We create our own prison bars through the restricting thoughts we have about life. Even animals do as well. When Elephants are very young they are roughhoused through play wrestling with their masters. Because they are very small when this is done, they remember this throughout their lives to such an extent that even when they are many times the size of their master they still fear them. What also happens is that they chain the Elephants to a pole when very young. The baby Elephant tries to free itself from this by pulling on the chain and sees that it can’t and after a while just gives up. It doesn’t enter the Elephant’s mind to give a tug on the chain when its older because its mind has already been preconditioned to this from its youth.
Adults are the same . We have certain experiences when we are young and this carries on in to our adulthood where we make decisions based on experiences that what happened so long ago. When I was very young, a dog jumped on me and from that trauma, I instinctively made that same connection to every dog I saw for a very long time in my life. Eventually I got over it, but it did take a long time.
Life hits most of us and then we become a prison of our thoughts because of this. But the good news is that we can free ourselves from our self created prison if we are just open minded enough to see it’s coming from. It’s just a thought that we have continued to hold on to from the past. Our thoughts create our experience. If you don’t like the program your watching what do you do? You just change the channel. So to with our thoughts. If I don’t like the current experience I’m having, I just realize that its a thought and it will pass like the clouds and then I’ll be open to having a new thought and hence, a new experience.
Enjoy the video below as it encapsulates the idea of what it means to be a prisoner who is chained down by limiting thoughts and how to free yourself from them.