The State of Freedom
A journey of Truth into the mind’s sanctuary
with the destination of inner Freedom.
Β14. The prejudices lose ground.
For many years the mind was prejudiced, in other words pre-occupied. To wit, he was a priori occupied by various laid down convictions of his, which had possessed all his inner space since a long time ago. As a result, they did not leave any space to new ideas to enter and become credible for the mind. This resulted into the boring – and ultimately painful – reproduction of the same scenarios every time that life confronted him with similar situations.
The examples are countless:
Situation: “I like this woman I met right now”.
Prejudice: “According to my experience, it is easy for beautiful women to find a love partner who meets their expectations. Moreover, I do not have a beautiful woman, and so it is obvious that I do not meet the expectations of a beautiful woman”.
Conclusion: “It is useless for me to approach her; she must certainly be in a relationship with someone else who satisfies her. Anyway, she would never like me, since I do not meet her expectations”.
Another example:
Situation: “I wanted to go out tonight, but I did not find any companion”.
Prejudice: “Loneliness is misfortune, because whoever is left alone is evidently not a very interesting guy and thus does not deserve others’ love and therefore is an unfortunate person”.
Conclusion: “I am unfortunate, because nobody wants me”.
Third example:
Situation: “This book I want to read is too big and densely written”.
Prejudice: “I know that I am not patient enough, because I am slothful and cannot read such bulky books, for I always quit reading them from the very first pages”.
Conclusion: “It is useless to start reading it; let me better order a pizza and watch a TV series, I am not capable for more complex things”.
The mind now understands that all these three examples denote low self-esteem. But all his other prejudices which are relevant to his supposed limits also show his low self-esteem, which is due to the excessive function of the logic. The logic does not roll over, even when the real facts prove its errors.
Such facts, which belie the assertions of the logic and are relevant to the three examples in question, are the following: the fondness which has been expressed for me by some beautiful women at times, the pleasant lonely hours I have experienced whenever I immersed myself into a solitary activity which fascinated me and the study of lengthy and difficult texts which interested and engrossed me. None of those achievements proved to be able to reduce for long the power of the respective prejudice which narrowed my mind.
Now the mind realizes that, thanks to the recent repositioning of my value and its placement on my very existence, he is now able to find the courage to talk to beautiful women and all his brothers free from the fear of rejection; he is also able to spend some nice lonely hours of inner warmth with himself without grief for his aloneness; and also he is able to start reading and enjoy bulky books as well as other difficult operations devoid of the haste to bring them to fruition in order to prove that he came through and hence verify his value as a person. This change took place for the reason that he has now understood that his value is inbred in the very existence of his primeval Entity and hence is a priori granted and therefore not at all dependent upon or endangered by all these trivial external issues.
So, all his prejudices are losing ground, as long as the mind recalls and does not blank out the fact that his value is granted and self-existent, because with the help of this inner attitude he no longer feels in every single moment of his life that he is taking an exam towards himself and other people, nor does he feel any longer the need to prove his value to anyone, for he now knows well that his value does not in the least hinge upon his worldly accomplishments and the recognition or admiration which he may relish due to them.
The mind had been very much pestered by his prejudices throughout the years, and now that he sees that he has found a reliable and – what is most important – reproducible way to overcome them, he rejoices with the idea that he will at last dare to accomplish whatever his prejudices prevented him from doing over the years. He is now glad, because in this way his life will obtain variety and color; he will no longer feel obliged to live a dull and colorless life within the narrow limits of activities in which he had confined himself. The problem was not so much the lack of variety itself; what really was depressing him was more the feeling of self-confinement.