A New Declaration of Independence  

How to make clear and conscious choices that lead to a larger life, luscious liberty and greater happiness

Introduction

    If I have learned anything during my turbulent, outrageous, at times scary and wonderful life, it is this: to create any sort of change, I need to first change my mind and sometimes lose my mind before I can change it. I need to learn to let go of old beliefs, which no longer serve me, and then create new ones, which I vow to live by. It is really helpful if those new beliefs are more positive and centered around a declaration. A declaration of Independence from the archaic, obsolete beliefs and a devotion to the beauty and magic that we are. And so I say to you: DECLARE IT. Declare your new truth and fully live by it to create the change you wish for. 

    In this book you will learn to identify those old beliefs, find examples that help to trigger your mind, learn exercises to develop the skills of fine tuning your wisdom and taking action steps towards your declarations. You will also hear from leaders in Spirituality, Poetry and Philosophy about the way your thinking can impact your life, and how to move forward towards freedom and a great life you call your own. 

    Without these steps and conversations, the Universe will always recognize your duality. If you are driving in your car, it is a very good idea to make up your mind whether you are going left or right first, and then actually use the turn signal. Decide now to let people know which way you are going. Declare the way you are choosing and then go. Do not wait for an opening from someone else, don’t wait for it to hopefully be big enough and long enough, and maybe afterwards start the process of informing them about the way you are choosing to go. Maybe you might not even be blinking at all. You could be one of the people, who are weaving in and out of traffic just to be faster and more active than others. Possibly, you get annoyed easily by another driver, who has the audacity to drive in front of “your” lane. No matter who you choose to be in this traffic of life, wonderful and haunting emotions and ideas about yourself and ultimately the world will be triggered while driving along the streets. These experiences will perfectly be given to you again and again until you have learned what that experience is. It is the law of attraction: if you “want” something, the Universe will give you more want. If you ‘cannot understand it’, the Universe will give you more situations in which ‘you cannot understand it’. If you “cannot love”, the Universe will give you more “you cannot love” experiences. If you “fear”, the Universe will give you more opportunity to experience “fear”. 

    “Let those negative and limiting ideas go”, I say to you, “and you will find freedom and happiness”. If you say “I love”, you will get more experiences of “love”. Once you say “I have everything”, the Universe will show you more of everything. At the moment you declare “I am beautiful”, the universal energy will bring more beauty. It will be all that you see, all that you experience. All this is not outside of you to resolve, it is inside of you to look at and heal. And it is only one choice away. Declare it, and you will find a whole new life you knew nothing about. Soon, you will know how to declare and assuredly manifest your truth, desires and your dreams. 

    There is a traffic light where I live, and to say that I am ‘a bit nervous’ when I drive up to it is a bold understatement. Pure horror and sweat evoking fears of wild honking and possible accidents would be more accurate to envision. This light is one where I need to turn left onto a very busy street with two lanes on either side, giving the impression of a roaming and screaming freeway. That ant colony-ish tar surface is my way home. The lanes are rather narrow, and if I wish to turn left where someone else might be turning right coming from the opposite direction, I say a prayer that I may not be driven into. Other drivers behind me, waiting their own definition of patiently, are frequently in need to honk to me what I should do and how I should drive. 

    That street is like an ant hill, where single file we seem to be heading toward the same goal in a swift and rather urgent manner. “Turn!” they scream with their horns. “Make way for me, I want to go home!” they seem to show me with their hoods kissing my tail lights. Oftentimes, I can feel sweat running down my back, and the effects of my meditation, my silent beginning of the day, my sacred hour of resting in the silence of the morning hours and finding strength within for the day have already worn off. Completely, that is. 

    As I am driving into the sought after lane of the street, energy of anxiety and distress comes my direction, and I give it off as well. It feels like war out there, and I am like a soldier in the midst of it. And that is what I need Independence from, the sheer ability of a moment in time involving people and places to grasp me and throw me so far off my track, that I am dizzy, confused and ultimately miserable. 

    In the chapters of this book you will read about the ways to declare your independence from your intrinsic ideas about life, and declare your new and positive wishes firmly and clearly. You will see how the above example of Independence from the outer world is not only about road rage, anger or desperation, it is about the Independence from the right or wrong, good or bad thinking of the world. You will learn to discern your own freedom in seeing all sides and take a stand in love. 

    In Chapter Three you will be able to understand more deeply the concept of blaming others for what is happening “to’’ you, and you can realize your own beingness and strength in your Self, which lead to freedom. In Chapter Six you can declare your gentle tenderness within yourself and away from hard persisting thoughts about who you are. Learned patterns of what you have to do or be in order to be worthy can fall away. You will realize the magical beauty in your inherent person and in the blessing of your choices. You will see how a detachment from opinions and ideas benefit your outer strength and boundaries as well as a softening into a part of you that speaks of wonderful change and loving flow. In Chapter Thirteen a meditation awaits you that can change your daily experience and has the power to heal anxiety and negativity. Re-imagine your body and the way you perceive it in order to heal and love yourself deeply.

