COCOON LIVING

This is a story of a rich man who was born in a prominent, wealthy family many years ago. He grew up completely sheltered from the world, happy, and fearless. Everything was provided for him and all was new, exciting and wonderful. When he was old enough, he wanted to travel and experience the world so he left for many years to travel all around it. But the more he traveled, the more he saw, heard and experienced things that were new to him, and he started to lose confidence, to be scared, and protect himself and the possessions he had acquired. It finally got to the point to where he decided that he did not want to continue with this journey anymore. It was just too dangerous and no longer pleasant.

So, he went back to his country and his family. His parents had given him a beautiful piece of land in a valley surrounded by mountains, rivers, grass, trees, etc. The summers were warm, the winters cold, and the rest of the year was just perfect. It was a priceless piece of land. But things had changed a lot in his country since he had left. So, he built a small fortress to protect himself, his animals, his people and his belongings. As he heard rumors of or experienced theft, sickness, and hunger, he made the walls even thicker and stronger. With time it came to the point of him being too afraid to leave the fortress, so he surrounded himself with everything he needed and never left again.

Does this story sound familiar? It should, even if you have never heard it before, it should, because this is each of our stories. Let me put it in perspective. When we are born, we are all only smiles and happiness, regardless of your family’s financial status as long as our basic needs of food, board, and warm clothes were provided. But as we grew up, our parents, educators and just about everyone told us all types of stories, some good and some not so good. They told us about our gender, nationality, religion, color of the skin, abilities, disabilities, language, etc. These tales are similar to the tales told to the traveler. And like in the story, we believed them without questioning them.

From an early age, we started creating who we think we are, or what is called our “personality”, which one of its predominant components is basically a large set of identifications (i.e., gender, nationality, religion, color, creed, language, etc.). We also started creating walls to protect ourselves. We chose carefully what to eat, with whom to associate, where to go, what we liked, and so on, and discarded or ignored everything else. By doing this, by building these walls, we have basically divided the world into what we like and dislike, what we feel is secure and insecure, and what we fear and do not fear. You may think then that we divided the world 50/50 between what we like and dislike, but what we dislike is tremendously greater than what we like (80’s to the high 90’s percent).

You may call this living, but in reality, it is not. In order to protect ourselves, to deal with all the unconscious programming from childhood and all of our fears and beliefs systems that we have accumulated throughout the years, each of us has been building a cocoon or fortress all of our lives and have reduced our lives and our world to the bare minimum. Although a cocoon is great in terms of survival, to protect us, what we do not understand is that by building a cocoon, we have also built a prison in which we have been living. Our world and lives have become only what is inside of the fortress, or what you can barely see from the outside.

How is it possible that we do not realize that we have imprisoned ourselves? Because we ourselves have slowly been building this prison throughout our entire lives. If someone had built it for us, we would have noticed it. But because we are the ones who built it very slowly and unconsciously, we are completely blind to it. If you compare your fortress to the size of the world, to the size of what you could be living and experiencing, it is like comparing a grain of sand to the entire solar system or galaxy. It is insignificant, minuscule! This is a shame!

Life is meaningless if we cannot, or do not, consciously experience it to the fullest! Every single person, animal, plant, thing or moment like a child, man or woman, flower, dog, cat, horse, tiger, sunset, sunrise, rain drop, snow flake, etc., could potentially take our breath away, only if we would allow it, if we just were to give it the chance. You can do nothing and continue living the rest of your life sheltered and secured or you can tear down the walls of beliefs, fears, judgements, and opinions and live to your full potential! Let yourself get swallowed by the immensity of this miraculous experience called life! Otherwise, you are not living, you are just surviving!

Author: Maurice Correa
Website: pathtoone.com