The Only Way Out is Through

A Parable: The Prisoner in the Dark Cave

There once was a man who was sentenced to die. He was blindfolded and put in a pitch black cave. The cave was one hundred yards by one hundred yards. He was told there was a way out of the cave, and if he could find it, he was a free man.

(Parable by: John Bradshaw)

After a rock was secured at the entrance to the cave, the prisoner was allowed to take his blindfold off and roam freely in the darkness. He was to be fed only bread and water for the first thirty days and nothing thereafter. The bread and water were lowered from a small hole in the roof at the south end of the cave. The ceiling was about eighteen fee high. The opening was about one foot in diameter. The prisoner could see a faint light up above, but no light came into the cave.

As the prisoner roamed and crawled around the cave, he bumped into rocks. Some were rather large. He thought that if he could build a mound of rocks and dirt that was high enough, he could reach the opening and enlarge it enough to crawl through and escape. Sine he was five feet, nine inches and his reach was another two feet, the mound had to be at least ten feet hihg.

So the prisoner spent his waking hours picking up rocks and digging up dirt. At the end of two weeks, he had build a mound of about seix feet. He though that if he could duplicate that in the next two weeks, he could make it before his food ran out. But as he had already used most of the rocks in the cave, he. had to dig harder and harder. He had to do the digging with his bare hands. After a month had passed, the mound was nine and one-half feet high and he could almost reach the opening if he jumped. He was almost exhausted and extremely weak.

One day, just as he though the could touch the opening, he fell. He was simply too weak to get up and in two days he died. His captors came to get his body. They rolled away the huge rock that covered the entrance. As the light flooded into the cave, it illuminated an opening int he wall of the cave about three feet in circumference.

It was the opening that led to the other side of the mountain.

This was the passage to freedom the prisoner had been told about. It was the south wall, directly under the opening in the ceiling. All the prisoner would have had to do was crawl about two hundred feet and he would have found freedom. He had so completely focused on the light that it never occurred to him to look for freedom in the darkness. Liberation was there all the time, right next to the mound he was building, but it was in the darkness.

Embracing The Pain

In order for an individual to be able to experience true freedom, healing, growth and expansion in life - one must allow their pain and trauma to come out of hiding. If we wish to be able to break free from the constraints of our own minds and to release the shame we feel, we must be willing to embrace the pain attached to our past experiences. As long as our pain remains hidden, there is nothing we can do about it. In fact, most of our neurotic behavior is due to the avoidance of legitimate pain. We try to find an easier way. This is understandable.

Often times, we do anything and everything we can to avoid our pain; taking yoga, meditating, reading personal development books and simply keeping ourselves busy so it seems we have no time to sit with ourselves. But, it is only by being with ourselves and listening to our inner worlds are we able heal childhood wounds, offer our inner child the love and acceptance she never received and hear the stories that have been playing on loop in our minds. The stories that tell us who we are expected to be and what we must feel ashamed of and hide away. The stories that influence the relationships we choose into and the stories that ultimately dictate every aspect of our lives.

However, the more we avoid our painful pasts the more they end up controlling our lives. We must become aware of the beliefs we have created about ourselves and the coping mechanisms we have adopted as a result if we wish to move forward without repeating painful and unfulfilling patterns.

How do we do this: by attempting to make that which is covert and unconscious into something overt and conscious. This is the path to liberation, empowerment and towards creating the life you deserve.