The Prison

Sometimes I fell locked in a prison, a cage that I created for my ownself limiting my being into a contained space of self-exigence and self-judgement.

It feels like there's a judge watching every step I take to guarantee that it will be perfectly right, to guarantee that I'll be accepted and recognized, to guarantee that I will be loved... and any step away from what the judge thinks is perfect, it is sentenced and judged in a way that brings me down.

Its amazing how that happens, I know better, but the unconscious patterns plays tricks on me, bringing up childhood wounds and transforming it into a cycle of repeting the patterns to reafirm it.

It seems to me that according to our experiences, pathways are created in our brains and we tend to follow this known paths again and again, instead of starting new ones. And as much as we use them, it deepens and become harder and harder not to follow it.

So how do we break those patterns that we don't want anymore? That has been my question for a long time.

What I've been noticing is that besides the judge, there is another 'caracter' watching over me, is a sutil one that I call higher self. It is kind to me and always look in a compasionate way into what I am doing, because it knows it is only a small part of me.

I would say they are two different sides, one is my ego, that had incorporated cultural, social and family patterns; the other is my spirit that understands who I truly am and knows the experiences I'll need to have in order to evolve. The first one hurts me a lot, yet the second one gives me a bigger understanding of myself. The duality of the physical world.

I have realized that, what can take me out of this cycle is to stop looking for answers outside of myself, to stop comparing myself with standards that I don't even know where it come from. And instead, start focusing on accepting myself the way I am, imperfect as anyone else, on loving myself instead of seeking for love and recognition outside.

I know all of that by heart, but sometimes I can't do it, because the ego plays tricks on me. Isn't that the 'game of life'? Fighting the imperfection within us to overcome it and evolve?

I've understood in practice what really means what I've known in theory for a long time: In order to love others and to evolve we have to first be able to love and acept ourselves, since by far, we have been the worst judges for our own selves.

Many times I see that people are not able to deal with that inner imperfection and they end up projecting that imperfection outside onto other people, places or situations. They'll find enemies, feel threatened by the differences, judge right and wrong, judge people, end up going to wars, killing each other etc.

That's the story of humany all over the world, that's the story of each one of us. What does it take for us to see, deal and accept our shadows as much as our light, as two sides of one self ?

in the question,

Narjara Thamiz