The Mask

<img class=”size-medium wp-image-7350″ src=”https://quillian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2D7F8D31-A883-46EA-950A-1A723B22285E-300×300.jpeg” alt=”Steve Quillian is a leader in the historic window restoration industry ” width=”300″ height=”300″ /> The fact that you have influence over others doesn’t imply your personal sovereignty.
Compliance is a virtue when you are a slave
If you have no sovereignty, then its alright to cave.
The idea of personal sovereignty is the idea of self ownership and the natural right to choose control over one’s own destiny. Some words that are synonymous with sovereignty are autonomous, independent, liberty, free, unfettered, self-deterministic.
Schuyler Brown said, “<a href=”https://www.artofemergence.com/post/why-personal-sovereignty-matters”>What sovereignty seems to offer is choice; or liberation from automatic response</a>.” I like that. However I’d modify that to say that what sovereignty seems to be is a freedom, a choice, a liberation from a prodded response. 
Do you live a sovereign life? Are your choices sovereign? Automatic? Or are they prodded? Are you indeed individual, distinct and self determining? Perhaps you’d like it that way. Are your day to day choices your own? Or are they choices arising out of options placed before you? Perhaps your choices are derived from an influence not you, from scenarios presented to you or even that you were placed in. Perhaps you fell into a circumstance, not necessarily of your choosing, but by your own lack of personal awareness or lack of self control, escapism or addiction. Perhaps it could be that down there, in the bottom of that pit that something is waiting there to exploit you in your weakest moment. With all the types of intelligence in this world, is that not possible?

<img class=”size-medium wp-image-7351″ src=”https://quillian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/46FE7C05-7157-478E-B35B-5EB6B6B5A343-300×239.jpeg” alt=”Personal Sovereignty is based on living from within” width=”300″ height=”239″ /> Yes, I know you’ve seen this. The question still stands, is the choice you are making yours? Or has it been placed before you in a way that you are prodded to decide?
You are on social media and see a post that interests you so you go down the rabbit hole. Who put that post there at that particular time for you to look at? It wasn’t you. You might say, “Oh, I am just on there to be informed.” Informed? That’s a loaded word isn’t it? Informed = formed within. Informed by what? What is forming inside of you? What agenda? Is it your agenda? 
Maybe you chose to occupy a place where other’s influences rule. Simply an observer. An observer for while anyway. Soon a lure (attached to a string, no less) is passed before you – you bite. On the fisherman’s end, you biting means you get a reward. Most fish, once hooked, become enlightened to a degree. If it lives, it might not fall for that thing again. But you? Not you. Something about that hook is pleasurable. You get something out of it. You have to get something out of it, otherwise, why would you go back? When its painful you avoid the trap. Step on a nail once and forever you are on the lookout. But for you, the trap keeps coming back.

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<li class=”p1″>Can you really say you are sovereign? You swallow the lure every time. You keep coming back. You like it. You keep getting what you want and don’t notice that your behavior has changed. You are lured in and once comfortable, the game changes. You are shown something else, something you weren’t counting on, that you didn’t need, ask for or want. But now you’ve seen it and it can’t be unseen. Now you are responsible for information you didn’t volunteer for. You are asked for an opinion, to take sides on an issue that you’d never known about and arguably didn’t need to know about. Now you are spending your time, your choice, your freedom, spending your autonomy juggling and debating another’s idea, another’s influence.

<img class=”size-medium wp-image-7356″ src=”https://quillian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/F06210F5-9983-498D-9CE7-966500B181AF-300×300.jpeg” alt=”The mask. You never in a million years would have dreamed up that you would be conned into debating the efficacy of mask wearing with random people.” width=”300″ height=”300″ /> The mask. You never in a million years would have dreamed up that you would be conned into debating the efficacy of mask wearing with random people.</li>
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You are not your own. Not sovereign. You take the bait and the bait is laced with a morphine, a deadening drug so that you can be <a href=”https://decider.com/2020/02/07/pinocchio-80-anniversary-donkey-scene/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons”>dragged to pleasure island to be turned into an ass</a>. An ASS. A beast of burden, another’s burden placed upon you. You are a labor device and your life is not your own. You are a slave in the army of an ideology of another when you could be your own ideology. Why not be your own ideology? 
And you just wanted a cheap, easy way to keep up with your family, to connect with your friends and loved ones, to unite with lost friends. Now you are the one who is lost. 
Want to connect? Then connect. Connect in person, face to face, discuss your ideas, thoughts, problems, struggles, successes, dreams, goals. Don’t take the drug. don’t take the easy way. Work to establish your own sovereignty, lest you be a slave. Decide from your own self, from your own thoughts, your own genius, what you will do, who you will be, what your life will mean. 
Be the master of your own destiny. Ask yourself, “Who is my master?”
Proverbs 16:32 says that “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.“ 
Sovereignty over self means ruling over your own spirit. 
Am I sovereign over my own spirit? Good question. Lets start with our own impulses. If I can’t control my own impulses, if I’m not sovereign over that, how can I be free from the influences and prodding of others?
Learn more about the author at stevequillian.com

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The Mask