Sometimes ideas hold us down; they become heavy anchors that hold the bark of identity fixated in shallow, dead water. In the Western tradition, the idea of the sinfulness and selfishness of the self has trapped many lovely people all their lives in a false, inner civil war. Fearful of valuing themselves in any way, they have shunned their own light and mystery. Their inner world remained permanently off limits. People were given to believe that they were naturally bad and sinful. They let this toxic idea into their minds and it gradually poisoned their whole way of seeing themselves. Sin was around every corner, and in any case, probable damnation waited at the end of the road. People were unwittingly drafted into blaspheming against their own nature. You could not let yourself go. Any longing to claim your nature or to pursue your wildness would lead to ruin. This corrupted the innocence of people’s sensual life and broke the fluency of their souls. Rather than walking the path with the encouraging companionship of your protecting angel beside you and the passionate creativity of the Holy Spirit at your deepest core, you were made to feel like a convict trapped between guilt and fear. It is one of the awful sins committed against people. So many good people were internally colonized with a poisonous ideology that had nothing to do with the kind gentleness and tender sympathy of God.
Despite our being subjugated by negative belief, there remains a deep longing in every person for self-discovery. No one can remain continually unmoved by the surprising things that rise to the surface of one’s life. It is a great moment when you break out of the prison of negative self-criticism and develop a sense of the inner adventure of the soul. Suddenly everything seems to become possible. You feel new and young. As you step through the dead threshold, you can hear the old structures of self-hate and self-torment collapsing behind you. Now you know that your life is yours and that good things are going to happen to you. At a Gospel Mass in New Orleans recently, the preacher invited each one of us to turn to our neighbour and say, “Something good is going to happen to you.” It made me realize that there are such beautiful bouquets of words that we never offer each other. For days afterwards, I could see the chubby face and hear the gravel voice of the little boy beside me saying, “Somethin’ good’s gonna happen to You.” His words became a kind of inner mantra that blessed me for days.
We were created to be free; within you there is deep freedom. This freedom will not intrude; it will not hammer at the door of your life and force you to embrace it. The greater presences within us do not act in this way. Their invitation is inevitably subtle and gracious. In order to inherit your freedom, you need to go towards it. You have to claim your own freedom before it becomes yours. This is neither arrogant nor selfish; it is simply moving towards the gift that was prepared for you from ancient times. As a German thinker said, “Frei sein ist nichts, / frei werden ist alles,” i.e., To be free is nothing, to become free is everything. Albert Camus’s story “The Adulterous Woman” is a fine portrait of a woman who has fled from herself into the prison of a relationship with a man who is vacillating, demanding, and lost. One night, during a listless and utterly frustrating business trip with him, she leaves the bedroom and goes out into the desert: “Then with unbearable gentleness the water of the night began to fill Janine, drowned the cold, rose gradually from the hidden core of her being and overflowed in wave after wave, rising up even to her mouth full of moans. The next moment, the whole sky stretched over her, fallen on her back on the cold earth.” With sensuous and spiritual intimacy, Nature comes to find and free her by calling her suppressed nature alive.
Rousseau said, “Man was born free, yet everywhere I look, I see him in chains.” Each of us has a reservoir of unknown freedom, yet our fear holds us back. The worst chains are not the chains which others would have you wear. The chains with which you manacle yourself cut deepest and hold you longest. In a certain sense, no one outside you can imprison you. They can only turn you into a prisoner, if you assent and put on the chains they offer. There are no psychological police. Only you can step over that threshold into the prison of image, the prison of expectation, or the prison of anxiety.