My dear friend, you are not in the prison, you are the prison itself. You have taken thinking for yourself.
Look at your life. It is driven by your idea that there are problems, and your search for a solution is itself an even greater problem than those ones what you're trying to solve. Well, what you resist persists.
Do you understand your mind and its proper role and purpose in your life?
All your crisis are born of the limited and conditioned way in which you think, the way you feel and experience life. Your rationalism and "common sense" have robbed you of your ability to recognize and experience the life as it is.
You have never before had access to so much knowledge. But you have gone deep into the material world, finding the perfect house, perfect car, the perfect shoes, but you have never been more limited, more ignorant of who you are.
You simply do not understand the mechanism by which you create you own suffering. Your thinking has created your world as it is now.
Without ego there is no thinking. Also, there is no credit cards debts, crisis in relationships, problems at work... These external things in your world reflect a serious inner crises; you don’t know who you are.
As you're now, you're completely identified with "me and mine" identity, consumed by fears and are cut off from your true nature.
Your race, religion, country, political affiliation, any group that you belong to, all reinforce your false identity.
Have you noticed that all your "belongings" are actually limitation on yourself. Consider, different people experience completely different thoughts and emotional reactions to the very same events. Pay attention, heaven and hell, are two opposite views on the same events and they are both in you. What do you want to experience is up to you and this makes your world.
External circumstances don’t have to affect your inner world in any particular way. Examine your life honestly, without lying to yourself.
Are you able to stop your robotic, repetitive life if you want to?
Can you stop seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, are you addicted to certain foods and hobbies?
Are you constantly complaining, judging and blaming, criticizing yourself and others?
Does your mind incessantly seek out stimulus, or are you completely fulfilled just being in silence?
Do you react to how people think about you?
Are you seeking approval and positive reinforcement?
You experience your life the same way today as they will tomorrow and a year from now, and ten years from now. Begin to observe your robot-like nature, be aware of that. Recognize the depth of the problem. You are the prison and you are completely and utterly prisoner.
You don't see the world, you only see your own thoughts.
Your mind distracts you, entertains you, keeps you endlessly doing, consuming, grasping, in a cycle of craving and aversion with constantly changing forms, keeping you in a deep slumber.
