We all carry an invisible cage of false beliefs and assumptions around us and like little birds quickly learn to move comfortably in circles within the cage. No one notices their cage, much less that of the others–thus living a life of auto-pilot, the coveted cruise control.
All our wars, corruption, and incongruities–and the whole vanity fair–is the unfortunate consequence of this fundamental human disability.
Once in a while, a few enterprising ones dare to look at their own cage, become aware of it and recognize the terror of the situation, and find the doorway to freedom—the vast expanse of unencumbered space.
Freed themselves, they clearly see people moving placidly in circles within their cages.
Out of their inexhaustible compassion, they offer friendly help to whom it may concern– not by trying to get the captives out of their psychological cages or even pry open the door for them but by gently making them clearly see and become aware of their self- limiting confinement.
Once one sees one’s cage, one is through!
One’s awareness then rotates into a different orbit of Reality, as it were, where there is more light, more tenderness, more compassion, more love, more courage, more giving, more wonder, more presence, more warmth, and more curiosity–more of just about everything that really matters. One is just more fully alive!
One also realizes that before this liberating discovery, one was not really living but merely existing–busy doing full-dress rehearsal in the theater life.
This is the open space of creative incubation–the unguarded dimension of profound beauty and splendor infused with childlike openness.
Miracles get wrought in this blessed space.
In this benedictory state, the yoking of the spirit to the Divine takes place spontaneously. This is the real meaning of the word yoga–the ‘communion’ of the ‘self’ with ‘the Supreme!’
In this holy union, one discovers one’s true nature to be limitless Pure Awareness and is freed from the servitude of a limiting, ‘skin-encapsulated ego,’–to borrow a felicitous phrase from Alan Watts.
One also realizes that one has verily been free all along and never confined to any limitation to begin with–except in one’s own thoughts. The Bard of Avon was right, after all: Thinking makes it so.
Freedom is not a place we go to;
freedom is a place we come from.
May your being continue to suffuse with exquisite love, light, and clarity!
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