The Walls We Build
We are the architects of our own suffering. With every thought, every judgment, every opinion, we lay brick upon brick, erecting the walls that box us in from adaptability and the possible depths of experience. These walls aren’t built by the world itself but from within, fashioned by the stories we tell ourselves (i.e. this should not have happened, this needs to happen, I can’t lose this, I want, I need.)
We don’t see the futility of our labor. The world drifts and shifts like sand beneath our foundation, yet we toil to build structure atop it. The bricks of judgment are mortared together with fear, anger, and desire, in endless striving.
When cracks appear, as they inevitably do, we scramble to patch them, blaming the wind, the rain, or the eroding earth beneath, never pausing to evaluate the construction itself.
This fortress we build becomes a prison. Its walls narrow our vision, cutting us off from the boundless expanse that life truly is. The suffering we sought to keep out is the suffering we have surrounded ourselves with, ever-amplified by our resistance to it.
But what if we set down our tools? What if we stopped building? Just like we have walking the country, you’ll soon realize the fortress was never needed. The suffering we built it to repel was never outside, but we lost sight of this truth, imprisoned by walls with ever-fewer windows to reality.
If instead we let go of our desire to build these walls, they soon crumble above the changing surface of the world, and with them, the illusions that bind us. What remains is beautiful, boundless vision. Pure openness. A vast, unshaped space where we are no longer builders, but witnesses to a majesty we could never construct. We begin to flow within something greater than ourselves, the universal will, and its ceaseless, ever changing rhythm.
OUR will, the one that once sought to control, only finds harmony, fulfillment, and contentment in letting go. The self that once clung to its illusions dissolves and crumbles alongside the ruins of our fabrications, revealing a deeper truth. We were never separate from the world, nor isolated within our walls. We are as much a part of this universe as the wind, the rain, and the erosive earth.
Set down the tools of contrivance. Cease laboring for naught. Let the walls fall or deconstruct them yourself. Then step into openness; let go of attachment, and you will see: with nothing of your own, you are wealthier than you could have otherwise ever been.
Your qualities didn’t spring forth out of the ether. You are composed of universal qualities, qualities embodied by not only those around you, but by all that is around you, while being affected by and affecting all that you touch.
The underlying truth this points to, however, the one no one wants to hear… the architect must die for you to truly live beyond the walls.
