Eleven years ago I read a story that changed my life forever, for the better. It’s a story about liberation and it rocked me to my core.
The Prisoner In The Dark Cave (Parable)
There once was a man who was sentenced to die. He was blindfolded and put in a pitch dark cave. He was told that there was a way out of the cave, and if he could find it, he was a free man.
After a rock was secured at the entrance to the cave, the prisoner was allowed to take his blindfold off and roam freely in the darkness. He was to be fed only bread and water for the first 30 days and nothing thereafter. The bread and water were lowered from a small hole in the roof at the south end of the cave. The ceiling was about 18 feet high. The opening was about one foot in diameter. The prisoner could see a faint light up above, but no light came into the cave.
As the prisoner roamed and crawled around the cave, he bumped into rocks. Some were rather large. He thought if he could build a mound of rocks and dirt that was high enough, he could reach the opening and enlarge it enough to crawl through and escape. Since he was 5’9”, and his reach was another two feet, the mound had to be at least 10 feet high..
So the prisoner spent his waking hours picking up rocks and digging up dirt. At the end of two weeks, he had built a mound of about six feet. He thought that if he could duplicate that in the next two weeks, he could make it before the food ran out. But as he had already used most of the rocks in the cave, he had to dig harder and harder. He had to do the digging with his bare hands. After a month had passed, the mound was 9 ½ feet high and he could almost reach the opening if he jumped. He was exhausted and extremely weak.
One day just as he thought he could touch the opening, he fell. He was simply too weak to get up, and in two days he died. His captors came to get his body. They rolled away the huge rock that covered the entrance. As the light flooded into the cave, it illuminated an opening in the wall of the cave about three feet in circumference.
The opening was the passage to freedom the prisoner had been told about. He had so completely focused on the opening of light that it never occurred to him to look for freedom in the darkness. Liberation was there all the time right next to the mound he was building, but it was in the darkness..
–Parable found via John Bradshaw’s Healing the shame that binds you
At the time my life looked good on paper. I had a high paying job, money in savings, no debt and good friends.
But truth be told I wasn’t happy on the inside. In fact I was pretty darn miserable.
There were parts of my life that were calling for expansion yet I wasn’t doing anything about it. I wasn’t going for my dreams or exploring new things. I wasn’t embracing the unknown or living without limits.
In fact it was the exact opposite. I was living a life of fear, playing it safe and settling for less.
I remember sitting there thinking to myself - Could I really find liberation by walking through my biggest fears? I’m scared but what’s the upside of staying where I am?
I was thirty seven years old and for the first time in my life I felt real urgency. That’s when I did something I’ll never forget. I took my first steps into the unknown and up-leveled my life.
------------------------------------------
Is your life calling for expansion?
You don’t have to wait for a story like this to come along if you want change in your life. You just need to take a first step. Ask yourself – Am I willing to move the needle just 5% in the direction I want today?
If you are that’s great. If you aren’t, what’s getting in the way? How would your life be different if you did take that first step?
A lot of people say they want change yet they keep doing what they’ve always done. Remember, if nothing changes then nothing changes. Or as Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got.”
Learning to love the space between where are you are and where you want to be is a life altering journey. So go looking. Try things you’ve never tried before. Your life WILL expand.
Love,
Zachary