As By The Strength Of Their Illusion Shall Draw Him On To His Confusion.

There are groups of people, the creationists spring to mind, that create a myth, however incongruous it is with established fact, and believe it fully; they do this to protect certainties without which their world would fall apart. Isolation and separation is honed and perfected, making a small, very much known world, safe, and without any annoying confusion or doubt. In fact, most individuals (and the institutions they form) are all about creating a known system with absolute rules and laws, comforting, safe. It is a way of making sense of our feeling of being apart, the alienation of being a separate entity; it is an attempt to satisfy that longing to come home, that persistent sense that something is missing. There is an urge to make a safe nest with known factors, an attempt by the mind for it to all make perfect sense. What these words point to is the certainties falling apart. There is no advice, but it can't hurt to do what 12-step programmes and other practices encourage: to be honest, open and willing. Honesty in its best sense probably means being truthful about motives, and most motives boil down to protecting the personal identity and the little world it operates in. Openness and willingness can simply allow room for another possibility, whatever that may be. And that may be relinquishing everything important, the value system by which you live, the very person that lives. Being trapped in the human condition, no matter how comfortable the prison might be, no matter how bearable separation is, is still incarceration. Paradoxically, the prison is perfection, everything as it seems right now is just as it must be. But it can either be happening to you, or just happening.