"What does it mean to be truly free?"

This was one of the most important and profound questions I was ever asked. I'm thinking it is so important to our journey in this country which was created out of this tenet, that our schools should ask the question of all our children and adults of all ages (in fact, it would be a great topic of discussion at any gathering), at least once a year or more, so the thought stays uppermost in our consciousness.

I love the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note that it does NOT guarantee every single person's happiness (an impossibility), but does recognize everyone's freedom to pursue it however they desire. For myself, I add in the words "and DO NO HARM."

For me, freedom means to accept responsibility for every aspect of my life--past, present and future. 

And that means that I'm not to point my finger at some other person and say, "He's got too much abundance--I could use some of his abundance. Let's make a law and make him share because poor, pitiful me.......or I have this cause.......or these poor, pitiful people need it more than he does......." 

If I choose to help someone out, I choose to do so from my own abundance--I'm not going soliciting, nor is it any business of mine to tell another what to do with his/her flow of abundance.

Nor should I enslave another in order to manifest my abundance. I worked for a family owned business that went corporate, was bought out and merged with successively larger corporations until they had cost-cutting (an abundance of lack of abundance consciousness) down to such an art that they didn't fix our machinery, yet increased our output orders. Then one day, they basically said, "You people aren't working hard enough for the wage we pay you, so we're shipping the entire plant down to Mexico where people are willing to work for less." In all fairness, we'd been working our asses off, looking at their little This company cares about you/OSHA-enforced safety posters, knowing and experiencing that they really didn't give a damn. I'm sorry, people of Mexico--you didn't deserve enslavement either and that's an atrociously horrid representation of what my country stands for. Corporations such as those are NOT my ambassadors.

And by the term, abundance, I don't mean just money. Abundance comes in all forms: health, joyful being, wealth, etc.

I was born into one of the most amazing gifts of our planet--the United States of America. We've been on a journey of exploration of what true freedom means and how to live that to our utmost while living alongside our FELLOW SOVEREIGNS in harmony. Yes, we've had our growing pains, trials along the way, but considering that most humans (myself included) don't really know or can grasp fully what true freedom means and is, well, we're moving through it moment by moment, concept by concept, breath at a time................and I think and, most importantly, feel that we should celebrate and remember that.

It's easy to point out everything that's wrong in the world--it's pretty much a default setting in our mass consciousness. Maybe we should consider shifting perspective and look around and within ourselves with gratitude instead?

This is just a start to what living freely means to me.

Now I pose the question, "What does it mean to be truly free for you, SOVEREIGN?"