Monday, February 23, 2009

Prison?



Prison?

I watched a movie about a man who was imprisoned thirty years without conviction or trial because of what he knew. My metaphorical mind loved it and immediately became engaged with the mystical symbolism.

I could visualize myself as a prisoner in this worldly life, suffering and struggling for eons until spiritual understanding eventually liberated me from the bonds of ignorance and materialism.

But suddenly this perspective, valid to a point perhaps, struck me as limiting. It was as though the movie set me up to regurgitate an age old idea that never actually delivers the so-called prisoner into the free light of day.


Then a new and unprecedented idea emerged: what if I’ve always been free and am free right now? What if any prison experience was totally self imposed?

The image of the Devil Tarot card came to mind, in which the two people in apparent bondage can liberate themselves easily at any time by merely lifting the loose chains from their necks.

What if the perception of prison and limitation – in whatever form it appears in someone’s life – is a fiction, an assumption, a mistaken perception? What if everything that occurs happens not TO us, but FOR us and BECAUSE of us?

What if the universe is presently giving and has always consistently given exactly what we have needed and asked for?

Wouldn’t that be called . . . liberty?

1 comment: