As I was trolling through files today I came across this interview with Jim Morrison which is a perfect reflection of how I am now choosing to live my life by feeling my way through each day. Some days I am successful, some days I allow the pressures of the fears of others and my own fears to overcome me and I dismiss opportunities to feel my true self. this is something that I am working on every day. Every day I pray for the humility to be my real self - the me that God created. In order to find this pristine self I must first wade through all the crap that has been dumped upon me as a child and added to by myself as an adult. It is a slow and painful process but one which I believe is absolutely necessary if I am ever to reveal the real me that God created.
My prayer for 2016 is that I will have the courage to open more fully to humility and allow myself to feel more fully the broken and hidden parts of myself.
I hope you too can resonate with these very wise words from Jim Morrison.
Interview with Jim
Morrison -
Lizzie James: I
think fans of The Doors see you as a saviour, the leader who'll set them all
free. How do you feel about that? It's kind of a heavy burden, isn't it?
Jim Morrison:
It's absurd. How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up
alone and declare his own freedom? I think it's a lie--people claim they want
to be free--everybody insists that freedom is what they want the most, the most
sacred and precious thing a man can possess. But that's bullshit! People are
terrified to be set free-they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who
tries to break those chains. It's their security....How can they expect me or
anyone to set them free if they don't really want to be free?
Lizzie: Why do
you think people fear freedom?
Jim: I think
people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But it's ironic
... That unknown was once very well known. It's where our souls belong ... The
only solution is to confront them -- confront yourself -- with the greatest
fear imaginable. Expose yourself to yourself to your deepest fear. After that,
fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
Lizzie: What do
mean when you say "freedom"?
Jim: There are
different kinds of freedom -- there's a lot of misunderstanding ... The most
important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your
reality for a role. You trade in your senses for an act. You give up your
ability to feel and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale
revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's
got to happen inside first.
You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't
hurt him -- unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him.
Lizzie: But how
can anyone else have the power to take away from your freedom to feel?
Jim: Some people
surrender their freedom willingly--but others are forced to surrender it.
Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents; they refuse to allow you to
keep the freedom you are born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person
for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true
feeling nature. You imitate what you see.
Lizzie: Are you
saying that we are, in effect, brought up to defend and perpetuate a society
that deprives people of the freedom to feel?
Jim: Sure ...
teachers, religious leaders-even friends, or so-called friends -- take over
where the parents leave off. They demand that we feel the only feelings they want
and expect from us. They demand all the time that we preform feelings for them.
We're like actors-turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom
... endlessly searching for a half-forgotten shadow of our lost reality. When
others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to
destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder ... the most
loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.
Lizzie: Do you
think it's possible for an individual to free himself from these repressive
forces on his own -- all alone?
Jim: That kind of
freedom can't be granted. Nobody can win it for you. You have to do it on your
own. If you look to somebody else to do it for you -- somebody outside yourself
-- you're still depending on others. You're still vulnerable to those
repressive, evil outside forces, too.
Lizzie: But isn't
it possible for people who want that freedom to unite -- to combine their
strength, maybe just to strengthen each other? It must be possible.
Jim: Friends can
help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be
yourself-and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling
at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to -- letting a
person be what he really is ... Most people love you for who you pretend to be
... To keep their love, you keep pretending -- preforming. You get to love your
pretence ... It's true, we're locked in an image, an act -- and the sad thing
is, people get so used to their image -- they grow attached to their masks.
They love their chains. They forgot all about who they really are. And if you
try to remind them, they hate you for it -- they feel like you're trying to
steal their most precious possession.
Lizzie: It's
ironic -- it's sad. Can't they see that what you're trying to show them is the
way to freedom?
Jim: Most people
have no idea what they're missing. Or society places a supreme value on control
-- hiding what you feel. Our culture mocks "primitive cultures" and
prides itself on suppression of natural instincts and impulses.
Lizze: In some of
your poetry, you openly admire and praise primitive people -- Indians, for
instance. Do you mean that it's not human beings in general but our particular
society that's flawed and destructive?
Jim: Look at how
other cultures live --peacefully, in harmony with the earth, the forest --
animals. They don't build war machines and invest millions of dollars in
attacking other countries whose political ideals don't happen to agree with
their own.
Lizze: We live in
a sick society.
Jim: It's true ...
and part of the disease is not being aware that we're diseased ... Our society
has too much to hold on to, and value -- freedom ends up at the bottom of the
list.
Lizze: But isn't
there something an artist con do? If you didn't feel you, as an artist, could
accomplish something, how could you go on?
Jim: I offer
images -- I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached -- like The
Doors, right? But we can only open the doors -- we can't drag people through. I
can't free them unless they want to be free -- more than anything else ...
Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person
has to be willing to give up everything -- not just wealth. All the bullshit
he's been taught -- all society brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to
get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.
