A man once found himself standing between two great walls.
They stretched high into the sky and disappeared far into the distance.
He looked to the left wall.
Then to the right.
No matter how long he searched, he could see no opening.
So he concluded that he had become trapped.
Days passed.
Then years.
The man remained there in fear and frustration, believing there was no escape.
One day a friend happened to pass nearby and saw him standing there.
The friend called out:
“What are you doing?”
The man replied:
“I am trapped between these walls. I have searched everywhere, but there is no way out.”
The friend looked at him quietly for a moment and then said:
“Why do you not simply turn around?”
The man did not understand.
He had become so accustomed to staring at the walls before him that the thought had never even occurred to him.
Slowly, cautiously, he turned.
Behind him there was no wall at all.
The entire space had always been open.
The moment he saw this, he became overwhelmed and began running as fast as he could away from the place.
But his friend called after him:
“Why are you running?
You were never trapped to begin with.”
Reflection
The walls are the past and the future.
Memory and imagination.
Regret and expectation.
The mind moves constantly between these two and concludes that bondage is real.
So long as attention remains fixed upon them, freedom appears impossible.
Yet liberation is not found by destroying the walls.
Nor by endlessly studying them.
One must simply turn around.
That turning is attention returning toward the one who is aware.
Instead of looking outward toward thoughts, time, and appearances, attention turns inward toward the feeling of “I”.
And when this is done deeply, something strange is discovered:
there was never a prison.
The bondage existed only because attention never turned toward its source.
Even the fear was part of the dream.
The Self had always remained open and free.