“What if everything in life was up for grabs and there were no givens?”
– Michael Neill
From his brand new, hot-off-the-press book,
“The Space Within: Finding Your Way Back Home”
I am so excited because one of my mentors, Michael Neill, released his latest book yesterday. One of the reasons I have been a fan, follower and student of Michael’s for so long is because we are cut from the same cloth, belong to the same soul collective.
For years I have been working with myself and my clients to release us from our innocently self-imposed prisons. In Chapter 6 of The Space Within, Michael talks about dissolving the bars of our self-created cages.
In Michael’s words:
” . . . all any of us are ever suffering from is our innocent misuse of the play dough of Thought. When we use it to create insecurity, worry, and fear, we live inside a cage with bars of our own making. But, like a child who gleefully creates and destroys animals and people and monsters and flowers every time they take their play dough out of its container, we’re free to change our mind and think differently about absolutely anything at absolutely any moment.
I don’t always remember this, and there are certainly times when my reality becomes very “real” to me and I feel the walls closing in on my self-created cage. But then a new thought comes along, and I’m once again reminded that I can roll up the bars of my cage into a lump of divinely neutral play dough, change my mind, and begin the game of creation all over again.”
My words:
When we get it, really get it, that our imprisonment comes from our own thinking rather than ANY external circumstances, we are free.
I was fortunate to read Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, my junior year in high school. His first-hand account of life in four different Nazi death camps depicts how even in the most horrific circumstances during actual imprisonment, a person doesn’t need to be imprisoned.
His story was one of my first directional signals, pointing me toward becoming a business and life coach. I have come to recognize that I am here on this planet to inspire and urge me and you to be fully ourselves by freeing ourselves from our own innocently self-imposed prisons. And, I am so grateful to share a soul collective with Michael Neill and Victor Frankel.
Oh Dianne, I do love to wrote directly to you and for you!!!
I’m so curious what might become compelling enough to help you befriend the unknown . . .
I had to chuckle over this one. I can’t tell you how many times I feel like I’m walking into a self-created jail cell when I come into my workplace, a comfortable and familiar one to be sure, but jail nonetheless. Because it feels to me like my sticking to this limiting scenario day after day out of safety and familiarity and fear of the unknown is keeping me from allowing any other possibilities for my life.
Ken,
Yes, I have a bit of a mantra, “If I feel stuck, trapped, imprisoned now, what would I like to think, see or experience differently?” Thus, melting those prison bars once again . . .
I remember a line from a song in The Dances of Universal Peace, “Even though you have broken your vow perhaps ten thousand times, come, come again . . .” I think it came from a Rumi quote. Good to remember we have an infinite number of opportunities!
Such a great reminder, Thanks!
The analogy certainly isn’t new, and it remains so popular and vital because it is urgent. It seems to be an unending process for me, no matter how many times I have “gotten” it in the past, I need to “get” it again today.