Chapter Five – The Great Escape

‘You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.’

Franz Kafka

The invisible prison

‘I’m not sure who discovered water – but I’m quite sure it wasn’t a fish.’

Marshall McCluhan

There are essentially three ways to go for, get, and have what you want – the right way, the wrong way, and your way. The sooner you find your way (and the more you are willing to follow it), the easier your life gets and the more effortless your success.

What gets in the way of following your own path are all the rules you have collected over the years about how things are supposed to be. These inner rules, described in the work of therapist Albert Ellis as ‘Ought-ism’ and ‘Must-erbation’, quickly become the invisible bars of a mental prison – and like a real prison, for as long as you are stuck inside you will have no idea of what is really possible for your life.

A woman came up to me in a break at a seminar to argue with me about the idea that she might be stuck in an invisible prison of her own rules. ‘After all’ she told me ‘I can do anything I want to!’

Noticing that she was being extremely polite about arguing with me and was wearing a cross around her neck, I played a hunch and said ‘Great. Tell me to go to hell!’

She looked at me horrified. ‘I can’t do that’ she said, looking down at the floor and sounding suddenly like a scared little girl. ‘That would be wrong!’

Now you may be thinking that you would have no problem telling me to go to hell (or even further), but that’s not the point. ‘Hell’ was a wall in her particular prison. No doubt you have your own words that you do not like to hear spoken aloud and a long list of actions you couldn’t take without feeling as though you were going to be struck down, either by the person you are talking to or a lightning bolt from the skies.

The reason most of us don’t notice our own walls is that we stay so far away from the edges of our world view that we never feel the restriction. It’s a bit like a dog on a really long lead: if he never strays too far from home, he’ll never notice that he’s tied to a stake in the ground.

But if we are in a mental prison, who are our jailers?

This is the most invisible thing of all. You are not imprisoned by your past or by your parents or teachers or children or even society at large. You are kept in a prison of mental limitations by that most transparent of all jailers – the voice inside your head.

Eat ‘should’ and die

‘That voice inside your head is not the voice of God –
it just sounds like it thinks it is.’

Cheri Huber

Do you ever say things to yourself like:

• ‘You stupid, stupid girl – you should have known he was going to do that’.
• ‘Oh no, I can’t believe I’ve done it again. Why can’t I just be a little bit more careful?’
• ‘What are you, a man or a wimp? Stop whining, get back out there and do something about it!’

Although we generally begin our lives by following the flow of our own wanting and inclination, it is usually very clear from the reactions of those around us which of our wants are on the ‘approved’ list and which constitute possible expulsion from the family tribe and exile from the love and approval we have not yet learned it is possible to give to ourselves.

Consequently, we develop at a very early age an inner voice whose job is to keep us ‘safe’ by telling us not to do those things that the big people around us don’t approve of.

We internalize those outside voices of disapproval and began disapproving of ourselves first. It’s like a great big game of ‘I’ll get me before you can get me’, where the most important rule of all is ‘don’t let them catch you breaking the rules!’

Why are we so afraid of getting caught?

Well, the worst thing that could happen to you as a child is to be rejected by the particular big people you rely on to care for you, like your parents, teachers, uncles, aunts and even older siblings and friends. This is actually part of a biological survival mechanism. Throughout nature, any animal who is rejected by its caregivers and forced to live outside the safety and comfort of the family or pack is liable to die, either of starvation or by being eaten by predators.

Like our animal forebears, we are genetically programmed to do whatever it takes to ensure our survival. Therefore, over time you started paying very careful attention to which behaviours got you love, approval and deeper acceptance into your own personal ‘pack’ or ‘tribe’ and which ones led to anger, rejection and possible banishment.

Here’s an experiment which will let you know a little bit more about which rules are currently most active in your life…

From theory to practice…
The Way Things ‘Should’ Be

1. Write down the words ‘I should¼’ at the top of a sheet of paper.

2. Writing as fast as you can for two minutes, complete the sentence as many times as possible. (If you haven’t got at least 10, keep going until you do!)

3. Read through your list, replacing the words ‘I should’ with as many of the following as appeal:

a. I would¼, but¼

b. I could¼

c. I can¼

d. I want to¼

e. I would love to¼

4. Rewrite your list again, but only including those statements that you can meaningfully start with the words ‘I choose to¼’

Of course, you should stop reading and do this experiment right now, but if you don’t want to, do yourself a favour – don’t, and feel great about it!

How to escape from prison

Part one: The ‘right’ way

‘Human beings are the only creatures who shit in their own nests
to get themselves to move out.’

