Caged Containment

What we build throughout our lives to feel a sense of control, safety and security help to create cages of containment within us. Those bars we try to live within limit our ability to be ourselves. They confine our ability to be fully awake, aware and experiencing this journey in life.

I have built many cages for myself over my lifetime and as I’ve learned and grown, my cages have also shifted. I’ve honed my skills of trying to fit in and be liked by people I believed were important to me at those times, and thus lost myself in a self-created prison of living and colouring between the lines. I believed my worth and value were determined by people and things outside myself.  For me, this is a lifetime of undoing, unbecoming and true alignment with my heart.

As children, what we are told about life, health, happiness, money, abundance and ourselves is taken into our bodies, into our beliefs and morph our impressions of what life truly is like. They influence how we see ourselves in that bigger picture. We want to be loved and accepted – so, we believe and adapt.

As we enter school (all levels), what we’re told and taught, we take in and believe. We act accordingly as we want to fit in, please others and accel at this game in life. We adapt.

Entering the work force, most of us have learned how to act, what to say and how to fit in so we can feel a sense of value through common beliefs and connecting through this social circle. We adapt.

Relationships with family, friends, partners, professionals and everyone else including ourselves, now gets coloured by the cages we’ve built to contain ourselves and fit in. We have learned how to read signals, signs and adjust our behaviours to get a particular outcome. We are good at adapting. 

Each adaptation is another bar in our self-made cages. Our potential is slowly shrinking to fit inside this limiting world we are creating. 

None of this is shared to lay blame on anyone (including yourself) – this is an opportunity to dig deeper – to change patterns – to take conscious responsibility without blame for your life and understand your cage. Every choice we make aligns us or further contains us – and sometimes both. 

I invite you to be conscious of the choices you make and why. What you decide shapes your life so be aware and turn off auto-pilot.

Here’s an exercise I do, which may help in your process of unfolding and aligning more fully:

Angel of Mercy – In the gentlest way possible, please help me to feel, heal and release old patterns and ways of being; limiting thoughts and ideas about:

Myself, about Life, about Health, about Abundance, about Love, about Living, etc. (add anything here you are working with).  Thank you.

I hope this helps you (as it helps me) to stay present, be aware and live from the depths of your heart.