At first, you try to remember how you got there. Then you get up and call for help. No response. You scream and shout that you want out, but your voice bounces off the walls and echoes down the halls. You are completely alone.

Well, not entirely alone. At the end of the hallway is a guardsman standing in front of the door. His ever persistent gaze watches you, keeping you from acting out of line.

On his belt, you see the glint of a set of keys, the keys that will free you. You beg him to please let you out. You cry to him that you are innocent. The whole time, he’s silent, no words, just that steady gaze, reminding you that he’s in charge.

Day after day, you live in that cell. Food is delivered while you sleep. You never see anyone come or go. You pace around your cell. You feel helpless and alone.

You might try to escape–but there’s no way to get out. And with each failed attempt, your cell feels a little smaller. You start to hate the walls for keeping you trapped. You hate yourself for not being able to escape. But most of all, you hate the guard for not letting you out.

After a while, the hate turns to desperation. You are so sure that the guard is your only way out, you tell him you will do anything to release you. You make bold offers. But he continues to stare at you, no more or no less.

When the guard doesn’t succumb to your offers, you start to think that he wants you to behave a certain way. Maybe if he is convinced that you are a good person, he’ll release you. You change your behavior. You want to prove to him that you are worthy of freedom.

More time passes. You’ve started to accept your situation. It’s not so bad. The walls keep you safe. You’ve got food. And since you can’t remember what life was like before you entered the cell, you start to believe the guardsman is protecting you because you are special.

Yes! You are a king, and the cell isn’t a jail, it’s his majesty’s chambers. The guard is a royal guard. He can’t talk to you because he’s beneath you. That explains the lack of other people around you. That’s why food is delivered daily. Only a king would have servants and a guard!

But one day you have a dream. You’re in the middle of an endless field. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. In the distance is a beautiful mountain range. No limits. No walls.

When you wake up, you realize that despite all of your rationalizing delusions, you’re still trapped in jail. Remembering life before, you surge with anger. You attack the walls, punching and kicking as if your tiny blows could knock it all down. You run to the guard, screaming and shouting, you want to kill him so you can set yourself free. But the bars stop you. He just stands there, blank and unphased, holding the keys that could set you free.

Exhausted, you slink back into a dark corner. You feel completely hopeless, more trapped and alone than ever. You’ve tried everything, but nothing you do seems to lead to freedom.

What you don’t know is that this is an enchanted jail. The walls are just an illusion. The guard is just a mannequin. All the result of a spell you cast on yourself. You wanted it to protect you, but somehow it trapped you.

Once you understand this, the jail will vanish. The guard will lose his power. In their place, you’ll find a world of limitless freedom.

How is your life a prison?

[PHOTO CREDIT: Prison by : Dar. on flickr]

Fears and complexes can lead to problems like difficulties in relationships (with family, friends or partners); an inability to allow ourselves to achieve or feel success; and even manifest into some health problems.  Our quick-fix society thinks we can take a pill to solve everything, but medicine alone can’t cure the source of the suffering.  For that, I feel that psychoanalysis, meditation, etc., are the only real ways to grow into healthy human beings.

"Reconciliation" by Josefina de Vasconcellos at Coventary Cathedral

Part of the process, for me, is writing. Words are powerful: They change our perceptions and therefore also modify our thinking and habits.  By writing, we can get our thoughts out, manifest them into the world, and settle our minds.

Tonight I couldn’t sleep well.  Instead of the usual drift-into-sleep meditation I normally do in this situation, I ended up continuing deep-meditation exercises I’d been working on earlier in the day.  After I’d gotten into a certain state, I started writing out and acknowledging some of my fear-based actions.  Then I followed the threads of those fears backwards until I’d discovered their source.

One part of the breakthrough involved my relationship with my mother.  The message, below, was typed out in a text message on my cell phone.  It was spontaneous and somewhat subconscious, and the emotional release was so strong that I was crying while writing it.  Thanks to the new copy/paste feature on the iPhone, I’m able to share it with you guys as is.

Mom: I love u so much. I acknowledge that in the past your actions hurt me. I also acknowlede that u r human, and like the rest of us, aren’t perfect. With all my heart, I forgive you and allow you to be imperfect. I allow anything that happened in the past to happen. By so doing, I let go of any pain and suffering it has caused me. I do this to heal myself and allow you to heal. I love u so much, mom. Thank you for bringing me into this world. Love, chris.

