Last weekend, I had the honor of being invited, by Schanavia Bronson, an amazing woman, to speak at the Macon Juvenile Detention Center for girls. This was a fabulous experience. I met with seven young women, all 18 years old, and will be released within the year. I was there to share The Power of Awareness, through a workshop I designed, specifically for them, called, You are not your past - You are your possibilities. This group of young ladies and I committed to playing full-out, during the workshop, and we all grew through the experience.
It was through my personal experience, as I spent several years wandering in my dark night of the soul, which led me to awaken, where I discovered my life purpose is to guide seekers out of prison. Their mind-made prison, that is. During my journey, I discovered that I had become a prisoner in my own mind-made story. We are all prisoners inside invisible walls made of thoughts! Yet, we can only get out of our mind-made prison, and stay out, when we deliberately focus our attention on freedom. The dichotomy is that to get out of the mind-made prison is not as easy as getting out of a man-made prison. The reason is that the bars of the mind-made prison are invisible, and the key that unlocks the door is awareness. Awareness of how the mind-made prison was created in the first place!
It is my belief that our human journey is nothing more than the opportunity to experience the game of hide and seek. We do this through first hiding our magnificence behind our “I’m not good enough, not worthy, not lovable, or not _____ (fill in the blank)” enough story. Yet it is the very discomfort of this story that propels us to seek a way out. This seeking is commonly referred to as the spiritual journey. And much like going to a brick and mortar jail, it is the discomfort of being there, that fuels our desire to get out.
Being at the Macon Juvenile Detention Center gave me the opportunity to experience, not only the physical prison we create, but it was a perfect metaphor for the mental prison we all live in, that is, until we wake up. You see, every one of these girls is a magnificent being. They, like you and me, have created a story of who they are based on the information they received from their environment. Because of their circumstances these girls learned to be tough, and protect themselves, the only way they knew how -- through physical violence, which is against the law. So their external world became a reflection of their internal world. They became prisoners mentally and physically.
Most of us don’t end up in a physical prison, but every one of us lives in some form of a mental prison. Our mind is constantly in protection mode. We don’t want the outside world to hurt us, so we compartmentalize our feelings and only allow certain aspects of ourselves outside of our emotional walls. We cut people out of our lives if we feel threatened by them. We go to great lengths to stay away from anyone who doesn’t validate us, or who cause us to feel bad. We live within the walls of an invisible mental prison, and when life causes any disturbance to our “story” we batten down the hatch and do whatever it takes to defend our story. Since killing someone, in our mind, or discriminating against them, in our mind, or judging them, in our mind or even in public, is not against the law, we don’t go to a physical jail, but we are imprisoned, nonetheless, by these thoughts. Think about it, we separate from others and from many aspects of life, because we believe invisible thoughts that scream in our head “watch out!” These fear based thoughts are our mental barbwire.
The seven young ladies I met with were able to see that within them lives two stories: the story “I am bad” and deserve to be in prison, as well as the story that “I am a magnificent manifestation of Source/God/Life” and therefore, deserve freedom. And just like you and me, they have a choice, to either continue to live in the “I am bad” story, or, they can dig deep within their mind in order to break free. And the only way to freedom is through knowing the truth of who we are. The truth that sets us free, from our mind-made prison, is remembering that we are already good. We are already worthy. We are already magnificent!
If you are at a place in your journey, where you are ready to break free from your mind-made story, please consider attending The Power of Awareness workshop I’m facilitating September 10 -12, 2010, at the Sacred Embodiment Center in Asheville, NC. The freedom I’m talking about is priceless and is only available to those who seek within!