Soul in a Box
One of the saddest things I saw in a Bird Park in Asia a couple of decades ago was an eagle with its wing feathers clipped. It was also chained to an iron stake in the ground.
It had all the potential to soar in the heavens but was constrained by humans of its natural abilities.
Perhaps it affected me so profoundly because I accepted that I, too, was destined to soar with heart-inspired love, but, like that magnificent bird, I was restricted by the force of my own thoughts.
Something in the way I had been socialized inhibited my emotional expression and, as a tragic consequence, I lived out of my head. Though I didn’t realize it, I had allowed my love muscle to atrophy.
Seeing that eagle forced into a submission he did not want — or deserve — hit me hard.
My simple truth was this: I did not know if I even had that capacity to fully enter the world of consciousness. How could I soar with heart-inspired love and feel the oneness of all when my emotional wings had been clipped and I was staked to the ground?
The signs that I kept my soul in a box (similar to the chained eagle) were,
- I had to unlearn the bad habits of thought based knowing. I figured that I could crack the God code with my mind (All I needed was a good theology)
- I rejected non-conceptual direct ways of knowing Presence as ‘woo woo’ stuff (those Primal Scream types or male bonding retreats where its all emotion)
- I got hooked on ego-fixes where my focus was on my performance; when will I learn to balance doing with being?
- I was trapped in dualism in my personal religion. Here I divided the world into them and us, sinners and saints, heaven and hell, and god up there and us down here
- I lived in a future “I can fix it” attitude and neglected to remain in the present
What was the answer? How was I sprung free from the trap?
That’s my next blog