Declare Your Independence

Celebrate the freedom to pursue the aspirations and ambitions you covet, flourish in the relationships you crave, practice the philosophies, life styles, and religions you choose.

Ponder how lucky and blessed you are to live in a country with the opportunity to achieve your goals, fulfill your desires, and realize your dreams.

Certainly this week, you can commemorate having witnessed the historic moment when gay marriage has finally become legal in California.

This is further evidence it’s not necessary to relinquish your beliefs in order to conform or please others. Hold steadfast to your integrity, stay strong, stand by commitments. You’ll feel confident and competent to weather any external and internal strife or storm.

This is applicable even though you’ve been beaten to a pulp by love. No matter what you’ve endured, you don’t have to give up your passion to meet your soul mate.

However, you’re only free to the extent you’ve processed the pain and hurt suffered. If you’re brave enough to let the skeletons out of the closet, you can rise above the agony, remorse, and regret to where radiance, hope, joie de vivre, zest, and freedom reside.

If you haven’t resolved deep seated issues, your hidden agendas will consume every breath you take and each move you make. Dysfunctional patterns will rule your relationships, reactions, conversations, and especially determine whom you magnetize and invite into your private realm.

You’ll be unable to pay attention because you aren’t really free. You’re stuck, tied to pre-programmed conduct and destructive behaviors. You’ll be helpless to eradicate their control and influence, lest your childhood traumas are dealt with head on.

While you’re oblivious, walking around in a fog of denial, the abundance of divine gifts the universe has in store for you will bounce right back. The impenetrable walls you’ve built up will prevent you from receiving the sunlight of the spirit.

Once you opt to seek genuine and sincere liberation, the solution is simple. Discover how to purge and release yourself from the sorrow and anguish that binds you to guilt and shame.

There are many techniques at your disposal, several discussed in previous columns. To reiterate, recollect methods such as meditation, mindfulness, yoga, hypnotherapy, affirmations, journaling, grief workshops, silent retreats, spiritual advisors, psychic healers.

Find a place where you sense safety, security and protection from judgment and criticism. Link up with compassionate, supportive, encouraging, sympathetic cohorts.

Surround yourself with loving companions and confidantes who get you, remain faithful for the count, and won’t abandon you when the going gets rough.

Accept and appreciate that past situations you were involved in are not your fault. You didn’t cause or generate them.

Forgive yourself and comprehend that you did the best you could under the circumstances with the information and knowledge you had.

Then absolve those who perpetrated the damage and distress for the same reasons. They were flawed, unconscious human beings, repeating what was done to them, without a clue as to the dire consequences.

Only henceforth will you be free to live without the dysfunctional designs that have dominated your connections, albeit romantic, platonic, business, pleasure, social.

You’ll no longer be tied to self-defeating agendas, stuck in limbo, incapable of change, transformation, rejuvenation, illumination.

Those who avoid the pain are trapped in an unending sequence of sickness, neuroses, and dis-ease, which stems from the unwillingness to reconcile the fact that you’ve been harmed, betrayed, offended, and wounded physically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, and/or sexually.

Awareness is crucial to autonomy. Merely reading this article brings you leaps and bounds towards emancipation. Rejoice in the infinite possibilities you have to achieve and attain purity of thought, emanating from an unshackled mind and core.

Break the cycle, renounce major angst, and go ‘Back to the Future’ with the stunning 360-degree live theatrical concert extravaganza “For The Record: Zemeckis” at Rockwell Table & Stage, 1714 N. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027, in the heart of Los Feliz Village.

This unique combination of singing, dancing, and acting by a company at the top of their game, will send you soaring in your seats through time as you revisit treasured music and memorable, magical selections from Academy Award winning director, Robert Zemeckis’s films: Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away, The Polar Express, Contact, and Flight.

You’re guaranteed to leave with an enormous ear to ear grin and head to toe glee, exuberant, cheerful, ecstatic, and excited to return again and again. 

It’s an au naturale high, better than any drug or drink, euphoria at its peak. You’ll be dancin’ and groovin’ to the beat while instantly recognizing the lyrics and joining in on the fantastic fun.

The brilliant live band, led by house genius and gifted musical director, Christopher Lloyd Bratten on keys, includes: Joel Gottschalk, on bass; Kiel Feher on drums; and Nick Perez on guitar. Just watching this extraordinary group is enough to hold you mesmerized for the entire evening.

“Zemeckis in Concert” is directed by Anderson Davis; conceived by Shane Scheel, Bratten, and Davis; Created by Scheel and Bratten; and Produced by Scheel and Siobhan O’Neill.

This remarkable, innovative presentation stars a rotating cast from stage, screen, and music performing songs and medleys from the Zemeckis films’ soundtracks, e.g. “California Dreamin’,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Hound Dog,” “Light My Fire,” “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Feelin’ AlRight,” “Power Of Love,” “Earth Angel,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Spirit in the Sky,” and more.

The talented triple threats traverse throughout the room, bringing the numbers and excerpts tableside, where you can take advantage of the delicious cuisine and inventive cocktails available for purchase.

Members of the awesome ensemble are: Nicole Parker (Fox’s “Mad TV,” Broadway's Wicked), Ginifer King (Nickelodeon’s “Haunted Hathaways,” Broadway’s Gypsy, Steel Magnolias), Derek Ferguson (NBC’s “Smash,” Broadway’s Wonderland), Jackie Seiden (“New Year’s Eve,” Broadway’s Hairspray), Angela Pupello (Broadway’s The Drowsy Chaperone), Payson Lewis (NBC’s “The Sing-Off”), Patrick Mulvey (Fox’s “The Mob Doctor,” Broadway's Billy Elliot), Constantine Rousouli (Broadway's Ghost, Hairspray, Wicked) Laura Dickinson (Disney’s “Phineas and Ferb”), Rogelio Douglas Jr. (Broadway's In The Heights), Jason Paige (Blood Sweat and Tears), Lindsey Gort (CBS’s “Vegas”), Dionne Gipson (“Black Dynamite”), Derek Manson, Ruby Lewis, Katie Boeck, and Ciarán McCarthy.

Shows continue Thursday-Sunday at 8:30pm, closing on Saturday July 20th. For tickets, please call (323) 661-6163 (ext 20) or go to www.rockwell-la.com. Don’t miss this superb happening that will knock your socks off!