The Prisons of the Mind

Hi to everybody

When we look at our lives, past to the present, and then into our future; all the hardships, all our struggles, all the pain we have gone through, our mundane routines of getting up going to work, getting home to sit in front of a TV, going to bed just to do it all over again, day in and day out then the question arises;

What is the difference then between a prison and your life?

The only difference is that people in prison don’t want to be in prison. We on the other hand want to be living our lives. That is when we start to realize how many prisons are in our world. Any place you don’t want to be is a prison for you. If you are in a marriage or relationship that you don’t want to be in, any work that you hate or if you are in a body that is sick and full of pain that is your prison. If you are around people that you don’t want to be around that is a prison for you. If you are addicted to something, then that will be your prison.  

So how do we escape from this prisons we are in. We don’t need to get rid of our partner or quit our jobs. We don’t need to leave the party and rather go home. All we need to do is to want to be there. As soon as we want to be in the relationship or job or at the party, as soon as you can change your attitude from, I don’t want to be here, to that of I want to be here, you escape the prison.

There are 4 well known prisons of the mind we could find ourselves to be in.

•         The prison of Anger.
•     The prison of Fear.
•         The prison of Pain and Sadness.
•         The prison of Guilt.

Just as in a prison there are also different cells in these prisons.

In the prison of Anger there are Migraines, Peptic Ulcers, Back Pain, Hyper Tension and Obesity.

The prison of fear consists of Phobias and Anxiety.

The prison of Pain and Sadness consists of Asthma, Depression, Addiction and excessive smoking.

In the prison of Guilt are cells like Impotency, Frigidity, Skin Decease, Obesity and Suicide.

So if we have these prisons there are obviously crimes that are committed, there must be a sentence and then also we need prisoners.

The crimes committed.

·        I am here.

·        I am a boy/girl.

·        I am angry.

·        I am afraid.

·        I hurt.

·        I love.

·        I am curious.

The sentence that is given.

·        You must never feel angry

·        You are not lovable – you are bad

·        You must not succeed

·        You must be afraid

·        You must not love – not even yourself

·        You must not think.

The Prisoners

·        Psychosomatic disorders

·        Decease of addiction

·        Emotional disorders.

The most amazing aspect of this model is that these prisons do not have guards or bars or doors. You can walk out whenever you feel like it, but we choose to stay in these prisons our entire lives.

The only way to get out of these prisons is to go back to the crime scene, to understand where/who passed the sentence. Only then can we walk out of our prison.

Lesson number one:

·        Never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you. How many predictions have been thrown at you your whole life? If you believe every prediction that is thrown at you, you will wither and die. You will physically or your spirit will die as you walk around like a carcass, a corpse, walking around just following the masses. You will be given a lot of titles in your life, you will be told so many things. You must only listen to that that empowers you. I do have a belief that served me well in my life and that is that everyone is rooting for me to win, even those that doesn’t know it. I am not here to tell you that I had adversity in my life and therefor I know what you are going through. I do not have a clue. I did not grow up in your neighborhood, I did not have your set of parents nor do I live in your body. I did not have the events that you had to go through. I am only an expert in one thing and that is how to be me. 

The second lesson is that you are not your condition. That is why I am teaching people in addiction that they are not addicts. You must rise above this condition. The only addiction is the refusal to adapt and to stay in that prison of the mind, to act like addicts. You have to adapt to any environment you are in, even if it is addiction. You must stop pitying yourself. The biggest addiction is self-pity. You are not your condition. How does adaption looks like? I think it looks like celebration. If you are around people that celebrate life you want to be around them, you want to learn from them, you want to do business with them. If you want to get out of that prison you need to change your attitude, you must believe in yourself you must start trusting yourself that you can bring value to the human race. If I believe I am an addict I will wither up, I will be shy, I will be insecure, I will be afraid, I will act as if I need your help and the rest of humanity will be okay with that. I choose something else. I choose to be strong; I choose to be a leader. I know why I was put on earth. I have been put on earth to rid humanity from their insecurities. When a human being is insecure they do stupid stuff. When we feel that we are not enough we chase external validation to tell us that we are enough. You are enough. I made a pledge as a therapist to love all people, it doesn’t matter what they did wrong. I found that it doesn’t matter what people did, all people just want to be loved. They don’t want to only be loved by their moms or dads or partners, they want to be able to love themselves.

Lesson three.

Stop bullying yourself. You cannot pity yourself, stop believing the predictions other people lay on you. I am not good enough, I am a wash out an addict I am no good for society. Stop bullying yourself.

Last lesson.

The real prison is not surrounded by barbed wire, fences and bars. It is in your mind. It doesn’t matter if you are in a real prison or live in a mansion. I know of people that lives in mansions but they are still in prison, the prison of their own mind. We all got it. We all have a mind that chatters, on and on, never stopping.

Do you know where your salvation is? It is when you drop out of that chattering mind of yours into your heart, into your soul. There where love comes from. When you love yourself, when you stop believing predictions, when you stop bullying yourself, when you stop pitying yourself, when you learn to master your emotions then and only then you are free. 

Thank you for reading this post. 