I’m so thankful for this epiphany.  I hope it really does help us both heal. I KNOW it will help us both heal.

Will I be able to write the same sort of message to the person whose abuse has affected me the most?  He has blocked it from his memory.  Maybe doing the exercise without contacting him is sufficient to start my side of the healing process.  I know the Lord will help me find the answer.

Our perception of the world is based on our past experiences and the collective perceptions we share with society, our family and our friends. When we add more personal experiences to our lives, we can calibrate our perceptions against those we have learned from others.

When I play back the moments in my life that define the perceptions of the moment I’m in, it’s always like a movie: The action takes place in the present, even though I’m aware it is actually in the past. I am all the experiences leading to this moment, but the person from 5, 10 or 20 years ago is not the same.  I’ve changed.

In Austin, I’ve been constantly aware of the perceptions and experiences I had in college.  It’s been a process of rediscovery and reconciliation.  It offers the chance to look at my past ideas, compare them with my current ideas, and then decide which make sense.  It’s kinda like recalibration of my perceptions–rebuilding myself based on who I was then with the experiences I’ve had up to now.  It’s an interesting process that is difficult at times.  Do people who’ve lived in one place all their lives ever experience this?

Over the last few years, I’ve started to realize that all these habits are actually effects of fear.  It’s kind of like a fight or flight mechanism.  My mind is so scared of what MIGHT happen–what if people don’t like what I write, what if I fail, etc–that it makes up these distractions to sort of ease the suffering that it thinks might happen.  In effect, what ends up happening is that I defeat myself.

I’ve also noticed that I feel like I’m missing out on something or giving up “Chris time” by FORCING myself to do some arduous task.  Whether it’s hanging out with my friends, going to the park, or just chilling, I feel like I’m rebelling against my own authority.

In both cases, what I have to remind myself is that writing and art make me happy.  I’ve purposefully changed my life so that I can spend more time working on these things in hopes that ultimately I’ll be able to support myself completely off my art.  With that in mind, I have the following three questions posted above my writing desk:

• What can I do right now to get closer to reaching my goals?
• What can I do right now to improve my state of mind?
• What can I do right now to improve my quality of life?

Not all of these have to do with writing.  Sometimes I’m legitimately distracted by things like paying bills, doing laundry or eating.  These questions force me into thinking about what’s bothering me by asking if I can do something in that moment to help me focus so that I can get back to work. It helps.

What do you do to fight procrastination?

The Washington Post had a great article discussing Michelle Obama’s reluctant ascent to fashion icon status.  A good discussion of celebrity and public canonization, it talks about her ardent defenders and how they actually stifle any discussion of reality.

To me, public perception creates a new identity in addition to that which actually exists–the identity of the “celebrity” vs the person herself.  But how does the celebrity mitigate these differences with the doting public?  Does she play up their image, or realizing she can’t be what they want, does she shut herself off?

In her closing paragraph, the author of the piece, Robin Givhan, asks similar questions:

Being an icon is not for the faint of heart. How unnerving it must be to know that your actions have disappointed some stranger. How odd to have anonymous citizens rising up in your defense over something that has caused you no upset. And even more frustrating: How do you show your gratitude or tell your defenders to back off?

via Robin Givhan on Culture: You Gotta Love the First Lady. No, Really, You Have No Choice. – washingtonpost.com.

Sad that we have a whole industry devoted to telling us how celebrities are just like us.  By so doing, they actually perpetuate the public myth.

Now this is scary.  Your brain punishes you for thinking differently!

A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the “oops area” becomes extra active, while the “reward area” slows down, making us think we are too different.

“We show that a deviation from the group opinion is regarded by the brain as a punishment,” said Vasily Klucharev, postdoctoral fellow at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study.

Hmmm…I wonder if they could make a drug to reward the innovation part.  Maybe those creative and innovator types don’t have this happen.  Or maybe it’s caused by society and then the body gets trained, kinda like dogs.  Too bad Foucault’s dead. Love to hear what he’d say!

Read more at CNN.com>>