The State of Freedom
A journey of Truth into the mind’s sanctuary
with the destination of inner Freedom.
Α30. The Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart.
The mind now makes some tests to see how his new acquisition works, the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart, where Compassion is seated, working as a healer. He brings one by one some of his worldly anxieties into the sanatorium. There is a reception hall there, which is the pulsating heart itself. This hall is connected to innumerable well-lit and warm halls, which altogether constitute the natural extension of the space of the heart. The layout of the sanatorium is such that the rays of the inner sun[1] can enter into all halls at any time and illuminate every corner evenly. Additionally, there is plenty of space available for expansion to new halls, which can be accomplished by the mere will of the mind. In all halls there are chairs along the length of the walls, for the mind to place on them his facets which need therapy, one facet on each chair.
The place is ideal. The mind brings for treatment the long-lasting Anxiety for finding a beautiful spacious and sunny house amidst nature with a far view. He smiles while he realizes that such a home has already been found. A more spacious, warm and well-lit place than the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart he could never find. He brings Anxiety to the reception hall. She is a young girl, in a miserable condition, exhausted, hardly having an aura, totally ragged.
Her gaze is frozen, she has withdrawn her emotions, she prefers not to participate in life anymore; she only wants to dawdle herself in the world like cursed. She does not want to feel anything, because she cannot anymore bear the pain of deprivation nor the envy for those whom she sees every day enjoy the good which she is so painfully deprived of. She is a living dead; her form reminds the mind of his hurt brothers, the junkies of the Concord Square in the center of Athens, who also dawdle themselves here and there, lost, without a goal or destination, with no joy, with no lap waiting for them at home, with no home at all, and without any hope in this world.
Compassion, the nurse, comes, smiles to her affectionately, takes her by the hand and leads her to the adjacent hall, sits her on a comfortable chair and goes out, closing the door behind her slowly.
Anxiety now sits there alone and silent and waits. She does not know what she is waiting for, but she waits. She was told that here where they brought her she will be healed, but she barely believes it. Only because she had nothing better to do, as she has withdrawn herself from the world, she accepted to come here, to the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart. She sits now quietly where Compassion placed her and waits. She does not know what she is waiting for, but she waits. She does not believe that she takes any healing; she considers herself provenly incurable, but somewhere deep in herself she harbors an unconfessed hope. Hope dies last, even when it is not confessed.
The sunrays lighten the hall, they also lighten Anxiety. Their warmth pleases her, relieves her, makes her feel a little better. The moments of enjoyment of this warmth are moments without thoughts for her serious problem. Her attention focuses on the enjoyment of the warmth and thus she forgets her problem for a while.
Anxiety simmers down slowly. For a moment she remembers her problem again and tends to grasp on it and get agitated anew. However, this time a nice idea passes through her mind: without noticing or going after it, she has already found the well-lit home which she had been wheezingly struggling for many years to find a way to obtain. Not only this; she obtained it without money, bank loan, installments, interests, contracts, paperwork and other troubles! At last free! Now she does not care if the material house where she lives is not perfect, because her boss, the mind, found inside himself the perfect home, the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart, which guarantees that she will never miss light, beauty, spacious room and far view. She leans on two adjacent chairs, takes a convenient posture and, calmed down as much as exhausted, falls asleep.
Next! The mind brings now his Brain with millions of uncon-trolled useless and painful synapses of the neurons, which were formed during the previous years of his life. Each thought, each deed, each word created a new synapse, which with stubbornness tried to reproduce itself with every opportunity, thus imprisoning the mind in an endless cycle of thoughts which wasted his life and still does.
The mind brings the Brain to the reception hall. He boils due to overactivity; he bubbles. Soon the gentle nurse Compassion comes again. She looks at him with understanding and affection. This one she will place alone initially, she says, in a separate hall with no direct contact to the sun; only the diffuse daylight enters this hall. What the overheated Brain really needs in this first phase of his treatment is a cool place to cool down. This hall will become for the Brain “a place of green pasture, a place of refreshment, from whence pain, sorrow and mourning will flee away” [2]. The glass partition leads to a spacious veranda with many planted pots and through it one can see a pine yard with the background of the lake’s quietness, the all green mountain peaks, the blue sky and a few white clouds. In the middle of the lake there is an islet, which is also verdant.
The nurse places the Brain in the center of the room, on a beautiful embroidered pillow. She opens the balcony door to let the fresh air of the spring come in; she comes out of the hall and closes the door noiselessly behind her, being certain for his cure. The Brain gradually cools down, at the same time listening to the heartbeats, which ceaselessly pulsate all halls of the sanatorium rhythmically, even the most remote ones, thus tactfully reminding to the patients that everything there happens under the auspices of the mind’s and the heart’s compassion.