Bruce DiMarsico

By now, you are probably champing at the bit, wondering how on earth you are going to get out of this seemingly inescapable prison of our own creation. And it is important to know that as with most things, there are three ways: the right way; the wrong way; and your way.

The ‘right’ way, in the sense that it is the way most often suggested in the canon of personal and spiritual development teachings, is to continually push yourself up against the edges of your so-called ‘comfort zone’. ‘If you’re not uncomfortable’ the saying goes ‘you’re not growing’.

The origin of this idea is that our nervous systems behave like thermostats, which turn on the heating when the temperature drops below a certain point (let’s call it point A) and switch off when the temperature rises above a certain point (point B). The ‘comfort zone’ is the range of temperatures between A and B. So far, so good. But why is the comfort zone the enemy of success?

Because – so our personal development texts tell us – nothing happens there. The solution we are offered is to ‘turn up the heat’ on our problems until we feel sufficient pain that we are forced outside our comfort zones and things begin to happen. Now I know the argument is that every time we step outside our comfort zone, it expands, but if it’s such a horrible and limiting place to be, why do we want to make it bigger?

Personally, I think the comfort zone gets a bad rap. I like being comfortable. I have big, comfortable sofas and I love sitting on them while I listen to music or watch TV or play video games or snuggle with my wife and kids. I also like going for what I want. I love the challenge of putting myself on the line and finding out that, more often than not, I do have what it takes. The problem may not be that we are too comfortable. It may just be that we inaccurately equate comfort with complacency.

What do you imagine might happen if instead of either pushing yourself through discomfort or avoiding it altogether, you embraced and accepted it as part of the rich tapestry of a fulfilling life? What if you could become comfortable with discomfort and at ease with dis-ease?

If you are willing to try something new, spend some time today hanging out with your ‘negative’ emotions. You could do this by enjoying your anger or wallowing in some self-pity, but here’s my suggestion.

Put yourself (safely!) in an uncomfortable situation and instead of ‘adjusting the temperature’ by taking action, just be there. Don’t try and make it better, don’t try and ‘adjust your mind’, just be there, feeling uncomfortable. (You might want to remember to breathe while you’re there!)

If you’re willing to do this for a couple of minutes, you’ll begin to notice something wonderful: when it’s really OK to be uncomfortable, comfort happens. And while I know that may still be an uncomfortable thought, a little bit of comfort may be just what you need.

Part two: The ‘wrong’ way

The ‘wrong’ way to escape from your mental prison – in the sense that it simply doesn’t work – is to continue to try and come up with better and better rules. Yet left unexamined, your rule-making mechanism can continue operating for a lifetime.

Every time you have an extremely positive emotional experience, the mechanism makes a rule about it in the hope that you will be able to have it again. Any time you have an extremely negative emotional experience, the mechanism creates a rule in the hope that it will allow you to avoid it in the future.

Similarly, if you encounter someone who speaks with great certainty about a topic you are unsure about or seems to have something you do not have, you may seek to take on what they have said as one of your ‘new’ rules. The rule-making mechanism can even kick in if you see or hear something about ‘breaking the rules’ or ‘not having any more rules’. Instead of actually following the advice, you can turn that into a new rule instead!

The philosopher J. Krishnamurti put it like this:

‘As long as you are concerned with mere reform, with decorating the bars and walls of the prison, you are not creative. Reformation always needs further reform, it only brings more misery, more destruction. Whereas, the mind that understands this whole structure of acquisitiveness, of greed, of ambition and breaks away from it – such a mind is in constant revolution¼ its action produces waves and those waves will form a different civilization altogether’.

A less optimistic philosopher might describe it as ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’. But if we neither force ourselves through our discomforts nor rearrange the rules to make our stay in prison more comfortable, how can we escape?

Part three: ‘Your’ way

For obvious reasons, I can’t tell you what your way of discovering more freedom in your life will be. I can, however, point you towards something I will be encouraging you to do again and again throughout this book – take the easy way out!

The following story is based on an ancient Hindu parable. Traditionally, the story ends at the lake, but I think what happens after they live happily ever after is far more interesting, don’t you?

Wake Up and Roar

Once upon a time, there was a baby lion who was born into the world alone and afraid. A family of sheep found him in their home in the green grassy valley at the bottom of the mountains one day and because he was so beautiful and because they were so kind, they decided to raise him as one of their own. It was his sister, who had a highly developed sense of irony, who suggested they name him ‘Leo’.