    In chapter eight your awareness of the power of assumptions will lead the way from confusion and false beliefs to clarity and compassion. Declare your independence from those assumptions and choose curiosity and a beginner’s mind. 

    Your Independence from the loud voices within that speak of negativity and limitation will be a revelation into a new life, into a new you and a more free, happy and blessed existence. You will learn to listen to the whisper of possibility and joy, where you are the steward, not life controlling you as it unfolds. You will see how and where you honor yourself deeply, in full acceptance of who you are. This is truly a step of choice away. You are so very beautiful, lovable and capable. To find the voices inside, which tell you the truth instead of the ones, which tend to scream those limiting beliefs, that is the quest.

    We have about sixty thousand thoughts a day. Although we do not consciously know of all of them all the time, they do exist and they must have an impact on us. If half of those are of the same misery, negative outlook onto the world, of doubt and of fear, imagine what power they will have! And now imagine that more than half and ultimately possibly all of your thoughts will be of your beauty, your joy, your endless creativity and utmost strength, imagine for a moment what you then can create. Yes, you will call that into your life and reel it into your existence. Imagine who you will be and how you will love! Infinite possibilities await you. 

    While I was studying for my Masters Degree in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica, it became clear to me that finding oneself and one’s freedom is never about what we do, yet how we do it. How do we treat ourselves as we go through conflict and how do we treat others? That is precisely what our daily experience and this book is about. How you treat yourself, while having whatever experience it might be, with the emotions and thoughts that accompany the experience, that way of being with yourself is the key to Freedom, the key to Liberty and the key to Happiness. And these challenges and ultimately ways, in which we have the opportunity to heal our issues for the very last time, they all present themselves in traffic, while driving on the road of life. All challenges are uniquely ours while in the midst of a universal truth, a field we all plow: 

    “Beyond ideas ofwrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field:  I will meet you there”… (-Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century poet) 

    For that is where Independence, liberty and happiness truly lie. Between and beyond that, which we consider right or wrong, or black or white.

    The original American Declaration of Independence was about letting go of war, it stood for the idea of stepping into a more peaceful and free future, about liberty, life and Happiness. And so today is about letting go of the war on our streets, around us as well as the war inside us. The declaration from 1776 states: 

“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”. 

    It seems to me that these goals and ideas are still current today. We are as humans still involved in finding all those qualities for ourselves and our world, and there is a way to achieve this. Declare it! Declare what you wish for and what you are willing to contribute, and doors will open and life will flow in a river of abundance and joy, loving interaction and greater peace inside. 

    I have been a driver on the roads of the world for 32 years, and I find the same ideas, behaviors, structures of human beingness and challenges wherever I drive. In the struggle on the highways and freeways of this or any other country, we can find the degree to which we are kind to ourselves, loving to ourselves, harsh to ourselves, and we can clearly ‘hear’ within us the thoughts that govern our behaviors. Oftentimes, I have the belief that I can tell by the behavior in traffic who the person in front or next to me is, what their life story might be and what their personality might reveal. Yet these are only assumptions, drawn from behavior I witness inside me, and the assumptions are directly related to my own experiences. It is impossible for anyone to know someone from their behavior. We have to spend time with someone and explore their unique story, their ways of communication and their specific identification with life. We are so very much alike as human beings, as the Smithsonian states:

    “As in all species, there is variation among individual human beings, from size to shape to skin tone and eye color. But we are much more alike than we are different. We are, in fact, remarkably similar. The DNA of all human beings living today is 99.9% alike.” 

    And yet we have our own unique novels to write, with chapters that are only ours, using words that only we construct together and a meaning that changes daily. On the roads of the world we can all witness that from a certain place of our intimate destinies. 

    The road can give you incredible insight into who you are and how you work, what your brain tells you and what your heart wishes to express. It shows you clearly where other people are capable of triggering you and calling you forward without even speaking to you. By the sheer steering of a metal beast, we are able to show each other our boundaries and weaknesses, our revelations and our blindness, and we create our reality one traffic light at a time, one turn of the road after another and one unblinked turn multiplied. 

    As a Spiritual Psychologist and Reiki Master, I deeply enjoy watching myself as I head into a new day and a new adventure out in the streets of Los Angeles, and some days I chuckle and some days I swear, and then it is so. I have spoken to many people about their own behaviors and how fascinating our inclinations towards anger and tension are, when we merely wish to drive from A to B. And so, I call on you to find your own inner makings throughout this book, in which you can find the human component in a truly spiritual world, a world in which nature grows itself, it beats our hearts and grows our hair and renews our skin. This natural force and truth gives us experiences, which show and offer us the opportunity to find the ever unchangeable truth of all that is: Love is the strongest force, and read this clearly: it is strength and must not be dismissed as weakness. This love force will forever be the light that illuminates the darkness, which is the powerful tendency we all share within: fear. Love is the Jedi strength that can conquer all our feelings of entitlement, of fear and righteousness and bring us to the light, the source from which we all come and to which we will all return. And how to find this beauty of softness, while possessing a strength that can move mountains, the force which sees miracles and knows that this is who you are, all this will be shown to you throughout the chapters of this book.