In this environment the Brain calms down. It is a totally stark place, without the thousands trivialities and paraphernalia which the neurons’ synapses have been addicted to persistently yearn for in order to ease off and quiet down awhile. Nevertheless, he is tranquil there, he enjoys to be pleasantly cooled, and he does not feel that he misses diversity. The old synapses gradually fade out, because there, inside that beautiful and cool place, in the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart, there is the diffuse true and undeniable presence of the heart, an unfailing guarantee for the future and undivided compassion for the sufferings of the past.
While the synapses fade out, the overheated Brain cools down, like a reddish incandescent piece of iron which extin-guishes slowly. While this happens, the mind notices that my whole body simmers down. The muscles loosen up; they are no longer in a misguided and untimely readiness to confront the imaginary enemy who supposedly menaces me. After the Brain cools down adequately, he will also be taken to a warm and well-lit room, together with other brothers-facets of the mind, in order that the Brain will also experience with them together the warmth of the inner sun, which lightens all rooms in the Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart.
A few hours later…
Now comes Compassion and takes the Brain, who has now reasonably cooled down, and places him into a closed transparent container. She covers the container with an airtight closure, which has an adapted innovative curative mechanism on it. She pushes a button and immediately appears inside the container the image of a stirring implement, which looks like a kitchen mixer and occupies all the space of the container which is simultaneously occupied by the brain as well. This stirrer evokes a holographic projection produced with laser rays. It starts rotating, originally slowly, and while time passes by it accelerates, until it rotates like crazy, like the kitchen mixers do.
The only difference is that this virtual stirrer functions totally noiselessly and peacefully, without damaging the physical substance of the brain. It only abolishes the olden synapses of the neurons.
Thus, the neuron on which the idea of finding a mistake has been imprinted is disconnected from the neuron where the idea of self-blame has been stored. The synapse, that is to say the electrical pathway which used to interlink the two neurons all these years and due to which my mind whenever he made a mistake was forced to feel self-blame in no time, is altogether abolished, as the immaterial energy stirrer of Compassion whipped up all neurons and stirred them up in the same way a farmer with his tractor stirs up the roots, stubble and other remains from the previous crop and shatters them, thus making the hard, dry and stoned soil soft, wet and fertile again, with his relieving and reviving passage. In this way the soil becomes ready to receive new fresh and healthy seed, in order to sprout and give succulent, abundant, nourishing and life-giving fruits.
In the same way, committing a mistake no longer necessarily triggers self-blame, the loss of goods no longer necessarily causes dread for the probability of complete neediness and the insult no longer provokes anger. These and many more automatic and forced associations of decades are abolished by the curative laser stirrer of Compassion. Thus, the Brain, now void of the outdated synapses of his neurons and being once again a plain paper like when he was an infant, is now in the position, with the assistance of an appropriate educator, to learn how to interlink the neurons which have these experiences imprinted on them (mistake, loss, insult and others) with nice and relieving ideas, which will produce for me inner experiences rich in joy and abundance.
Hence, the realization of a mistake will be neuroelectrically connected to the neurons which have imprinted on them attributes favoring my emotional health, such as confession, understanding and sympathy for the struggle of the self and undivided support to continue this struggle in this unknown world in which he is called upon to survive.
Similarly, the experience of the loss of goods will be linked to the joy of liberation from them and the probability of complete neediness will be connected to the ideas of trusting God and gratitude for the gift of life.
Moreover, the neuron on which the experience of insult from brothers has been imprinted will be interlinked with the neurons of understanding and sympathy for the deep pain of the brother who, due to his anxiety for the conquest of happiness, resorts to incorrect means, fallibly thinking that he could attain happiness in this way.
And who else except for Compassion, the dedicated nurse, could ever be this apt educator who has the competence, concern and will to undertake the task of redeployment and reallocation of the synapses between the centers of the Brain? [3] So, she lets him now sleep and calm down. When he wakes up, she will come and sit near him, to explain to him with love and limitless patience which will henceforth be the new healthy synapses between his neurons.
The mind keeps bringing more and more patients. One hall he filled completely by placing at the one wall his current Anxieties about Future and at the other one the Sorrow and the Pain for the Past. The experiment came off! The Warm and Well-lit Sanatorium of the Heart runs well. All the facets which the mind brought into it tranquilized and stopped pestering him and tuckering him out with their frenetic activity. The sorrow which stemmed from the repression has now eased off. Gradually the attitude prevails that “everything is well[4]”, regardless of the appearances, which, as known, can be deceptive and thus deceive the various facets of the mind and make them believe the problems to be real. Inside the protected area of the heart they feel that they do not lack anything.
[1] A conceivable sun, miniature of the physical sun, which lightens and warms up the entire inner space of my heart.
[2] The original text of the Holy Gospel is in the past tense.
[3] Searching in Google with the words “compassion synapses neurons” I found many articles about the transformative power of compassion on the neurons’ synapses of the brain, which results into the increase of the happiness which the individual experiences. In this way, my inner experience was also scientifically confirmed.
[4] One of the most favorite quotes of my Master.