The Imprisoned Self

The Imprisoned Self

“To be what we are and to become what we are capable of being,” wrote Robert

Louis Stevenson, “is the only end of life.” But when we stultify our divine

birthright in manacles of mental and spiritual limitations, then we have no

alternative but stagnation and pain. As long as we are responsive solely to the

stimuli that impinge upon our senses from the outer world, we have no choice but

to be victims of every circumstance. Locked to the senses, we reel under each

stimulus, now aggressive, now afraid, now joyful, now sad, now seeking death,

now life, but always our inner serenity and equilibrium are in the hands of

something we neither understand nor control; and so we are puppets, pulled by

invisible and unknown strings, swirling in the maelstrom of life like scraps of

paper in the wind; and if perchance we garner knowledge enough to perceive our

helplessness, then we often are overcome with such depths of sadness as to

make effort against our bonds an almost unimaginable thing.

But the moment that we pause long enough in the headlong rush of life to see

that we are not moving in accord with or in response to our own decisions but

rather in reaction to the world around us, then we have taken the first step

toward freedom. Only one who knows his slavery can aspire to be free, just as

true freedom is possible only to one who has experienced chains. Our hates,

loves, fears, envies, aspirations, deceits are for the most part products of

circumstance, of false and limiting codes and mores—more often innate terrors of

mountains that are molehills; and the solution to all of them is to stand fore-

square before them, daring them to do their utmost, exposing them for what they

are, thus foreswearing allegiance to the cupidity of the deluding and blinding ego

which forever keeps us thinking we are greater than others and less than we truly

are.

The Magic in your Mind

U.S. Andersen