Trapped by Fear

Question

I feel trapped in a hellish existence with no way out. The more I try to get free, the further away liberation seems. Even suicide seems like a dead end (no pun intended). Why doesn't my Higher Self help out? I feel so abandoned and uncared for? I thought my Higher Self was supposed to be loving!

Answer

One way to understand your predicament is that you are like a wounded animal caught in a trap, in that the more you struggle against the tools of your imprisonment, the more pain and suffering you generally create for yourself. Fortunately, a Supreme Loving being is ever by your side - constantly seeking to set you free by the grace of its pure goodness.

Rarely though, are you able to take advantage of such high assistance. Like most of the human race, you reflexively struggle and contract against its liberating embrace (believing, at some level, it is there to add even more pain and suffering to your already vulnerable state).

Such misguided fear comes from the widely held (primarily subconscious) belief that God set such traps in the first place. In reality, Divine Forces merely set you free to explore this exciting playground of dense, material manifestation (what you presently call earth). Over time, it was the ego-centered part of you, both individually and collectively (as part of the human race), that created the increasingly sophisticated range of traps that humans now regularly encounter.

Those traps initially looked like very grand creations. Filled with seductive ideas, intoxicating feelings and alluring manifestations, you felt drawn to explore them more and more deeply. Not surprisingly, the more time you spent exploring such creations and the deeper you delved into them, the more ensnaring they became until at some point you ended up in your current predicament - completely boxed-in with no apparent way out.

Ironically, that is the good news. It means you are nearing the end of a highly constrained (ego-centered) existence and are getting ready to move into something much more compelling and expansive. The first step towards that new reality requires allowing Divine Presence to draw near so that it can tenderly release you from your current bonds as well as safely guide you homeward.

Generally, there are two ways this comes about. You either continue to flail and struggle against your trap until you tire yourself out so completely that you no longer have the energy or the will to resist such Loving aid or you actively strengthen your trust in Higher Forces to such a degree that you can calmly allow their assistance. As you can imagine, the first method is the hard way - resulting in significantly more pain, trauma (and even boredom) over a much longer period of time.

Either way, liberation from your hellish existence only comes about through Divine Grace. You can never personally free yourself from your own trap, because the only tools you have at hand are by nature enslaving. Something beyond and much more powerful must come into play.

Fortunately, opening up to such higher power requires only one thing - surrender. Not simply surrender to your circumstances as they appear to be (which reinforces the long, hard path of resignation and ultimate defeat), but trust-filled surrender to a Loving reality that has yet to be experienced by you in human form. Belief in such far-reaching Love has the power to magically free you from any prison - even one as stubborn and tenacious as the present one of your own making!