For the majority of my life I lived in fear, yet I didn’t realize it. When I looked at my life from my external conditioning, I had everything: a great wife, healthy kids, a lot of money, exciting toys and a powerful prestigious career. Then I lost the excess – my money, my toys, my career and my notion of freedom. I ended up serving six months in prison for fraud. When my ego-based construction of reality crumbled, the only place left to go was inward, so my soul searching began. My search is for freedom. Not physical freedom, but true inner freedom not subject to external measure – a clear mind, an open heart and a fearless soul. It’s ironic that I had to be physically imprisoned to begin to release myself from the inner prison. But invariably, the greatest motivation for positive change is pain.
What I learned through my experience, is that most people live in their own version of an inner prison. It’s part of the game of life, a great Universal game of hide and seek. And at some point, the seeking for inner freedom begins for us all, initiated by some form of pain, leading to an objective look at our life circumstances, behaviors and attitudes. Underneath behaviors and attitudes are always beliefs. And among those beliefs are always self-limiting beliefs, meanings we create about ourselves and the world early in life that collapse possibility, rob us of our personal power and freedom, and often have us behaving in ways that aren’t aligned with our true nature. “I am not good enough”, “I’m all alone”, “I’m not safe” – these become our inner prison, holding us captive from the freedom of possibility.
Yet here’s the tricky part: these beliefs aren’t always conscious. They can be hidden deep in our operating systems, like a virus in a piece of software, that attracts unwanted life events without our even realizing it. And neurologically, because our brain is wired up and conditioned over many years with these unconscious beliefs and the feelings they create, we live in repetition of the same patterns. Growth is stunted. Happiness withers. That is the inner prison – with bars made of self limiting beliefs and fear. And the need to cultivate the inner wisdom to achieve liberation is essential.
Continues with Part 2: Life Lessons in Transmuting Suffering Into Liberation