Hi All,

Today the angels talk about real freedom nd how to exercise it. I'll share a story about a failed RAID drive, the free-will choice to embrace it, and how this story reminds us that free will is a power tool as you move through life and its challenges.

And to all who celebrate, Happy Fourth!

Have a blessed & beautiful week :)
♥ Ann

by Ann Albers in Phoenix AZ

My dear friends, we love you so very much,

As many of you celebrate a holiday commemorating freedom, let us examine what freedom really is, how to achieve it, and how it best serves you. For as much as you all truly do want freedom, it is all too easy to outsource your power, your thoughts, and your ability to think, discern, and choose for yourselves.

It is just as easy, however, once you become aware of these tendencies, to reclaim your power, think for yourself, and embrace true freedom of mind, body, heart, and soul.

Often, freedom is defined in terms of what you want to be free "from." You want to be free from tyranny, disease, and the control of those who want to have their way with you. And that is beautiful, but if you can't find a focus on what you want to be "free to" experience, you will remain energetically entangled with all that you want to be "free from."

Suppose you don't enjoy your job or life situation. You might feel oppressed at work, controlled by a boss or others who don't care about your well-being, tied to those you must caretake, and at the mercy of a system that controls your income. As you read this, you can already feel the confinement of such statements, no matter how true they might be at the time. The focus on what you want to be "free from" ties you, energetically, to it.

What if, instead, you were to focus on a spiritual truth—you are free to create work and situations that you love in cooperation with a benevolent universe—simply by aiming your energy and attention toward that which you wish to experience. You are free to love those in your charge while dreaming about a future more centered on your own desires. You are free to focus on what little bits of life are satisfying right now. Instead of complaining about what you wish to be "free from," which ties you to it, you can start to talk about what it is you are free to create. You can imagine what it will feel like to feel more freedom. You are free to anticipate a better situation. The more you do so, the more you attune yourself, freely, to the situations you want to experience.

Many of you have already experienced this firsthand. You left a job or a relationship you didn't like, only to find yourself in a similar situation once again. You didn't realize it, but you had bound yourself to the person or situation you were leaving, even though you left it physically. By maintaining a frequent focus on what you were glad to be "free from," you focused on it so thoroughly that you attracted it once again.

At some point, you were truly done thinking about what you left. You were done thinking about the injustice of it and the pain it inspired within you. You became tired of defending your right to have better. And as you relaxed and began to enjoy your life, bet ter started to appear. Your willingness to focus your free will on what you were "free to" experience instead of what you were "free from" opened new doors of opportunity, inspired you to explore new interests, and brought new types of people into your life.

Likewise, many of you have been "stuck" caretaking someone who wasn't a kind patient. As long as you struggled with the situation or hated it, it continued to bother you. But at some point, you may have decided to just love the person you cared for, even in spite of their bad moods. No longer were they in control of you. You felt better about yourself. And by the time both they and you found freedom from the situation, you were already free and able to move forward without regret.

So what is freedom? Is it the ability to get away from what you don't like? Partially, perhaps, but as we see it, freedom exists in the ability to think about what pleases you, inspires you, and draws you to it. Freedom exists in the ability to create change one step at a time and the ability to work in cooperation with a benevolent universe that wants you to experience a life that feels like love. It is the ability to find what is good here and now while anticipating more.

Freedom, dear ones, is your God-given right to attune to anything you please and thus draw it to you.

Using your free will to attract what you want feels like freedom. Using that same free will to focus on what you don't feels like bondage. In all cases, you are free.

So, as so many of you celebrate freedom, remind yourself that you are always free. No matter the circumstance or the people around you, you have the free will and the ability to look at reality for opportunity or confinement. You have the freedom to focus on what pleases you or to focus on what does not. You have the freedom to look forward with anticipation or to decry what is in front of you today.

When wielded wisely, using your free will today can lead to greater and more joyful freedom tomorrow.

May you be free to love, free to see what pleases you, and free to look forward to even better than you know today.

God Bless You! We love you so very much.
-- The Angels

Hi Everyone,

The angels have worked with me for years to find the freedom between my ears!

I used to argue for my limitations. I used to blame others for my mood. I used to feel victimized and unhappy about much in the world. I didn't love my engineering job. I felt confined and bound to it after my parents paid for an entire college education. I felt stuck in a marriage that wasn't bad but wasn't growing. And I wore a big "V" for victim, energetically speaking, often defending to the heavens my right to be displeased! Looking back, it makes me laugh. Why on earth do we insist on defending our pain and digging ourselves deeper into it? I know the answer, of course. We just didn't know otherwise at the time.

It wasn't until I stopped digging into my pain and started tilling the soil of my soul that things got better. I had to admit I had a choice. I started taking self-help classes, reading books, and experimenting with personal growth modalities. I would not be the loving and happy person I am today had I not gone through all that. I would still be stuck if I had never used my free will to choose a focus beyond my circumstances.

The crucible of difficult situations, coupled with the free will to think beyond them, is often exactly the catalyst we need to grow into the person we want to be and to have the life we want to live.

And while pain isn't necessary for growth, it often results when we want something different but don't choose to think differently or do something different. Change your focus. Make small changes to feel better in life, and soon you'll see the painful circumstances begin to shift.

Had I had my way with the external world at the time, I'd likely still be climbing the corporate ladder in engineering. Nothing wrong with that, except it wasn't what thrilled me. Now I work with souls I adore by day and have a creative outlet making coloring books and other fun projects by night! I love my life most of the time. And when I don't, I know I can change it.

In fact, I had an opportunity for change last weekend...