So they taught Leo the baby lion how to walk as a sheep and talk as a sheep and taught him all the ways of sheep and they loved him with all of their hearts. They taught him to fear what all sheep fear and that whatever he did he must stay away from the mountains, for lions lived up there and no sheep who had ever gone up the mountain had returned.

Eventually, Leo became so good at acting like a sheep that even his own family forgot that he was really a lion. Sure, occasionally some of the other sheep teased him for his unusual size and his bushy haircut. But Leo did what he could to fit in and he made good friends and eventually he became a good, productive member of the sheep community.

The years passed uneventfully until one day an old lion from the mountains came down into the green, grassy valley in search of food. Leo was the first to sense his presence and as soon as he yelled ‘Lion!’ all the sheep began to run in panicked circles. In the midst of the chaos, the old lion noticed Leo.

‘Hey, you!’ roared the hungry lion.

‘M-m-me?’ whimpered Leo, terrified, but at the same time fascinated by this magnificent old creature.

‘What are you doing here with all these sheep?’ the old lion demanded.

‘They’re my family’ said Leo proudly.

At this, the old lion laughed. ‘Then who are you, young one?’

‘I’m Leo and I’m a sheep’ Leo bleated.

Suddenly, the old lion’s face turned fierce. ‘Come with me!’ he roared.

Leo didn’t want to go with the old lion, but he thought that by doing so, he might save his fellow sheep. So with a last look back at his herd, he followed the old lion off into the mountains.

They walked for many miles until at last, high up in the mountains, they came upon a beautiful crystal clear lake filled with smooth, blue water. The old lion beckoned for Leo to come to the edge of the lake. By this time, Leo was exhausted, not so much from the climb, which he found surprisingly easy, but from the constant fear that at any moment, the old lion would eat him. So with a final reluctant ‘Baaa’, Leo made his way to the edge of the lake and looked where the old lion’s paw was pointing.

To his amazement, he saw not a sheep, but the reflection of a strong young lion. In that moment, he knew who he really was and let out a mighty roar that shook the mountains all the way down to the green, grassy valley.

After the shock of discovering his true identity, Leo realized that he was hungry – really hungry. And grass just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Fortunately, Leo knew where he could get food and plenty of it.

But when he got back to the valley to where his old herd was still grazing, he stopped in shock. For what he saw was not a herd of sheep, but a pride of lions, each one grazing and bleating and acting for all the world like sheep. It was his own mother who saw him first, and though Leo could see that she herself was a beautiful lioness, she cowered in fear, not recognizing him and bleating ‘Lion!’ at the top of her lungs.

‘Mother!’ he roared, but the sound just made the sheep/lioness run even faster among the increasingly agitated herd.

Finally, Leo noticed that his sister was looking at him with a faint hint of recognition, and he knew what he must do. He put on his fiercest face and he roared at her ‘Come with me!’ And though she was afraid, she followed him on the long journey up to the clear blue lake in the mountains¼

The self-aware aristocrat

William Penn was a 17th-century British nobleman who accepted the land that became the state of Pennsylvania as payment for debts incurred to his family by Charles II.

At the age of 22, Penn became a Quaker and was immediately faced with a profound dilemma. As the scion of a proud aristocratic family, it was unheard of (not to mention potentially dangerous) to walk around without a sword. Yet if he was to adhere to the letter and spirit of Quaker teachings, carrying a sword was bordering on blasphemy.

Young Will took this quandary to a Quaker elder, who gave him the following advice:

‘Wear your sword with full awareness for as long as you can.
When you can’t wear it anymore, stop.’

The elder knew that by encouraging the young aristocrat to bring his full consciousness to the problem, it would resolve itself in the most natural way possible.

The same is true in our own lives. When we decide to ‘wake up’ and live consciously, bringing as much attention and awareness to each moment as we can, our daily dilemmas fade into the background while the full magnificence of life as it is fills the screen. When we can see that the ‘bars’ of our prison serve our favourite emotional cocktails, life becomes easy, effortless and fun. When we see that we are the ones keeping ourselves stuck, we can often let ourselves go – just like that.

A parable of table manners

One of the consistent issues in the early years of my marriage was a habit I (apparently) had of eating with my mouth open. While at times my wife seemed able to overlook this aberration in what I will assure you is an otherwise well-domesticated animal, at other times she drove herself to distraction watching the hypnotic up and down movement of my masticating jaws, enthralled by the changing colour and texture of the food in my mouth and openly disgusted by the entire process.

As for me, I not only denied having this habit (surely I would know if I was eating with my mouth open), but objected to the idea that on the off chance that just occasionally I didn’t completely close my mouth as I ate, what business was it of hers?

