Note 2 Self: "The bondage that we create for ourselves can only be lifted when we allow ourselves the freedom to break free." ~KARS
It has been quite some time since I've last posted an entry to this photo-blog.
I could say it was because I was busy, or had other projects that more more pressing and needed to spend time on my career.
But the truth of the matter is that I hadn't posted anything because I had to release myself from some things.
Not only had I not posted any entries, but I hadn't taken any pictures either.
It was as if I'd lost my gift to "see" the finished photo that I wanted to capture and share. When I started photography as a hobby, I enjoyed it because it allowed me to capture a moment in time as a perfect picture that I saw when I traveled throughout my everyday life. When I captured an image, it was because I "saw" the finished photo in real time.
But that ability had left me. Deserted me it seemed for no reason and I couldn't figure out how to get it back. Sure, I made halfhearted attempts at taking some photos, but they weren't quite the same. The emotion wasn't there and the beauty and vibrancy were missing.
So I left my camera languishing in a corner while I turned my attention to other things and wondered when--or if--I'd ever regain that ability to "see" the perfect picture and then capture the moment.
And then something happened.
I started writing poetry.
Not just here and there, but there were poems pouring out of me and allowing me to express myself in ways that I hadn't done in years.
My writing allowed me to break free of things that had been subconsciously bothering me and weighing me down. It provided a way for me to "see" my way clear of my situation and my circumstances and provided an outlet where I could release the bonds that were holding me down and keeping me from truly being free.
The final breakthrough came when I began sharing my poetry.
When I allowed the works that had been pent up inside to flow forth like rivers of cleansing water, breaking through the weathered rocks of my battered past and cascading over the sands of the new and unspoiled beach of my future--it was then that I had my breakthrough.
When you experience something, you sometimes have to look outside of yourself and share your journey with others both as a way of healing you and as a way of helping them.
Your journey is not always about you. The breakthrough that comes only arrives fully when you are open, vulnerable and love yourself enough to trust the process. It is only once you have given yourself permission to be free that you will actually begin the process of breaking free.
Breaking through a situation or a mindset is liberating because it provides you with a release and at the same time allows you to be replenished, refreshed, rejuvenated and reborn.
The breakthrough doesn't come from the things around you. It comes instead from within.
For you can never break free of what holds your spirit captive until you give yourself permission to just BE.