Caught in a Trap?

What trap or traps are you caught in?

In one way or another everyone is.

Some don’t ‘think’ so or realise they’re trapped, but most of us do believe we’re in some sort of ‘trap’

For the last 60 years I’ve been helping people ‘spring’ their traps, escape from whatever was holding them back. Sometimes the people I helped thought they were in a particular trap when in truth they were really in a different trap of which they weren’t aware.

Some are in traps by choice and accept the constraints of the trap in exchange for the perceived benefit of being there. Sometimes a ‘trap’, like ‘change’ is thrust upon us as we feel we have no alternative, like a lobster after the bait in a pot, if we want to get where we want to but enter the trap.

Although we’re all in them, myself included, you and I can do without traps.

Here’s how – my thesis anyway.

As I said, I’ve helped hundreds of people out of traps, but I’ve been in a few by choice or by accident many times myself.
The trick is to be able to recognise a trap when, or preferably before, you see it but also to be aware other people, and I’m not sure if I know it’s ‘most’ or ‘some’, are attempting, knowingly or unconsciously, to entice you or I into a trap of their device which will, according to their belief, be for their benefit rather than ours.

Of course they may not, or probably not, see it in this way. They may think they’re doing something for you or I and I suppose I might even fall into that category myself. Am I building a trap?

There are a whole bunch of different types, colours and flavours of trap. Which are – or might – you be in? This may need some thinking about!

The most obvious is probably the financial trap – it does tend to make itself felt when we’re in it! Then we have emotional, relationship, societal and belief traps. Sometimes these are clear, sometimes hidden, and these are most likely to be the traps we’re unaware of.

On the other hand, if you know how, they’re not difficult to uncover. I’ve done it for many people and yes, you do need someone else to point these things out!

Then there are ‘accidental’ traps, usually not of our own making which we fall into even though we may often ‘see them coming’.

There is another side to the coin. Traps aren’t necessarily a ‘bad’ thing or a bad idea; sometimes they can provide protection or ‘insulation’ both against malevolent traps set by other people and more insidious, less recognisable societal and cultural traps.

You and I aren’t ‘trap proof’ – if we think we are then we’re in another trap. We’re trapped by our limiting beliefs, the counter productive ideas we were brought up with at home and at school, and the delusions promoted by social and mainstream media.

This has been just a brief outline of a very complex area of thought, encompassing as it does every aspect of life. Unpacking it is a bit like the Gordian Knot but is different in that it isn’t impossible. To understand where we are in the matrix of traps, we, me included, need help, as it’s only by someone else looking at the outside to see how the knot can be unravelled.