The Most Secure Prison is the One We Construct for Ourselves & "Our Deepest Fears."
Doing time in The Big House, much of it in isolation, taught me how to enjoy less, more. I've learned to notice and magnify the little thing in life, for good or for bad.
Extending back to my childhood, it was always the little things or subtleties that captured and raptured my attention. A leaf trembling under the weight of the industrious ant. Birds tilting their heads at their fellows. Lights on blades of grass reflecting into my peering eye. Shadows dancing like bullets on the sidewalk from a passing train; upcurled lips revealed in a smiles from strangers watching me watch them; hands caressing money in stores as people pay for products; cats peering from behind furniture waiting to pounce on passers-by; laughter from my mouth as I leapt into huge piles of autumn leaves. Everyone tends to hide in the theater of life, to wear social masks of so-called protection, which ironically becomes a private prison when one loses sight beyond the mask. Money is a mask, sometimes, as can be possessions, but the love of money is to become the mask.
Fast-forward through lessons beyond time and space: 1981, grief-stricken, I died of a broken heart in prison. My physical heart stopped beating; I felt my spirit exit my physical body. My spirit body was standing in the cell. When I realized I 'gave up the ghost' if you will, I fought back against the grief, and thought, "NO!" My spirit snapped back in my body, my heart restarted, and I jumped up from the concrete slab in that Death Row isolation cell (I was not on Death Row...they were just inflicting mental torture on me because I was a rebellious pain in the arse) and paced back and forth in that cell. I lost all interest in physical possession that day, and nobody could ever have power over me by "taking away" material items ever again.
Now I am in the Free World of masks and magnets, some visible, some not. And I usually see myself clearly enough not to partake of this illusion. I see through my BS quickly, which allows me to be free from other's intellectual shortcomings, too. But I realize how long I have enjoyed less, more, but made the mistake of internationalizing, or expecting, less. I can't have a cabin up north or have nice things because it's selfish (a part of me believes this still). But this self-imposed prison of limitation for loving expansion is loosening its hold, and the straight-jacket mentality is finding its own personal Houdini.
I'm calling to mind a quote from Marianne Williamson:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frighten us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
The pacing of the caged animal feels it limitation and rages from time to time, and this madness ends up scaring others who do not understand what to do about it. But I say to you, if you love someone, you will not hurt them. Love one another. Find a new way to love when you wake up in your personal prison of distrust. Never let your relative innocence brainwashed you into thinking the world is less than love. Ignite each other's spirit, and embrace the light NOW. Don't wait until you die to wake up and move toward the light, unless it is selfishness that does the dying.
And so it is.