One of my favorite lines in the Janis Joplin song “Me & Bobby McGee” is Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

That line means free when you have nothing left to lose. In other words, when you are practicing the art of detachment, you are free from attachment.

I have always felt that the best things in life are free. Love, for example, must be free, or it’s not real. It cannot be confined or controlled.

The soul is free to come to earth and accessible when it leaves.

I became aware that I was a soul having a human experience early. The soul is our eternal self, and our personality/ego is our impermanent or temporary self. The soul to me is pure; it does not need to be “fixed” in any way. Somewhere along the way, as we are pulled from the spiritual self into the secular self, we begin to forget that we are born worthy, whole, and complete. So begins the process of trying to prove our worth. We start to put conditions on ourselves and others. Our love becomes conditional.
I have always been drawn to nature and animals. I did not feel any pretense (charade, sham, façade, make-believe, deceit, deception, simulation). Unfortunately, I did feel a strong front coming from many people in my surroundings. I did not know how to pretend. The goal of my elders was to teach me the ways of the secular world and how to best fit into it. But somewhere within me, I knew this could mean a diminishing of my soul. I wondered if there was a way to be in the world but not of the world.
It seems to me that the only evolving man must do is to return to his true nature, to what is eternal and never changing. We would not lose our uniqueness if we lived from the soul. All souls are unique.
To me, evolving is not about learning more, attaining more, becoming more, or complicating and trying to perfect what is already perfect. Why does man try to make a name for himself? What does that even mean? To me, evolving is to return to what is natural in us, our soul. When we know we are already worthy, we have nothing to prove. We can be our authentic selves, express ourselves and bring light into the world from that true self. When we do not feel worthy, we are always trying to prove that worth, which leads us into temptation (thinking that we will find something outside ourselves to make us feel alive and worthy). What if we all knew we were already enough, that we did not have to improve ourselves? What if success was knowing that we already have all the answers we seek. What if we could relax into life knowing that we are souls and naturally nurtured by life itself? Would there be enough to go around if we did not take more than we needed for our survival? Would anyone be starving or cold without a place to call home?

I need to add nothing to my soul to make it better. There is nothing that my soul seeks to find. It is whole and complete. It is my conditioned self, the false self that on some level bought into a bill of goods being sold, the message you must make something of yourself. You must earn your right to exist. You must prove your worth. I did not hear a lot of notes that I was already myself and that I just needed to let that out into the world without changing it or improving it.

I relate in so many ways to St. Francis. It was said that St. Francis could see beauty where others could not. He saw the world opposite of most, as a poem and an adventure to be explored.
One of my favorite lines from the movie about St. Francis, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” In our obsession with original sin, we often forget…. actual innocence.