Feel free to leave a comment. It is appreciated.

Letting go of Fear

Hi to everybody.

When I was a little boy my friends dad bought him a bicycle. It was a brand new Raleigh bike with straight handles and a three speed gear setup.

I could not ride bike at that time, so I asked him if he could teach me. That same afternoon, after school, we were standing next to the pavement with Chris holding the bike. Me, one leg over the crossbar and my foot on the pedal, nervous, scared and very excited, all at the same time. Chris then pushed the bike without warning and shouted that I should pedal.

Needless to say, I traveled  about ten yards before I lost my balance and crashed, with my friends brand new bike. We tried another three times that afternoon, to no avail. By now I was so scared, holding the handles that my knuckles showed white. I was so rigid and stiff out of fear that it was impossible to hold my balance.

The next day after school, Chris told me something that I would never forget in my life. He said to me to relax. "Just relax, then you will be able to hold your balance" he said. It worked and I could ride the bicycle.

We are so fearful of what might happen to us, that we are holding the handles to tight. That is why we are suffering from all kinds of sickness, related to stress and anxiety.

We fear mainly two things in life. We fear death. We fear the future.

 

Fear is a huge problem in our modern world, and instead of letting go of fear we are creating fear. We are looking at horror movies, vampire movies, scary movies; we are listening to people who find it sadistically pleasurable to tell us the most horrific stories. The world is going to end on exactly that date and hour. That is their prophecy, and amazingly thousands of people actually believe them. You should not eat this or that, they say, because it causes cancer. 

Television is a good example of how big industry motivates us in buying their products. The biggest motivator is fear. Think about the insurance industry. They scare us into buying their products, just in case something goes wrong. Have you seen how high the crime rate is they say. Just be careful that you do not become a victim, without our products. And you pay and pay. The most amazing scary stories  gets around, from death, germs or losing your belongings. We are victims of fear. 

Winnie the Pooh and Piglet walked home one Saturday afternoon, after visiting Rabbit.

 On their way home a vicious thunderstorm broke out. It was a terrible storm. Thunder, lightning and a howling wind. Trees was uprooted or hit by lightning, and little Piglet was scared, very scared. He shouted on the top of his lungs, "What if a tree falls on us?" For a moment Winnie hesitated, because Winnie was also scared. But then sanity prevailed. Winnie stopped and waited for Piglet to catch up. "And what if a tree doesn't fall on us?"he asked Piglet. That calmed Piglet down and they reached their home safely.
                                                      

What will happen if… followed by something negative, something terrible that might happen to us in the future? There is a possibility but in most cases very unlikely. The anecdote for fear is, what will happen …followed by something positive. Negative thoughts have a tendency to create a negative outcome, and a positive thought creates a positive outcome. The lack of fear creates positive outcomes.

I understand when people go into a relationship with fear. Fear that their partner might cheat on them, fear that their partner might leave them, fear that their partner might abuse them. Whenever such a person is so afraid, it creates such a terrible lack of trust. When there is a lack of trust there cannot be a good relationship. Many of us are in relationships with a lack of trust, and a lack of trust means there is a lot of fear. So because there is a lack of trust, because of the fear we cause the relationship to crash. That is the negative loop we are into. What we fear will most probably happen. This fear stops us from enjoying life. Nobody wants to be in a relationship with a fearful person. There are so many rules that need to be obeyed, just because of our fears. When we are fearful we are tense, and when we are tense we fall off our bicycles. We need to learn to relax. Fear causes all kind of sickness.

This question always comes to my mind. Why do we have to fear God? That is the kind of fear we are taught from childhood, from when we are small. God loves us but we must fear God. Why is that? We are taught to love our partners but we must also fear them. 

If there is no fear that means you can relax, and when we relax you can start enjoying life. That is why you are on earth. Our biggest fear is fear itself.

So the best way of overcoming fear is to have a positive attitude. We must stop falling into the trap of having all this contingency plans. If this plan doesn’t work, at least I still have plan b or c.

Stop been so controlling. It is the control freaks that cause us so much fear. They want us to fit in with their plans and if we don’t we become fearful of what they might do. That comes from very painful experiences they had in their past, when they suffered a lot. Because they suffered a lot they think that the only way to protect themselves is to control more. So they are such fearful people, they always plan, figuring something out. Just in case they might get hurt again. They go into relationships with all their plans ready, they go to work with plans, and they even have plans for their children.

People don’t need to be like that, they create problems not only for themselves but for the people around them as well.

We do not know what might happen in the future. Why then, do we ask people to promise us that they will do something correct. We don’t know what will happen next. Why can’t we just adapt to life as it unfolds around us.

I have learned that the only way to overcome fear is to be kind. Just be kind at your job interview, or have to give a speech or whatever. Be kind to your children, even if they do something that doesn’t fit into your plans. Not only to be kind, but also try to put some fun into whatever you are fearful to do. 

Lastly stop all this worrying. Worrying comes from fear.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Don't be scared to leave a comment. It would be highly appreciated. 

A story about Cathy

Hi to all my friends

I found this letter which I would like to share with you.
It was written by a bouncer and because of the length of this profound letter to all parents, I would rather prefer to write a post about this next time.

