Joy of Feeling Freed
(Updated on March 11, 2008)	No.51

Hello, everyone, I’m Fuyo Haruna.

As the sun sheds its light on us, it makes us feel that spring is coming. Winter that covers everything with snow makes me feel like my heart is protected, restful and safe during a deep sleep under a white blanket. As the snow melts and the harbingers of spring have come into sight, all of a sudden, my heart soars high up in the sky. I think that such a release of my heart is a token of the tender love of Nature.

In my life, I’ve given heartfelt thanks for having had ‘the burdens of my heart’ lifted away. Being freed from what has been binding you and becoming lighthearted ― like a dandelion clock floating in the air ― is an amazing thing.

Don’t take such a change in your heart or your consciousness lightly. Give it into great joy and cherish it. Be aware of how you should value feeling freed and at ease, and how to be grateful for it. If you can appreciate and give heartfelt thanks for such a change of your heart, it will greatly help foster your soul.

In your everyday life, you all may have experienced a sense of relief when what has been bothering you or annoying you for days, months, or even years has been solved.
It is just like when you realize how patiently you’ve been putting up with cold winter days when the warmth of spring touches you and opens up your heart, you are surprised to know what a heavy burden you've been carrying along the path of your life.
All we humans shoulder many burdens of our hearts even without knowing how heavy they are. So, it is never a small thing when we can take them off and put them away.

We live with various worries and anxieties?about our work, our families, or our relationships with people. Once you have your burden lifted and feel relieved, don’t take it for granted. Instead, make it a starting point for building up your sense of gratitude. Exclaim to yourself, “Oh, I’m freed. I’m now at ease. What a blessing!” But just don’t stop there; realize that you have been embraced and fostered by the love of Nature, even when you were plodding along the long road of life, dragging many burdens, and be grateful that you’ve finally gotten a heart aware of such underlying love.

When you look back on your life, you may find some of your worries that bothered you so much are gone to the extent that they’ve faded out of your memory. Even so, imbue each one of them with new found joy. Because now your sense of joy or gratitude can be built up deep inside of you and assist you in moving forward.

It can be said, in retrospect, that we are granted various burdens of the heart because, by overcoming them, we can experience a sense of joy and gratitude. It is these feelings that can help us raise the level of our consciousness. That’s why Nature gives us a wide variety of burdens.

Once you realize this, you can feel grateful for these burdens granted to you and stop being afraid of them. And once you have overcome them and been freed from them, why not give them your greatest joy!