Even when I decided to make an effort to chew with my mouth closed, if only to keep the peace, the effort would quickly subside as other, seemingly more important things took its place.

Until one day¼

I chanced to sit at dinner opposite a woman who in every other way seemed the epitome of elegance and grace. When the salad course arrived, I was horrified, driving myself to distraction watching the hypnotic up and down movement of her masticating jaws, enthralled by the changing colour and texture of the food in her mouth and quite, it has to be said, disgusted.

From that day forth, my mouth has stayed resolutely closed while it goes about its business of tasting my food and preparing it for its conversion to energy and waste.

There are two key lessons we can take from this little parable of table manners, and they are both of great importance when we want to make lasting changes in our lives:

1. Self-observation

‘Observe all men – thyself most’.

Ben Franklin

So much of the process of personal and spiritual development is taken on faith. That is, we have faith that whoever is writing or speaking to us must know more than we do (remember, they’re the experts – aren’t they?) and we continually attempt to modify our thoughts, words and actions to be more in alignment with what they tell us is ‘good’ and ‘right’ or even ‘useful’.

Yet what makes this process of faith-based change so difficult is that it can become little more than an extension of the battle of wills we began fighting in our high-chairs – mummy and daddy may know best, but we’re important little ego-bodies too and they’re not going to get things their way without a fight (or at least without a bloody good caterwauling).

When, on the other hand, the motivation for change comes from our own observation, there is one less battle of wills to wade through. We resist change less, simply because it is initiated out of information, not faith. By the time we reach adulthood, we do not play in traffic not because mummy told us not to, but because we recognize we will almost certainly get hurt if we do.

And this is the gift of self-observation. When you can observe your own thinking, speaking and action with a degree of objectivity, certain thoughts, words and actions fall away as if of their own accord simply because they no longer make sense to the machine to do.

Change ceases to be an effort imposed from the inside or outside; it becomes a natural response to the best information available at the time.

2. Self-remembering

‘I see through my eyes, not with them’.

William Blake

My first introduction to any form of alternative teaching was a dog-eared copy of Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization. So impressed was I by the simple techniques for creating my life that I vowed then and there to visualize my goals daily for at least fifteen minutes a day according to suggestions made in the book.

Unfortunately, I only realized I hadn’t actually been doing it about six months later when I chanced across the book again and remembered my vow. This pattern of gaining great insight into what it takes to be happy and successful and then completely forgetting about it for as long as two years at a time continued for many years, and with it my frustration grew.

When I came across the phrase ‘self-remembering’ in the writing of P.D. Ouspensky, I was fascinated by his assertion that the primary reason we are often unable to keep our resolutions or make lasting changes in our lives is that most of the time ‘we’ weren’t even there.

Based on his own self-observation, Ouspensky came to see that instead of a constant presence, he seemed to in fact be a collection of different ‘I’s, each with its own agenda. His resolutions to make changes in his life were continually being undermined by the ever changing ‘I’s, and each new resolution to change was subject to the whims of what author Guy Finley refers to as TIWIICATM – the ‘I’ who is in charge at the moment.

The more I reflected on this idea, the more I recognized it as the key to understanding my own inability to do what I had resolved to do. After all, it’s difficult to maintain an intention when there’s no one there to maintain it.

Try this mini-experiment:

While you are reading this book, become aware of the fact that there is someone reading it – that is, someone looking out through ‘your’ eyes and taking in the information on this page. Indeed, that same someone seems to be listening through your ears to the sounds around you, though you may not have been fully aware of those sounds until prompted.

This is the key to self-remembering – dividing your attention in every circumstance between what you are doing and the consciousness of the one who is doing it – being present not only to your experience, but also to the experiencer.

In this way, you begin to create a constant ‘I’ – a true, objective witness – and it is only as that ‘I’ (what Richard Moss calls ‘the I that is we’) that you can truly create change, grow spiritually and transcend the limitations of your personality and conditioning.

In other words, before you can change,
‘you’ have to actually exist.

From theory to practice…
Use the STOP Exercise to Begin Self-observation

Whatever you are doing right now, STOP!

Do your best to neither increase nor decrease the tension in your body until you have completed a full body scan, as though you were taking a photograph of exactly how you were using your body in the moment that you stopped.

If you like, you can then begin to relax your muscles, allow your breathing to deepen and carry on with whatever it is you were doing (if indeed it still makes sense to based on your new observations).

Setting your inner alarm clock

‘You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth.’

