There is a story from my childhood called Gulliver’s Travels that is about a man who travels to a distant land and finds that he is a giant among the ‘little’ people of this land. The people of this land are so fearful of this giant that they use thousands of tiny ropes to lash him down and control his movements. Eventually he frees himself and is able to show the townspeople that his size was nothing to fear.

Of course the story is more detailed than this but it is possible that there is an energetic message here that we can explore.

Let’s start with the possibility that we are love – that everyone has an essence that is love and that this essence remains forever equal within all. More than this, that this essence (love) is our point of connection to divinity.

If this were the case, then we would each have the ability to either express from this essence or not. We would each have the chance to live from a level of love (divinity) that would tower over any other way of living.

This would mean that inside everyone there is a giant, waiting to be expressed. So we could all well be Gulliver, not in terms of physical stature but in our potential to express that very divine aspect of ourselves.

If you look around the world, it could be suggested that many of us don’t live from this essence. If we ignore the people who go out of their way to harm others, what you see around the streets, shops, workplaces are a sea of people who are kind, diligent, well intentioned for the most part but who also look tired and just trying to get through life. Essentially, you see people who look and feel ‘small’.

So how does someone living small respond to seeing someone in full expression (a giant)?

Some view it as scary, because it is so unfamiliar, some even see it as a threat, possibly because it shows how small our lives have become. So it makes sense, if we feel threatened, to protect ourselves from this giant – to find ways to tie it down and contain its movement.

Certainly history has shown that when people bring great truth to the world, they are often not met with open arms, because often what needs to be said challenges what is currently being lived.

Now this all might make some sense when we talk about people reacting to how other people are, but this is only the first layer…

If we all have an essence that we all live to varying degrees, is it possible that we also become threatened by the giant within because it shows us the ways that we have lived that are small . . . so we reach for ropes to try to tie it down.

We do a deal with the world that we will play ball with certain ideals about how life should be and subscribe to certain beliefs about what is true or not. At no point do we realise that each ideal, each belief, is equivalent to a piece of rope tying us to the ground. Over the years, and some would suggest lifetimes, we end up successfully harnessing the giant within. From time to time we might break a rope but, because there are so many, there is always another to take up the slack.

So how do we release the giant within? It is not a single heave or wave of the magic wand, but rather a dedicated process of lifting off each rope, one at a time.

Eventually you might free an arm but become shocked to find that when you haven’t moved a limb for a long time, those first movements aren’t always pleasurable… so in those first movements we might wonder if there is any real benefit to moving. But if we want to release the giant within we must persist…

Over time, as the one arm becomes free it can help remove other ropes, then others, then others. But this is not a fairy tale; there is no magical resolution once you understand what you have to do. Getting what you have to do and doing it are different. We can get frustrated, tired, bored, feeling like it is a tedious thing to do but, after those reactions, you look down and the ropes are still there.

We all have ropes to deal with. Some people are secured from head to toe, some have a hand free, some people are sitting up, some people are standing… everyone is realising, in their own time, that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain by releasing the giant within.

By Joel Levin