Imprisoned!
We jail ourselves.
We do not need to remain imprisoned even though many of us find ourselves stuck, jailed, captive to some thing or another. Often we find ourselves feeling shamed and blame the external world for jailing and nailing us to our own inner jailers.
Each of us find ourselves taken hostage not by others but by our own mind. This prison is an ancient confinement created by our mental formations. In this oh so very modern world of wireless communication, call it conditioning.
YEP!
We all suffer from our conditioning! Our ancient, twisted conditions built upon the external world of society and culture.
Another word for conditioning is training. We need to study our conditioning aka training by studying our mental thoughts and all the mental forms in our own mind. NOT OTHERS!!!
Babies, little children, teenagers blame others. Adults, at least adults that have developed some capacity to reflect on their own mind without attachment, are able to cut the chains of their conditioning.
It is NOT easy. BUT…cutting chains is essential for awakening and awareness. Once we are able to cut the chains we experience the freedom from karma (actions) and the afflictions that accompany our actions. This includes our past actions, our future actions and our present actions.
NOTHING is left out.
If we want to be free, we must do the work to free ourselves.
A teacher is helpful…and…many of us may believe and wish and hope that there is a teacher out there that will get us out of our hellish imprisonment. Something along the lines of a mother bird pecking at the shell of her eggs.
NOT possible!
Freedom does not come from the work of a teacher who may be willing to peck the egg from the outside. This external pecking will in fact kill the hatchling before it is able to break out of its shell.
We may believe that the teacher is helpful and to some extent this tendency is true. We, however, need to come to understand that NO ONE can free another person.
When we are seeking out a teacher, we need to find one who does not peck.
To believe that another person can free us from our conditioned & jailed self-interest and self-ego, is delusion.
We must learn and practice to check, peck and strike our own ego every day throughout the day very much like a hatchling breaking through the shell that keeps them trapped.
We need to be willing to study our traps of conditioning & training until we have discovered the impurities in our own mind. Finding the impurities is merely one of the first steps. We must be willing to purify our mind. Empty our mind from our ancient, twisted karma.
Our mind is the forerunner of all things. It is the unborn, undying, immutable quality of the mind that we need to find and take refuge in. We need to stop seeking from the external world of others and things.
Our mind is originally pure, but we with our conditioned states and training go after the delusion of objects in the external world. We need to let go of our attachments to the delusion of objects which is the path to awareness, awakening and freedom.
IT is not easy, IT is possible.
DON’T GIVE UP. KEEP GOING.
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