Anam Cara

The Mental Prison

A mental prison can be as bad as a physical prison. When you are trapped in a mental prison, the crippling idea or feeling robs you of all joy and freedom. You can see and feel little else. Your mind becomes a small room without light. You turn the wild mystery of your own mind into a shabby, negative little room; the windows are blocked, and there is no door. The mental prison is devastatingly lonely. It is a sorrowful place, because ultimately it is you who locks yourself up within a demented idea or feeling.

It is a helpless place to be trapped; all outside life lessens. There is a distance between you and everything else. It is difficult for anyone to reach you. You come to believe that the shape of the prison is the shape of reality. It is so difficult to leave the mental prison precisely because you cannot see beyond your pain. In other words, you are completely blind to the fact that it is you who construct it and decide to stay locked in there; this punishment is mainly self-punishment. Inevitably, you tend to blame others and hold them responsible for whatever hurt put you away. It is only when you become aware of your own longing to be free that you realize how you let what happened to you take away your power and freedom. You were so hurt that you were no longer able to distinguish your life from the hurt. It took you over completely. You acted in complicity with the hurt and turned against yourself.