There is a vast prison at the heart of every nation. With walls that reach from heaven to heaven. That span the entire horizon. As far as the mind can see. Precisely that far. Made of the ground they rise from. As dense and opaque as their makers. Exactly that dense and that opaque.
Forced into right angles they border boxes that contain and constrain and render their inhabitants insane. No doors and no locks can be found, yet the dimly lit openings are fearsome enough to paralyse. For the walls are too high to scale and the gravity of belief is total. Endless in their multitude they empty into one another with a familiarity that seems like home. Such that those that live therein don’t know that they are inside at all. This is the power of the prison. The power of illusion.
The-Prison-Itself – Gavin-Birchall
Born inside these walls, but not of the walls, they are shown how to see their prison. Shown by those who bore them. By those who live alongside. How to notice the strobing, textured shadows around them. How to feel the weight of their own incarceration. Pressing down on them from all around. So that they become shadow dwellers, border keepers and sovereign inmates.
They are not at fault, those that show newborns their way. They were shown when they were new to life. Each child shown, grows to show their own children. As the shared truth of the prison becomes hardened it is felt in every cell. Held between every person and those around them. In full faith they hold fast to the truth of their illusion and gift their walls to each other with sincere generosity.
Yet, while the walls and their boxes continue eternally in all directions, they are open to the sky. Those inside enter their lives already exposed to the infinite nature of all that is. No roof can rest above the knowing that lingers within. Often, as the sky flickers between pristine, too-true blue and sparkling, diamond-dusted black, those within the walls dare to glimpse. Lifting eyes and hope towards what, in this case, seems to be above.
Even within their chosen limits, a birthright knowing is stirred and they feel, for a moment, their place in the sky. But the pull of their walls, their ever present, always-on walls, the walls they know like the back of their hearts and the depths of their minds, returns. Their view recedes and shrinks to what they believe is in front of them and they, again, deny the sky.
Until, perhaps, one day they do not. A day when a glimpse turns to a gaze and lingers longer than before. When the sky reaches down and touches them, emptying them of themselves and they become the sky and all else besides. In this moment their sight is changed. In awe and shock they observe the world around them. The unbound, bright-lit, super-sheer world that is now so obvious and so immediate. Not a wall can they see. Not a shadow troubles the light.
Stepping beyond what was once an impossible edge they leave what they believed to be their prison. Moving into that which has always been free. Always been available. With no force and no difficulty they are beyond what no force could penetrate and no difficulty could master.
With only sky and ground and knowing they turn to look at what had once held them. They see no prison, only prisoners, moving as if walls tightly enclosed them. Prisoners, alone, as far as they can see. Each in their own private isolation.
The-Prison-Escaped – Gavin-Birchall
They call out ‘Come. Come. You only have to see that there are no walls and you will be free’. But the prisoners walls are tall. They cannot see or hear beyond them. No one can free them but themselves.
Turning away and onwards they continue. They are in the most dangerous moment of their liberation. Without the constraints that had formed their world, a new reality emerges. Boundless, formless, changeless, nameless, unborn and undying. There they reside, observing those who remain shuffling between imagined walls, encountering only themselves again and again.
As the moment of their emancipation lengthens and a new sense making precipitates, they do not notice foundations being laid in the ground. Their knowing, as uncommon as it is, becomes manifest and itself becomes material. New walls rise that look like freedom. Precisely like freedom. Made of the truth that they arise from. As dense and as opaque as their maker. Exactly that dense and opaque.
The-Prison-Of-Self – Gavin-Birchall
Danger becomes material and they are again within a prison. A new, relative freedom that has become solid and far more beguiling than the walls that held them first. Fascinated with their own liberation they enter into it as a destination and surrender to new constraints. Constraints they cannot recognise and that mimic liberty so that they do not see they are inside at all. This is the power of the prison. The power of illusion.
The first prison has walls that are visible but imagined. The prisons thereafter have walls that are invisible and unimagined. Those that are able to see their walls and step beyond, in each moment, will be free of themselves and unbindable.