The letter is called "Cathy" Enjoy.

 I had worked at various night clubs in Durban and surrounds since 1993. When I joined the Police the “work” was frowned on so I dropped it off, only working the odd job when money was tight. Well, let’s say money is always tight.

One of the main reason I was often hired to “work the door” was not just the size and intimidation factor, other guys had plenty of that, I tended to be mature and calm and knew when to draw the discipline line without resorting to injury. I saw and learned a lot about human beings in those years. My “bullshit” detector became highly tuned. I learned a lot about the proliferation of drugs and alcohol abuse, and I learned a lot about parenting.

The main thing I learned is that many parents talk big about how much they care about their little china cups and more often than not, when their priceless Ming vase messes up, it is everyone else’s fault except mommy, daddy or the work of art’s.

Many, many times I became a surrogate father to a goofed up teen lying in a gutter. A couple times I was even the “next of kin” to an unknown girl taken away in an ambulance who literally drank herself into a coma. (They will never know my name. Perhaps if they did, they might have got hold of me via the hospital documents and said thank you.) And here I come to the parents.

See, little Lisa certainly does not have a drinking problem. Someone MUST have spiked her drink. Now yes, I do know about Rohypnol and other drugs and the effects they have. But doing a little on site investigation helps me draw some more sensible answers. Little Lisa’s vomit is pure liquid meaning she has not eaten anything solid for at least 12 hours. Scratching around for some identity, I was almost guaranteed to find “Thins” in her handbag. (Back when they could be bought.) So our innocent darling has had no food, been fed nothing but ephedrine all day, arrived in time for the “happy hour” and collapsed after a mixture of red wine, tequila and a host of various shooters.

So we fly forward a decade to the photo posted above. I was asked a favour to help chaperone an end-of-year under 18 party. 99% of the reason myself and some other adults were there was to ensure that alcohol was not consumed. This, we attempted to achieve mainly by searching the bags of kids coming in. I was amazed mommies dropped off Pete and Suzie (both aged 15) at an under 18 party, but each of them is carrying a backpack weighing 20 kg and has a crust of frozen condensation on the outside. “It’s my makeup bag,” simpered one kiddie with big blue eyes and an innocent smile.

Next operation was to keep tabs on liquor “coming over the fence”. With a colleague we spent four hours walking the dark corners, boundaries and back doors, confiscating everything from beer, cider, vodka, and a good selection of other consumables. The more we took away, the more the partiers were on the phone calling in more drops in ever more creative methods. Kids 14-16 years old were determined to drink. And seemingly, the adults dropping them off either didn’t check or didn’t give a hoot. You should see the looks when we found a wire-thin 15 year old straining under the weight of two cases of Hunters cider coming through a hedge. The load was bigger than him.

Humour aside we were simply maintaining order ensuring no harm came to innocents. One of the chief rules of protection is: be invisible until you need to be visible. We weren’t there to spoil the fun. Then we came across our dear Cathy (Name changed) pictured above.

Cathy’s buddies scattered like stabbed rats when we came up to them, except for one faithful young blonde who appeared sincerely concerned for her friend. We picked up Cathy and took her to a lit area to asses her. She was puking properly and started weeping her sorrows. Her friend admitted Cathy had downed the better part of a bottle of Russian Bear. We established she was FOURTEEN years old and managed to find a phone number and get a parent to come get her.

Mommy arrived. And now I start quoting:

“Oh, ja. I gave her the Vodka. Sometimes she does drink too much but…..”

That was about the time I started having images involving fish hooks, pliers and a blowtorch.

This is your modern parent, dear readers. Cathy was ONE example of dozens every weekend in this suburb and others around the country. A hell of a lot of modern “parenting” involves dropping the “Cathy’s” of the world off somewhere and forgetting about them for a while.

Tell me, who would mommy have blamed if Cathy had ended up unconscious in some dirty corner with her jeans around her knees?

Who would mommy have blamed if Cathy was listed as missing and found a day later in a government hospital with God knows what disease swimming through her veins?

Who would mommy have blamed if we found Cathy a few minutes too late and she had drowned silently on her own vomit?

People better start waking up. This is not a joke. But my intuition is that I will receive a lot of “not my child” and “I know exactly where my daughter goes” but I don’t know if all the “Cathy’s” mommies will let the message sink in.

I feel sorry for Cathy. In her 14 years she has not had the time to gain enough life experience. Her only reference for morals and ethics is letting her down. I wonder how many nights like that one she has already seen. And how many more until something really goes wrong.

There are PLENTY of Cathy’s out there. I’ve seen them for decades. I still see them today staggering around shopping malls with jeans shorts pulled so high a gynecological exam is possible at 10 meters. And I see them giggling uncontrollably, reeking of liquor, on the passenger seat next to some 18 year old boy who just learned to drive.

Stop blaming the world, the government, the police and society as a whole. Look at yourself and see what example YOU set for YOUR child. And then you might also know how your child is going to turn out too.

This was posted by a bouncer in 2014 and I feel every parent today needs to read this.