A mental prison can be as bad as a physical prison. When you are trapped in a mental prison, the crippling idea or feeling robs you of all joy and freedom. You can see and feel little else. Your mind becomes a small room without light. You turn the wild mystery of your own mind into a shabby, negative little room; the windows are blocked, and there is no door. The mental prison is devastatingly lonely. It is a sorrowful place, because ultimately it is you who locks yourself up within a demented idea or feeling.
It is a helpless place to be trapped; all outside life lessens. There is a distance between you and everything else. It is difficult for anyone to reach you. You come to believe that the shape of the prison is the shape of reality. It is so difficult to leave the mental prison precisely because you cannot see beyond your pain. In other words, you are completely blind to the fact that it is you who construct it and decide to stay locked in there; this punishment is mainly self-punishment. Inevitably, you tend to blame others and hold them responsible for whatever hurt put you away. It is only when you become aware of your own longing to be free that you realize how you let what happened to you take away your power and freedom. You were so hurt that you were no longer able to distinguish your life from the hurt. It took you over completely. You acted in complicity with the hurt and turned against yourself.
It is astounding how we take on the violence that is directed towards us. When someone attacks you, it is practically certain that internally you will attack yourself. It would be great to have enough confidence in your self, and enough freedom and inner poise, that when hostility comes towards you, you could let it pass right over your shoulder. Someone assaults you verbally, points out your weaknesses and failures, testifies to the fact that the very sight of you is enough to make him want to reincarnate on the spot, and expresses the sincerest compassion with those who have to endure your blighted presence on a more frequent basis. Wouldn’t it be lovely on such an occasion to be able to look that person in the eye and say from your heart, “I am sorry that it disturbs you so much, but you know, right now I am just feeling so good. I am sorry that you are feeling that miserable. Can I get you a cup of coffee or anything?” What usually happens is you are hurt and begin to use the ammunition that has been just delivered against yourself. Such confrontation can burrow into you for weeks afterwards.
No one outside can open the door to release you from inner prison. The key is actually on the inside. It takes a long time to find the door and turn the key to come out onto the pastures where the wildflowers grow and the air is fresh and full. We are children of Nature. Thoughts should stir like the wind through the rich spring branches, and lift you, opening you towards new horizons, and not confine you to the stale, dead air of shabby inner rooms. The New Testament tells how people often begged Jesus to cure them. Sometimes these were people who had lived inside the prison of illness for years. In his gentle yet incisive way, he often turned the question inwards and asked, “Do you want to be healed?” This is a great question to ask yourself when you notice that the changes you long for are not happening. Maybe you do not want to be free. Something in the inner confinement confirms something in you which you are not yet ready to let go. The mind does not need to endure any internal police or prison guards holding you confined. You can be as free as your longing desires.
It is awful to feel guilty. Your mind and Spirit become haunted. You keep on returning to some action or event in the past. You acted dishonourably in some way. Perhaps it was some scalpel of a sentence that cut into someone’s life or severed a friendship. Or something you did to someone that was wrong and has shadowed that person’s life ever since. Perhaps it was something you did in ignorance or blindness; you only glimpsed the consequences later, but by then it was too late. You can also carry a burden of guilt not because of an action, but because of your non-action at a crucial juncture. If you had had the vision or courage to say or do something, then someone else might have been spared great pain. Once you began to see what your failure to act actually allowed, you feel guilty and ashamed.
