and look at it clearly. As clearly as we can today.

So, where do you feel like, when people notice what you are up to they try to berate you or beat you back into submission – whether physically, mentally and/or emotionally?

Where do people throw the most doubt your way? Where do they criticize, nag, complain? Where do you feel like you have to walk on eggshells because you just know if your husband or wife, or your sibling caught even a whiff that you were considering doing what you wanted to do of your own free will they would be all over you about it. Either talking To You OR about you to anyone who will listen, especially when you are in ear shot, putting you down as a form of “just looking out for you”?

Because the thing about this is that someone who truly wanted to help you would never put you down. Not even a little bit. “I’m just trying to help you” is what people tell themselves in order to justify abusing someone else. It’s another one of those socially acceptable reasons where we give each other a pass to be cruel to one another.

It’s so normalized, you probably think I am overreacting. That’s fine. Just remember, you always have the option in life to gravitate towards people who might be tough on you but they always have a kind thought in their head, a word for you, and they always believe in your ability to make good decisions while gaining life experience at the same time.

That is what is missing in a lot of relationships today, the missing key is that we’ve normalized abuse, we call it comradery, and we think it’s okay to put each other down from a place of “I really don’t believe in your ability to exercise good judgment. You should just stop and defer to anyone else but yourself”.

Personally, if I have to lower my standards of how you treat me the closer we get, I don’t want to get that close to you. I want our relationship to get more respectful as time goes on, not less. Relaxation doesn’t have to come at the cost of honorable behavior. It’s a shame that we’ve degraded so much that we WANT to give up honoring one another the more familiar we become. I would think you would want to earn more respect in someone’s eyes the more you interact with them, not be at a level where you have to drag them down to meet you. But hey, if that’s what you want for yourself and your relationships, by all means, that’s your perogative. It’s certainly normalized and accepted these days.

If you want to have better-than-average relationships, this journaling prompt is for you. How does it tie into purpose? Read it and see if you can see the link.

Where are you afraid to exercise your free will because you’re afraid you’ll mess up too badly? Maybe you’re like me, afraid to take the next steps to owning your own business because you’re afraid you’ll be crushed by taking misstep after misstep. Maybe everyone around you believes that it’s a stupid dream too, but if someone came to you and told you to run their business they’d be thrilled because that would mean you’re at the top of your game, career-wise.

Where do you want to expand your tolerance for failure, for other people’s abuse, their unsolicited negativity towards your choices to the point where you choose yourself over hearing their opinions one more time?

Even if it’s just a habit you enjoy. Because sometimes, people can be correct in their asssessment of you but they’re still trying to beat you into submission.

If a loved one wants you to quit smoking cigarettes, or marijuana, or taking percocets recreationally, or drinking alcohol because 3 of these 4 things turns you into a completely careless abuser yourself, and 2-3 of them just make you stink, that loved one could be coming from a place of true caring. But the thing is, if that loved one is trying to coax you into quitting, they’re likely abusing you in the process. They’re likely looking at you and reflecting back to you every negative thing they see. How can you tell if it’s you they’re really reacting to, or if it’s something within themselves that they haven’t resolved yet? Because the reality is that a healthy loved one wouldn’t throw daggers just to get you to change, even if those daggers have really pretty handles and sound like “words of affirmation”.

A healthy person would accept the reality that you are choosing what you choose, and if you’re abusing people in the process he or she would create enough distance to keep themselves and the people they are responsible for (for example, their children) safe from you.

So if your area where you feel the most cagey is around the fact that you smoke cigarettes or you vape, are you sure you’re surrounding yourself with people who accept you as you are today? Do you want to surround yourself with people who care so little about themselves that you smoking/vaping doesn’t bother them?

Maybe you do.

Maybe you want to be around people who don’t care about their own health enough to ask you not to smoke/vape when you’re in a car together, or walking down the street, or any place where you feel you should have the freedom to smoke/vape but the other person doesn’t want to be around it.

You should be honest with yourself about that.

Where are you denying yourself the right to exercise your free will because other people will judge you for it?

Where is what you’re longing to do actually something that could be good for you, or at the very least neutral, maybe it poses a risk (good or bad) to the life you’re living today like starting a small business? Where is it something that is actually blatantly harmful to yourself or other people, like using drugs or opening a bar?

Can you actually trust yourself to know the difference?

This is where I think a lot of people get really cagey. You might start to look for ways to justify the things you really want to do as “good” and the things you don’t want to do as “bad”. Can you accept reality?

Or do you want to argue about that which is “good” and “bad” first?

Just make your inventory today of the area(s) in your life where you feel like you’re not free to express your free will without judgment nor criticism. Tomorrow, we might talk more about harm. It’s not really a subjective subject. But when our negative egos get involved, it certainly can be riddled with hoops and loopholes, all kinds of ways to skirt around the idea that something is or is not harmful.

It’s not harmful to open up your own business, but if you do it without a plan and you invest all of your money and make promises that your future self might not be able to deliver on, it’s certainly an experience you can learn from.

It’s not harmful to open up your own business, but if it’s a business where you are selling drugs, that’s where people really want to debate whether it’s harmful or not. At the end of the day, you’re going to have to be willing to be honest with yourself in order to determine what causes harm and what doesn’t.

The real question everyone who seeks to exercise their free will ends up asking themselves eventually: Is it fear talking, or are the guardrails of reality keeping you at bay?

Thank you for reading 🙂