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Excerpts from Living Values Activities Books and
Freedom Ideas at Home for Parents of

Core Freedom Lesson: Inner Freedom

Ask:

• What is inner freedom?

• How does inner freedom feel?

• When do you feel most free?

• What types of thoughts make you feel free?

• What types of thoughts make you feel constrained or negative?

• How do we develop our own feeling of inner freedom?

• What are examples of people not feeling free when they physically or materially possess all ?freedoms??

• What are examples of people who experienced inner freedom when they had no physical freedom?

Tell or read from a story about a person who was imprisoned and yet experienced inner freedom. Or, assign students to read such a work.

Discuss the Reflection Points:

• Inner freedom is to be free from confusion and complications within the mind, intellect, and heart that arise from negativity.

• Inner freedom is experienced when I have positive thoughts for all others, including myself.

• Freedom resides in the mind and heart.

Do the following Relaxation/Focusing Exercise:

Freedom Relaxation Exercise

Say:  ?As I relax, I give my mind the freedom to explore. . . . I imagine that I?m flying through the air . . . like a bird . . . floating . . . effortlessly . . . feeling free and light. . . . I feel the warm rays of the sun on my back . . . . I am completely free . . . . I let go of any worries and feel light inside . . . . there are no anchors. . . . I imagine a world of freedom . . . where each one is free . . . content . . . happy. . . . People work and play together in complete harmony . . . each respecting the space and time of others . . . there is respect and love for each one . . . each has choice . . . and balance . . . each appreciating their own inner beauty . . . and that of others. . . . With my mind free, I fly back into the present . . . feeling light inside.?  - Based on a contribution by Sue Emery

Activity:  Ask the students to write about moments in which they feel free. Ask each to post one ?freeing thought? on the board before the end of the day. 

Homework:  Look for a piece of poetry, a picture, or a symbol or object that represents or gives the feeling of inner freedom. Bring it to the next lesson. 

Core Freedom Lesson:  Freedom for All

Begin with a song and a Relaxation/Focusing exercise.

Discuss the Reflection Points:

• Full freedom functions only when rights are balanced with responsibilities and choice is balanced with conscience.

• The most potent power to put an end to internal and external wars is the human conscience. Any act of freedom, when aligned with the human conscience, is liberating, empowering, and ennobling. 

Activity:  Instruct each group to make an artistic representation of the kinds of freedom they want all people to have now, after discussing their list in relationship with the Reflection Points. Do any of the ?freedoms? on the list they generated violate the ?freedoms? of others? 

Core Freedom Lesson:  Freedom and the Young Adult

Begin with the Freedom Relaxation/Focusing exercise.

Ask:

• What kinds of freedom do you have as young adults?

• What responsibilities go with those freedoms?

• What kinds of freedom do you expect as an older adult?

• What responsibilities go with those freedoms?

• What are the challenges to be faced in achieving those freedoms?

• How have freedoms and responsibilities changed over your lifetime? What freedoms and responsibilities did you have as a baby, as a small child, and as an older child?

• As a parent, what kinds of freedom would you give your teenagers?

• As a parent, would you have any concerns about any of these ?freedoms? your teenager wants? What?

• What is your experience with ?freedoms? and trust? Do you think parents give more ?freedoms? when teens prove that they are responsible?

• Doing what one says he or she will do builds trust. What else builds trust?

Activity:  Allow small discussion groups to select one or two of the above questions for further exploration. Perhaps they would like to make a progression of freedoms and responsibilities at different age levels.