One of the barriers to change of any kind is the rut of the Mind.
It’s such a familiar way of perceiving your environment that you stop noticing it. Like the young fish who, when an older fish asked "So, how's the water today?", looked puzzled: "What water?"
You think, feel, and act only this way. Suggest shifting your perspective just a little, and the response is confusion: "What do you mean, differently? Isn't this obvious to everyone?" Then comes irritation, anger, and so on.
How do you create the perfect drama? Trap everyone in a circle. The vigilant prison guard and the escaping prisoner live inside the same mind.
The most dangerous prison has no concrete walls or steel bars. A man draws a line in the sand himself: “You can’t go any farther. Besides, I don’t even want to.”
This becomes visible during guided imagery sessions, where the design of the exercise places no limits on participants' imagination whatsoever.
And yet you suddenly hit what feels like a glass wall — unable to do something that others, or even everyone else, can do freely. Why?
The analysis that follows helps bring to light a pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, the conditions that trigger it, and its hidden meaning. What now blocks you so painfully may once have saved you.
But to truly grasp an insight, you have to endure the discomfort of Nothingness. The transition only happens when you let go of the old vine to reach for the new one.
That means you need an environment where it's safe to be in that critical moment. Someone more experienced and mature holds the perimeter and takes care of you.
Then your chances of crossing the threshold of the River of Life safely become much higher.
Throughout history, Ritual helped people do exactly this.
Until modern man decided it was all nonsense and superstition.
And ever since, he’s been getting hopelessly stuck where nothing is actually holding him.
There’s nothing worse than blocking the flow of Being with your own body.
Why create and maintain Hell with your own hands?
There’s good news, too.
Turning a tragic situation around doesn’t require sacrifice or superhuman effort.
You can begin by accumulating experiences of “mad” being:
engaging creative work of any kind,
deep play,
genuine love,
a profound ordeal,
contemplating Beauty,
authentic prayer,
a living encounter with the Other,
voluntary uncertainty,
symbolic work (dreams, active imagination, guided imagery),
ritual.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.
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