The chains that are not

That's what we are, that's what we inevitably do, and how we work. We project ourselves with our thoughts and wills - our lives are the shadows of our innermost desires, projected upon the reality as we perceive and accept it. It is most common, and most devoid of effort, to merely receive this reality through the eyes and experience of others, a reality forged through the consensus of many people, an eroded intersection of practices of prudence developed through the ages. But though this is the easiest, best-treaded path, it is not the only one, and most certainly not one meant to remain in for the span of an individual's entire life.

Only until this is truly understood and felt can a person truly decide to expand his or her accepted reality into others - realities more complex, less constrained, and that allow far richer possibilities for our wills to project upon, than the one he was submitted into since birth. And when he does, he will weep, overwhelmed at the vast amount of possibilities that are and that he had never walked on, never imagined to walk on, always taught to ignore and forget. And when he later, sometimes meekly, most surely afraid, takes a step in the directions he has just discovered, he might weep even stronger when he finds that the chains that had always held him were only the shadows of his fears - and he can blame no one for believing in them - for assuming their power and perenniality, but himself.

And if this person then realizes that there are many more of these chains hidden in his life, in every corner, in the way he wakes up, in every menial activity, even in how we think, he can venture to find new constraints and directions he has always missed. And the more he finds, the more he ventures, the more he will find that his reality becomes closer and closer to his very thoughts and wills, to himself, his real self.