The Prison of Belief

How many times in the past have you discarded someone in your life due to believing them to be wrongful or even harmful to you and others. Maybe they unintentionally hurt your feelings by something they said. Or they intentionally tried to cause you grief, despair or sadness. And through not fully knowing the details of the circumstances, you cut them from your life. Or maybe you fully understood the situation, but instead you were selfish to them. Or wanted vengeance on them. Or were unwilling or incapable of being understanding, and so you still cast them out. I think this is something that we have all done at one point in our lives. And to the contrary, I'd say that many of us still do it on a regular basis.

We hold in our minds a great many beliefs of what is right and wrong. Good and bad. How people should or shouldn't be. And we act on these beliefs throughout everyday of our lives. Punishing those that we think deserve it. Through neglecting them, insulting them, physically attacking them or just simply ignoring them until they disappear from all areas of our lives. And it's not that we truly don't care about them somewhere deep down inside. Or that we don't feel remorse for our actions towards them. But that our beliefs have blocked out our ability to establish a connection to that feeling of unconditional love, care and compassion.

And it's not just within friendships and relationships that we hold our beliefs in such high esteem either. We can also feel this hatred towards things and places as well. For instance, maybe you experienced a difficult time while living aboard in a foreign country. The terrain, weather or even the culture itself felt extremely uninviting to you. Maybe because you couldn't speak the language. Or because you couldn't get used to the taste of the local cuisine. And, eventually you developed a negative point of view. That later festered into a full blown belief that this foreign land was a terrible place to live. Rather than just equating with the truth, and acknowledging that it had only been a terrible experience for you at the time. And nothing more. You cut off the possibility of ever going back there again. 

As we carry on through life discarding everyone and everything that poses a threat to our survival or comfortability. Rather it be people that genuinely care about us. Places we have visited or lived. Or things we own or have previously owned. We only cut ourselves off from the various aspects of life that may otherwise prove to be greatly useful, helpful or even healing to us one day. Ultimately, we find ourselves living in a prison walled by our beliefs. We had assumed that life would become more free by cutting away so many people and so many things. But actually, we only cut away ourselves from our own lives.