What I Got Wrong About How The Freedom Movement Could Destroy Itself
- Michelle Leduc Catlin
- Jun 8
- 5 min read
“Fear is the frequency that built the system and the problem that you are complaining about. And fear is still running the show.”
Nickita Starck
Perhaps it was the whisper of early spring that filled me with possibility in March of 2023.
It could also have been my expanded hope and heart in what we were creating with the National Citizens Inquiry.
As the Spokesperson, I was in my purpose, feeling simpatico with both the intention of the NCI and the witnesses themselves.
I travelled across the country, sitting through every heartbreaking and harrowing testimony from over 300 experts and laypeople.
Coming together as Canadians, as human beings, to face the truth, to embrace it in all its ugliness and beauty, to share it, to grieve together, and to heal and empower each other, was my goal in connecting with those who had the courage to speak and to listen and to watch.
It was in this first flush of national community that I wrote an article called How The Freedom Movement Could Destroy Itself.
I was dismayed by the infighting I saw within a constituency dedicated to sharing truth and spreading freedom.
I thought the solution was unity in the fight.
I was wrong.
At least, I was only partly right.
I didn’t yet see that the infighting and division in groups and organizations that were moving and catalyzing people was inevitable — a result of playing by the same rules we were standing against.
Plus ça change, plus ça la même chose.
I had dismissed the knowing that resistance only adds energy to that which one resists, and that the fear from which resistance springs can only expand that very same fear.
I couldn’t yet remove myself from the anger-inducing injustice and urgency of it all.
I had forgotten that the unity required must first begin within — in me and in each of us.
At the time, I was so grateful to be with people who were unabashedly speaking the truth out loud, that I focused all my energy and attention outward — sharing truth, promoting justice, forwarding freedom, and creating community.
Less than a year later, my sense of community crumbled.
Getting caught in the crossfire of internal differences in my own organization was unspeakably painful for me.
I experienced betrayal and heartbreak on a level I could never have imagined outside of a marriage.
And, it was the next necessary stage in my personal evolution, as well as my deeper understanding of what was wanted and needed in the world.
It was time to come home, to turn inward and learn to embrace and harness what Carl Jung called our shadow side.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
Why was I so deeply hurt?
Into what old wounds did my current circumstances press?
No one can hurt you without your permission.
Emotional pain is an inside job, a perpetration assigned meaning that usually goes undistinguished as self-inflicted.
Blaming others is easy when you feel like a victim, but it rarely leads to resolution, satisfaction or peace.
The situation had left me depleted.
I needed to heal, to slowly rise above to look below, to examine the big picture from a bigger perspective.
Eventually, I could see that none of it was personal.
Neither the infighting nor the global fight.
It never is.
Each of us acts, reacts, and interacts with the world as we see it.
Those who see scarcity will complete.
Those who see a battle will fight.
Those who see beauty will rise.
It is our perspective of life that creates our experience.
In other words, context is decisive.
“The external world cannot shift until the internal world does….You can’t dismantle control by clinging to it in your thinking. You can’t birth a new paradigm while you’re vibrating with the wounds of the old.”
Nickita Starck
I began to see the fight itself as the trap.
A Chinese finger puzzle where resistance is what keeps us stuck.
What is wanted and needed in the world is not to win or lose, but to surrender.
Not to tyranny or perceived external control, but to our true selves, our divine selves, our creative selves.
The Self that vibrates at a higher frequency, that recognizes what quantum physics has shown us — that the observer shapes reality.
With every thought, feeling, word and deed, we are creating our experience of life.
What is required is not unity in the fight, but healing of the wounds that caused the fight.
We created this world.
Each of us, as part of the human family, of collective consciousness, created the circumstances with which we now find ourselves.
And this is good news.
It means that we can create whatever experience with which we wish to engage.
Those who continue to advocate for a better world will only bring about real transformation by also working on the inner world.
Without this, we’ll have a new boss, same as the old boss.
What is wanted and needed in the world is the knowing that we are not victims, but rather, as Marianne Williamson wrote, that we are powerful beyond measure.
We are already unified as children of God, as expressions of the same consciousness, creating our reality.
“You want to dismantle the system? Start with the frequency that built it. Because the more of us who heal, the less resonance there is for tyranny to land. You don’t have to fight it, you just have to stop feeding it!”
Nickita Starck
After all my grieving of everything that has happened over the past 5 years, I see more clearly than ever that this time in history is our greatest opportunity to birth something so far beyond our current experience.
That we are only limited by our egos and imagination.
And that who we are being will ultimately determine the success of what we are doing.
The means are always contained in the ends.
Beyond this, I have no idea what’s next.
I’m standing for freedom, for truth, beauty and goodness.
I’m letting go of searching for answers in favour of dissolving the paradigm of problem-reaction-solution, instead relating to my life and the world as a creation.
I’m leaning into the unknown, engaging with what writer Vernonika Bond brilliantly distinguishes as Synchronosophy.
Learning, “to follow in trust with the all important sense of unknowing.”
From this unbound space, all things are possible.
One thing hasn’t changed since I wrote that article over 2 years ago.
I still belief in love as the most powerful force in the universe.
As Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us…
“Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.”
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Please also consider exploring the following fresh and compelling perspectives on the freedom movement and life in general...
“Coming together to bring about or birth the New Earth is the divine manifestation of reuniting with the divine within each of us and that is where our energy must be most consciously directed if we are to ascend into our true nature and purpose.”
David Cordes, The Journey Home
The Journey Home 10-week course led by David Cordes —
The Freedom Movement’s Missing Piece by Nickita Starck —
Introducing Synchronosophy by Veronika Bond —
How to Be Both Happy and Well-Informed by Caitlin Johnstone — https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/how-to-be-both-happy-and-well-informed?r=1ibyp4&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
The Middle Book: The Sacred Code of Vibration —
The Way Forward by Donald Lee —
100% spot on belovedivine. we are each the unique seemingly individualized expression of the one and in this pure innocent knowing beyond knowing our oneness we are, we are unconditionally free only always in all ways. boom diggity boom! thank you for sharing the infinitely glory-us gift you are!