Breaking Free from the Prison We've Come to Know as Home

The Audiovisual Version of this article is available you Youtube.

Many of us carry a generational script: “life is hard.” And while that may be an honest reflection of one’s experience, if we are not careful, we can become ambassadors of hardship. Exhibiting our pain becomes a way to prove we exist—a statement and a plea to be recognized. We perform our wounds—not always to manipulate, but because being seen is survival. We cling to suffering like it’s a passport—proof that we’ve earned our place here. 

In contrast, peace, serenity, and joy can stir suspicion, for in order to embody these qualities, we are required to abandon a system that only knows how to run on distress. But who were we before pain became the price of admission to belong? As J.Krishnamurti wisely stated, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society.” But how do we unplug from a sick society without also erasing ourselves from the world? In a society where drama holds the most currency, suffering becomes the stage upon which sense of self is affirmed. 

So let's unpack this dilemma systematically…

We are living in the wake of widespread disillusionment—a time in which the emotional body—our capacity to feel and express has been systemically denied, distorted and pathologized for centuries. But what is denied does not disappear. It gathers force. It returns—louder, deeper, and more urgent.

Usually the emotional body is associated with the feminine form, calling forth a fight to be heard amongst this gender. However this view has proven to create further divisiveness and for this reason alone, is still missing the mark. Instead, I invite a new question: What are we actually reclaiming and from whom? Why insist on being seen within a system that lacks the emotional structure to hold the totality of who we are? Why fight for a seat at a table where unwholesome food is being served? Perhaps this is what it means to be a renunciate: to walk away—not in defeat, but in clarity—recognizing the inevitable barriers to one’s growth when the environmental conditions are lacking are the nutrients needed to thrive.  

The irony is that every time we claim our right to belong within this system, we are in a way,  claiming our right to suffer. To be acknowledged within this system, we must agree to having problems. In this way, we cling to an identity and sense of belonging in the world that is melded to pain, hardship and complaint. We decorate it. We defend it, and call it home.

The monastics have long seen through this mistaken pursuit: the struggle of existence being both tragic and absurd. Like trying to grasp a cloud, we labor to possess what was never meant to be held, but only witnessed as phenomena that arises and passes.  This fundamental reorientation from holding onto objects to observing the nature of impermanence, characterizes one element of “right view” and is essential to alleviation of suffering. Awareness of impermanence also brings about awareness of the unsatisfactory nature in one’s futile attempt to catch clouds mistakenly viewed as objects. 

As Ajhan Chah once famously said, “Joy at last, there is no happiness in the world”. If we are to embrace joy without fear of collapse, we must begin to untether the threads of consciousness knotted around systems that have disabled our capacity to realize that joy is not found out there but is a symptom of a liberated mind. Within this realization, we can begin to reclaim what we believed to be lost or stolen.

When peace feels like erasure, joy feels like betrayal, and rest feels like exile—you know you’ve been taught to fear your own liberation. Ironically, such natural states like serenity, joy, and peace, are chained to experiences of punishment, rejection, and neglect. We may remember being looked at suspiciously, judgement or disgust in response to our authentic self-expression. We may remember our joy being remarked as offensive with respect to the template of emotional experience we are ought to exhibit as a sign of respect - obedient and shameful. 

However vast and all-encompassing these systemic overheads may seem, they cannot truly disable us—only render us temporarily clumsy, distracted or disoriented—like being spun around ferociously and then given the impossible task of walking in a straight line. Before we take that first step, it is essential that we find our center again. To build inner structures that stabilize rather than destabilize, that orient rather than scatter our attention. And the first step? Recognizing the mental fabrications that inhibit self-agency and consciously choose to step away from the ideologies that keeps us off balance.

To ground this insight, it's useful to acknowledge the very real and growing problem that we live in a world where many people find joy difficult to access. Why is it that such an emotion feels unreasonable—or even provokes guilt? This aversion to joy didn’t arise in a vacuum but reflects the residue of disillusionment, traced back to a time when suffering was the marker of one’s faith in God. A time where the image of Christ’s crucifixion became a model of spiritual devotion. This wasn’t just theology—it was history’s most effective marketing campaign. Pain sold obedience, leaving people with a choiceless choice: only those who suffer are worthy of redemption.

Jesus dead on the cross became the visual template for how humanity would come to approach their lives and prove themselves worthy of entering the gates of heaven. The message was clear: pain proves loyalty. Those who embraced suffering were seen as trustworthy while those who were joyful without reason were seen to be standing in opposition to the image of God.  

In contemporary society, we continue to live in the shadows of this story, believing even if subtly, that suffering is a testimony to one’s virtue and faith in the higher power. No misery, no entry into heaven. With stakes this high, it’s no wonder suffering was viewed as a wise choice.

But now, we can choose differently.

Upon recognizing the fallacy of this view, we can awaken from perhaps the greatest collective delusion in human history. And yet, as this narrative runs so deep in the strata of the collective mind, we are likely unaware of how much it still shapes the quality of our emotional structure. 

With awareness, we gain access to choices once hidden under the blanket of false view. We see it for what it is: a survival story—not a truth. Those who refuse to suffer aren’t avoiding emotional depth. They’re reclaiming the self that existed before guilt, shame, and obligation shaped its contents. 

