Prison: A Valuable Metaphor for Disease and Disorder

The Shawshank Redemption will do as a beautiful metaphor for pain, disease, depression, and suffering in general:

THE PATH OF APATHY AND DESPAIR:

FINDING A GLIMPSE OF LIGHT IN THE DARK HOLE:

CHOOSING LIFE:

When pain first arrives it’s a bit like the cops bursting into your house and arresting you. Either you feel non-plussed, like there has been some kind of mistake, or you feel like you’re being punished for doing something wrong. There’s no mistake, and you’ve done nothing “wrong”, it’s just change, or what we’ve come to refer to as “life”. Certain liberties that you took for granted have suddenly been taken away. You receive a sentence or “diagnosis” and the initiation begins. Often they tell you that it’s a life sentence. You feel doomed. How to tell your friends and family? How will they react? It’s a bit like you’ve been banished from the garden of Eden, like Adam, with a great sense of shame.

Adam was overcome by this shame and simply accepted that he could no longer experience heaven. There wa another tree in the garden though: the tree of eternal life, from which, if he had eaten the fruit, he would experience what Andy did in the second clip posted above. The place (heaven) that can’t be taken away from you, and available to be experienced in an infinite variety of unique ways. Pleasure provides an opportunity to experience Unithou, just as much as pain does. Pleasure descends from a peak, whereas pain can ascend from the valley. We can equate this ascension to a prison break.

The Brooks character symbolises the person who accepts their fate, but then doesn’t attempt the audacity to try and change it. Those who attempt to strategically, and methodically change their lifestyle to increase their vibration and awaken the Eden within are choosing to “get busy living” as opposed to “getting busy dying” (the later is what organised religion is well known to encourage).

Remember also that there is another aspect to vitality: that of power which is gained through the experience and the enduring of suffering. A voyage through hell (the prison of the mind, or the “hole” of solitary confinement) in which the individual discovers a strength which would otherwise have remained latent. This brings to mind the science of “epigenetics”:

Key UniThou Terms Defined

Unithou: “One you”, “Unique Divinity”.

H: Pronouced “hhh”. Nameless, all-penetrating vital energy (ethereal and corporeal).

Void: The infinite unmanifest H.

L.I.F.E. = Learned Interpretations Filtering Experience

Intent: The source of consciousness, the director of H, usually manifesting as mind
activity/thoughts/attitude. “H goes where the mind goes, H obeys intent.”

Intelligence: The ability to receive, intuit, process and transmit information, whether spatial, linguistic, logical/mathematical, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, existential, or psychic.

Cohesion: Consciously “blending in”, or merging with one’s scene/setting/required role, so as to act in a lucid and virtuous manner.

Longing: …for balance, harmony, growth, connection (physical and empathic), depth of feeling, understanding, creation, and experience of the unknown/unfathomable.

Vitality:
– The capacity to live, grow, or develop.
– Frequency/quality of meditational practice, as well as flow of meditational
focus from moment to moment.
– Physical and psychological health/vigour.
– Intimacy with, amount of, and circulation of H.
– Power to endure/embrace/joyfully participate in adversity/suffering.
– Sense of lightness, detachment and good humour.

Maturity: Authority over, and responsibility for one’s own thoughts and actions. Recognition of the unique divinity in the other. Respect. Sacrifice of time for another/others.

Consciousness/Awareness: The ability to observe one’s thoughts/interpretations, and detach oneself from them (as opposed to delusion/ignorance, where one has no choice but to be defined by them).

Multi-dimensional: Dynamic/evolving/non-patterning. The ability of the mind to approach any activity as a performance, experiment, work of art, game, dance etc. A “this AND that” philosophy as opposed to “this OR that”.