Mental Slavery: Letting Go of the Labels . . .

One of the hardest things to do in life is to let go of a situation, material things, or a person. Why is that? I've been reading "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle and he talks about how we define ourselves by things we associate ourselves with, believing that without this associating relationship with things, or people we'll lose our identity. I thought about this and I started to think on all the things that bound me some how. I thought about my religion and how I put God in a box. Michale Eric Dyson say it the best. Mr. Dyson said, "When we close our bibles doesn't mean that God stops speaking". Not his exact words but pretty close. I also thought about my sexuality and how my usage of labels created for me a box, which allowed me to operate only in the confines of its boundaries. I remember speaking to this one man who claim that being gay was not who he was but something that he does. We debated on the subject and in conclusion we agreed to disagree. Now when I look back, he was just saying that "I don't identify with gay, it's not who I am". There are so many labels I give myself and unknowingly live within the boundaries of these labels. Now there was a time in my life where I wanted nothing to do with anything gay, my reasoning was that (All gay men isn't capable of love).

Hey, I was young at the time LOL.

Anyways, with that reasoning in my "young" mind, I decided to remove myself from the gay lifestyle. So I started to drop gay men that obviously wasn't going anywhere in there lives. Basically going through my phone book on my cell deleting numbers. To make a long story short, I started to get bored, then I felt empty inside and then lonely. I couldn't let the lifestyle go because the lifestyle had become who I was. How often we find ourselves trapped in the confines of labels that we or other people give to us. Gay, Straight, Bi, Black, White, Asian, Racist, Sexy, Top, Bottom, Versatile, Man, Woman, Christian, Muslim, Low Class, High Class, Middle Class, Classy, Hoe and so many more. What happens to a person who dis-identifies with labels and release the chains of a mental slavery . . . I wonder is that what true freedom is like . . . free to just be me . . .