This is why I’ve found refuge in the Buddhist path, for it does not romanticize pain or glorify suffering. It does not make cryptic promises about salvation through anguish, but rather gives clear and practical instruction for understanding the causes of suffering—and the way out. On the contrary, the teachings of the Buddha, bring the gift of disenchantment, which seems so relevant given the seductive spells that have narrowed awareness of one’s true potential. The path re-establishes joy, serenity, and freedom—not as rewards, but as the natural state of an unburdened mind.

In this path, we are not only giving up delusion, but all the emotional hindrances that are born out of delusion. As a result, many of us may begin to fear losing our grip on this physical plane, since there are no heavy disturbances that weigh us to this realm. To unhook ourselves from these heavy feelings, can feel like turning away from life itself. We may begin to ask ourselves: “If I’m not suffering, do I even exist?”

And in a way, this is a valid question.

In Buddhist cosmology, the Human Realm is described as living on the midpoint between suffering and liberation. This is because humans possess the unique capacity to contemplate their own existence and make skillful choices through reflection and discernment. As such, letting go of suffering also means releasing what tethers us to the wheel of life and the engine of karma that causes seizeless rebirth. Letting go steers us beyond the human experience—where we trade depth for vastness, entering a relationship with life that expands rather than narrows.

From this insight, we can see how Buddhism challenges the  idea of “home,” which more conventionally can be understood as that which is most familiar. But as many of us have come to realize, what is most familiar, is not necessarily what is most beneficial. We return to the familiar because it signals an emotional climate we’ve come to recognize as self.  What is instinctual is what we call home. 

On the contrary, the Buddhist view invites us to turn away from the instinctual home that is made up of coarse emotional experiences and move towards more subtle and refined experiences that characterize the evolved self. Evolving requires leaving behind what we have come to know as home. 

In closing the door to what is familiar, we open a new door to a pristine inner palace, undisturbed by the emotional hindrances and mental clutter that once filled the space. To make this journey, we again need to remind ourselves of the ideological structures we’ve built around “home,” “self,” and what is real, and recognize the ways we may be choosing to inhabit chaos in order to belong to a world shaped by it. 

From the insights given in this discourse, we can see how the simple act of letting go of suffering is not that simple. At the same time, by naming the systemic structures that have been woven into our psyche, we can begin to untie ourselves from the psychological knots that have us fighting not so much from the wound, but for the wound. We are to recognize how we are campaigning for our hardships in the name of reclaiming our sense of belonging in the world. Again, we can ask ourselves: Why fight for a seat at the table that is serving unwholesome food? If belonging in this world requires the exclusion of our true nature, then perhaps opting out is actually the way home. 

For the last 2000 years, we’ve aligned ourselves with struggle in hopes of earning our place here. We’ve calcified identities around wounds and believed exhaustion was proof of our devotion. While humanity may find itself perched between heaven and hell, we’ve certainly tilted toward hell, all the while believing we are leaning the other way. But as we know by now, we’ve got our wires crossed. 

When freed from the burden of false view, the emotional body becomes a vessel for insight. It no longer needs to testify its pain in order to be here. The paradox is this: the less we try to prove we exist, the more fully we arrive - not to the home we have come to know, but the home that has no walls. 

As we learn to unhook ourselves from the story of me, we become unburdened by a need to justify our existence within an emotional structure too too narrow to hold the vastness of who we really are. When freed from conditioning, the emotional body becomes sensitive and responsive without being reactive.  It no longer needs to defend itself because it knows that “defence is the first act of war” (Byron Katie). 

So ask yourself,  When I stop fighting for my suffering, do I lose myself—or do I return to what’s been buried beneath the need to survive?

And finally, what if my choice to feel unreasonable joy was the greatest way I can reclaim not necessarily my place in the world, but a realization of my true nature?

Key Insights

• Suffering is not proof of existence—it’s the shadow of forgotten joy.

• Peace shouldn’t feel like erasure—unless your identity is built on pain.

• You don’t belong at a table that serves unwholesome food.

• The true renunciate walks away not in defeat, but to seek more wholesome food.

• We can think we are healing our pain when really we are defending it.

• Sometimes when we speak from the wound we end up speaking for the wound.

• We decorate our wounds and call them home.

• Home in the conventional sense, is inhabiting the emotional structure we have come to know as self. 

• We’ve campaigned for our suffering, mistaking it for our seat at the table.

• Joy is not found; it is remembered in the absence of false view.

• Unreasonable joy may be the most radical act of reclaiming your true nature.

• When we stop performing pain, we return to presence

• The less we try to prove we exist, the more fully we arrive.

• Why fight to belong to a system built on exclusion? 

• Defence is the first act of war (Byron Katie) 

  
  

These questions are ideal for reflection, journaling, or meditation.

1. What am I defending when I cling to my pain?

2. Do I feel suspicious of joy—and if so, why?

3. When did suffering become the price of admission to belong?

4. Have I mistaken familiarity for safety?

5. Is my identity shaped more by my wounds than my essence?

6. What emotional templates have I inherited, and are they still useful?

7. Do I seek validation through hardship because that’s how love was earned?

8. Who was I before pain shaped my emotional landscape?

9. How could I be fighting for my suffering without realizing?

10. Am I decorating my prison and calling it a sanctuary?

11. What would it feel like to belong without suffering?

12. Where in my life have I confused protection with imprisonment?

13. If I let go of my suffering, what part of me do I fear will disappear?

14. What ideologies keep me from accessing joy freely?

15. What is my true nature beyond survival?

If you have enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with your friends.

Luna Feyth