A house can become a little self-enclosed world. Sheltered there, we learn to forget the wild, magnificent universe in which we live. When we domesticate our minds and hearts, we reduce our lives. We disinherit ourselves as children of the universe. Almost without knowing it, we slip inside ready-made roles and routines which then set the frames of our possibilities and permissions. Our longing becomes streamlined. We acquire sets of convictions in relation to politics, religion, and work. We parrot these back and forth at each other, as if they were absolute insights. Yet for the most part these frames of belief function as self-constructed barriers, fragile clichés pulled around our lives to keep out the mystery. The game of society helps us to forget the unknown and subversive presence of the human person. The control and ordering of society is amazing: we comply so totally with its unwritten rules. In a city at morning, you see the lines of traffic and the rows of faces all on their way to work. We show up. We behave ourselves. We obey fashion and taste. Meanwhile, almost unknown to ourselves, we are standing on wild earth at a crossroads in time where anything can come towards us. Yet we behave as if we carry the world and were the executives of a great plan. Everywhere around us mystery never sleeps. The same deep nature is within us. Each person is an incredibly sophisticated, subtle, and open-ended work of art. We live at the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless nature.
On the outside a person may seem contented and free, but the inner landscape may be a secret prison. Why do so many of us reduce and domesticate our one journey through this universe? Why do we long for the invisible walls to keep us in and keep mystery out? We have a real fear of freedom. In general, everyone is apparently in favour of freedom. We fight for it and we praise it. In the practice of our lives, however, we usually keep back from freedom. We find it awkward and disturbing. Freedom challenges us to awaken and realize all the possibilities that sleep in the clay of our hearts. Dostoyevsky’s legend of the Grand Inquisitor in
In the inner landscape of the soul is a nourishing and melodious voice of freedom always calling you. It encourages you to enlarge your frames of belonging—not to settle for a false shelter that does not serve your potential. There is no cage for the soul. Each of us should travel inwards from the surface constraints and visit the wild places within us. There are no small rooms there. Each of us needs the nourishment and healing of these inner clearances. One of the most crippling prisons is the prison of reduced identity. The way we treat our own identity is often Procrustean. In Greek legend, Procrustes was a robber who stretched his victims until they fitted the length of his bed. Each one of us is inevitably involved in deciphering who we actually are. No other can answer that question for you. “Who are you?” is a surface question which has a vast, intricate rootage. Who are you behind your mask, your role? Who are you behind your words? Who are you when you are alone with yourself? In the middle of the night, when you awake, who are you then? When dawn rescues you from the rainforest of the night, who are you before you slip back safely beneath the mask and the name by which you are known during the day? It is one of the unnoticed achievements of daily life to keep the wild complexity of your real identity so well hidden that most people never suspect the worlds that collide in your heart. Friendship and love should be the safe regions where your unknown selves can come out to play. Instead of holding your friend or beloved limited within the neat cage of frightened identity, love should liberate both of you to celebrate the festival of complexity within you. We remain so hesitant and frightened to enjoy the beauty of our own divinity.
