If you experience your mind as a prison, isn’t it time you applied for parole?
For many people, their mind really does feel like a prison. Their sentence? Life. They experience “having a mind” as a kind of life sentence of repetitive thoughts, self-critical thoughts, and unproductive thoughts leading to the felt sense that they can’t escape from their own ruminations.
We could conjure with the idea of parole and visualize a parole hearing where you present your winning case for parole. But that would still land you years of visits to a parole officer. Or we could plan and execute a prison escape, maybe by digging a tunnel hidden beyond your bunk. But that would only make you a fugitive. Let’s do the following instead.
Let’s systematically redesign that prison and turn it into an early university filled with devoted scholar monks. First, let’s remove all the bars from the cells. Visualize those bars disappearing. Cells remain, but without bars. Next, let’s turn those concrete walls into stone walls lit by candles. Now we have ancient walls atmospherically lit. Let’s add a comfier cot, not plush but also not so hard as to amount to punishment. We’ll need a desk, a bookcase, and books to engross a scholar. No computers: parchment and pens. No piped-in music: but maybe a bird in a cage, picked for its sweet song?
This monk’s cell is not physically so different from that former prison cell. It has the same ceiling height, the same dimensions, even the same sense of confinement. But there is a world of difference between a monk’s cell and a prison cell, isn’t there? In that prison cell, you are trapped and you are being punished. In your monk’s cell, you can live your life purposes, express your devotion, live in a self-directed, self-disciplined way, and think thoughts that interest you and that serve you. And, of course, you can go outside!
This transformation honors your desire to think, study, muse, imagine, and contribute. This cloistered university is a repository of the world’s wisdom, from Athens to Babylon to Constantinople, filled with illuminated manuscripts, at once as dark and as light as Plato’s cave. You get a private cell here in this mecca, where you can relax and ponder. Its dimensions are exactly the same as that already-forgotten prison cell, where your thoughts were held prisoner, but what a world of difference.
This visualization may serve you well. But it is not the only way to visualize yourself freeing yourself from your mind prison. Conjure up the visualization that works for you. To learn more Redesign Your Mind techniques, please take a look at my new book Redesign Your Mind, available now. Come enjoy and explore.
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“Maisel’s thorough explanation of his technique will help readers who are looking to push through their mental roadblocks and improve their emotional well-being.”―Publisher’s Weekly. Redesign Your Mind, available for purchase now.
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