From the movie The Matrix

Do you know that wonderful dopey feeling when you first wake up in the morning and are debating whether to get up out of bed and face the day or to hit the snooze, button, roll over and go back to sleep?

Well, in every moment of our lives, we are faced with the same choice:

Do we ‘wake up’ by bringing higher levels of awareness and consciousness
to our lives, or do we go unconscious and let our lives pass us by
in a haze of half-formed dreams and imagined torments?

Here are some of the most common ways we choose to hit the snooze, button on our lives. It is important to note that few if any of these things are bad in and of themselves – it is simply that using them in order to go unconscious that creates the lives of quiet desperation we so desperately want to go unconscious to escape from:

• alcohol
• drugs
• excessive eating
• gossip
• oversleeping
• overworking
• perfectionism
• procrastination
• sex
• shopping
• surfing the Internet

While it may seem daunting to let go of any or all of these habits, it is also often unnecessary. Instead of struggling to ‘subtract’ these behaviours from your life you can take advantage of your brain’s natural ability to learn new things and ‘add’ any of these three habits of conscious awareness to your repertoire instead.

Habit 1: Do it like it matters

Karma Yoga is sometimes called ‘the householder’s path’ because it is one of the few paths to enlightenment which can be followed in the midst of everyday life. The essence of this path is to engage with every activity and interaction, no matter how seemingly mundane, as if it were the most important thing for you to be doing in the world.

How would you read this page if it really mattered? How would you sip your coffee? What quality of attention would you bring to the next interaction you have with a fellow human being if you knew that interaction would really matter to them?

While you may never know which of your actions or interactions ultimately makes a real and lasting difference in someone’s life, what you will notice almost immediately is that when you act like everything in your life matters, it makes a real and lasting difference to you.

Habit 2: Take frequent holidays

I have always preferred the British term ‘taking a holiday’ to the American idea of ‘going on vacation’. When I think of vacations, I think of vacating – literally ‘to be empty’, as in vacuum, vacuous and vacant. Holidays, on the other hand, were originally ‘Holy days’ – a sacred time to renew, recharge and reconnect to the highest and best we have within us and around us.

To plan your holiday, identify a time later today where you will take at least five minutes for spiritual self-care: a time for nurturing your spirit by reconnecting to your sacred self. You can spend your holiday reading from a book that has special meaning to you, looking at pictures of the people and things you love, or simply contemplating the mysteries and wonder of being alive. The time you spend ‘away from your desk’ will come back to you multiplied in terms of more energy, increased effectiveness, and heightened creativity.

Habit 3: Face everything

When Socrates said ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, he was pointing out that until we face what is real inside ourselves and embrace what is real outside ourselves, we may as well stay asleep. It is not enough to become more conscious of our thoughts, words and actions. We must also shine the spotlight of our attention onto the beliefs and feelings which lie beneath them.

Fortunately, the prescription is also the cure: whenever you directly face whatever is going on in yourself and in your life, what is unreal will dissolve in the light of conscious awareness, leaving you face to face with your own original Self.

From theory to practice…
The Three Habits of Highly Present People

1. Choose at least one activity you normally sleepwalk through and just for today, do it like it matters. For example:

– type each word of an e-mail as if it matters

– fold a towel as if it were the most important job in the world

– say hello to someone as if the energy and enthusiasm of your greeting might be a matter of life or death.

2. Take a holiday in the next 60 minutes. If you think you’re too busy, take at least two more before the end of the day. Here’s a simple way to do it:

With your eyes open or closed, begin counting your breaths, letting each complete breath – breathing in and breathing out – count as one. If you’re at all stressed, you’ll lose count before you get to ten (or give up because it’s pointless and you’ve got a lot to do and people are staring and this is just stupid and you could get to ten if you really wanted to and… well, you get the idea). The sooner you lose count, the more stressed and unconscious you currently are and the less effective you’re likely to be.

To feel calmer, more centred, and become more aware and effective in a matter of minutes, start again at one and carry on until you can get to ten. Each time you lose count, begin again.

3. Make a list of the ways you most commonly go unconscious and any rituals or practices you already engage in that assist you in waking up and staying awake.

A simple test for whether you are doing something because you want to or as a way of distracting yourself is to ask yourself this question:

Would I enthusiastically recommend this behaviour
to the five people I care about most in the world?

By now, you have had four opportunities to use this symbolic alarm clock to ‘wake up’ and come back to yourself:

For the rest of the book, you can reset your inner alarm clock using any of the additional strategies you have now learned. Because every moment you spend in touch with your present-moment self is a chance to bring more joy, freedom and inspiration into your life than ever before…