I've been having issues with the increasing insanity of computer programs as vibe coding becomes a thing. What used to take an engineer days to create and debug now can be done in a few hours. You tell a computer what you want, walk away, and it writes the software. However, it does exactly what you tell it, and if you're not careful to be specific with your instructions, it may not know to consider the gazillion other factors involved. So many of the design programs I use are incorporating insanely brilliant features while losing their basic functions at times... like editing text correctly or showing the cursor.

Being a former engineer, this drives me nuts. I started to pray for my soul and sanity! "Dear God, help me be patient with these programs so I can create better interactions with them." Most of my life, my tech stack has been supportive and kind to me.

I had a great opportunity to see what I had created and shift my thinking last weekend!

Last Friday, right as I was finishing up the week's work, one of the drives in my RAID konked out. A RAID is a set of disks that all work together to create a safety net for your data. If you lose one drive, there are copies of your data on another. But when one konks out, you can't mess around. You need a current backup ASAP in case the other one goes, or you risk losing a lot of your life's work. Although I had prior backups in the cloud and on an external drive, they were days old. In my life, that might mean thousands of files that remained to be backed up. I changed my weekend plans.

As it turned out, the normal backup programs didn't play well with the compromised drive, so I spent the weekend manually comparing 12 TB of data with what I had already saved and dragging all the changed files to the backup. It was not hard work, just a lot of grunt work.

I didn't feel too free about the situation until I sat, breathed, received, and saw it through God's eyes. I have a lot of data. It needed to be better organized. And I had asked for an attitude adjustment about computers! So I used my free will to focus on the fact that I am loved, that all would turn to good, and that I was lucky to be able to recover my files.

Suddenly, the grunt work felt like a meditation.

Suddenly functions on my computer that had driven me crazy mysteriously started working.

I started feeling great about my new organization. I found replacement drives easily. I was even able to complete another project and tidy up the house.

Using my free will to ask for help, receive love from heaven, and look for the good in the situation turned things around almost immediately.

I still "lost" a weekend. I still had a huge expense buying the new drives. But I'm organized. My data is safe. And I feel great.

There are many times in life when we face far more confining and difficult circumstances than rebuilding 12 TB of data. In my late twenties, I thought I was stuck in engineering for life and couldn't see a way out... until I started focusing on the good where I could.

I never would have guessed I'd be talking to people I can't see, working with thousands of people, and designing T-shirts—not to mention having beautiful, loving relationships with people in my personal life that I once considered impossible. Using my free will to love myself, find the good in life where I could, and focus on the good in others that I could see has changed everything.

Life now feels like freedom! Not because life always does what I want. Not because people show up exactly the way I'd wish. Not because I'm always the person I want to be, but rather because I now know I'm free to think a different thought, focus on a different thing, and find the good wherever I go. And in so doing, life changes... quickly.

Here are a few ways to use your free will to shift life when needed or to make it better when it is already good:

1.  When Feeling Limited, Focus on What You Can Do

Sometimes we feel remarkably free. At other times, life, our bodies, or circumstances feel confining. It is easy to focus on a lack of freedom—what we can't do, don't have the energy, time, or money to do, etc.

But if you can pivot and ask yourself, "What can I do right now?" "What can I enjoy right now?" You will be using your free will to find the path to better circumstances. You will breathe a little easier and allow the body to recalibrate. And you'll remember your freedom, which brings relief to the mind and emotions.

2. When "Stuck" in a Situation, Look for What You Can Enjoy

You might be in a job you don't care for or in a situation where it is right to care for a child or an elder. It may leave you feeling stuck at times since there is no immediate way to create change or find balance. At those times, finding what you can enjoy is the way to exercise freedom, shift your vibration, and create opportunities for change.

If you're in a job you don't like, try to have fun on weekends, and in that happier vibe, you'll receive new inspirations or bump into people who give you new direction.

If you are caretaking and find it hard to find balance, find simple rituals and pleasures that you can enjoy. A sip of tea while watching a program with your loved one. Holding hands and feeling your love flow to them. Simply telling yourself that doing your best is more than enough can shift a situation to feel more loving.

There isn't always a big solution or a big change available, but by using your freedom to find whatever pleasure you can, you enter into a higher energy where new solutions, new ideas, and new opportunities become easier to access.

3. Take Baby Steps

It isn't always feasible to quit a job, leave a relationship, or heal a health condition right away. But we are free to take baby steps. You can make a small change to be kind and compassionate to yourself. You can sit, breathe, and receive help from the angels. You can watch one inspiring video or read one uplifting passage a day. You can appreciate something other than what bothers you. You can brainstorm with a friend or AI about how to create change. Or you can do it the easy way and focus on the feeling of a better situation and let the Creator of Universes guide you.

In all cases, we can use our free will to take small steps that bring us closer to kinder realities.

This is a delicious make-ahead dish great for picnics, potllucks, and backyard barbecues, or just as a lovely dinner dish!

6 ears fresh corn
1 sweet Vidalia or Maui onion
1/3 – ½ c sun-dried tomatoes in oil
1 can black beans, rinsed & drained
1 good handful of cilantro, chopped
Olive oil & balsamic vinaigrette, optional
Salt & pepper

1. Husk & wash corn, brush with olive oil.

2. Quarter onions and put on skewers, brush with olive oil.

3. Heat grill to hot then reduce to low. Put on corn and onions. Grill until corn is blackened and turn. Do this until all sides are a bit blackened. Typically, grill 10 min/side. Keep the onions on until done.

4. Cut corn off cob, chop onions, and toss together. Add sun-dried tomatoes, black beans, and cilantro. This is great tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette.

This is great as a summer side dish or combined with grilled chicken, lettuce leaves, and ranch dressing in a wrap.