As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped; confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a rope tied to their front leg – no chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at any time, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. I wondered, that huge creature can pick up two thousand pounds with its trunk, yet it calmly stays tied by a rope. Why? 

I saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.

“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them to an iron stake that could not be moved and, at that age, it’s strong enough to hold them. Regardless of how hard it tried, it could not break the rope and run free. After a while it just gave up. 

“Later, when it becomes strong, it never attempts to break free. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. The “imprint” is permanent. “I can’t! I can’t!’ it says. They believe the rope can still hold them and even though they are strong enough to break away, they never try to break free.”

I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

There are millions of people who behave like these elephants. They have been conditioned to think “I’ll never make it,” so many times, that they finally call it quits. They may have dreams, but the “imprinting” keeps pulling them back.

Our mind is being continuously conditioned by so many factors, right from our birth, to such an extent that when we function in this world, we are unable to breakthrough these conditioning’s and end up functioning within the limitations set by our own mental conditioning’s. They are the cause of us being stagnant in our progress and development and we continue being miserable. We need to de-condition the mind and discard mental blocks.

Similarly, the so-called bondage of a finite and limited existence – limited by space, time and causation – is also a conditioning we have imagined on ourselves. We need to break out of this conditioning and be the eternal, Infinite, Pure Blissful Self, which is and have always been our essential nature.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he thinks he is not and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he thinks he is.

Today, let us eliminate the source of our limitations. When we mentally break free, the boundaries will be removed from our future.