In the first part of our investigation, we stood inside the prison of fear and discovered a startling truth: the prison wasn't built by some external monster. The walls, the bars, the locks—they were all forged in the workshop of our own minds, using the blueprints of Thought itself. This leaves us with a profound dilemma, the ultimate escape artist's paradox. If the prison is made of thought, how can we escape? We can’t just stop thinking. So how do you unlock a door when the lock and the key are made of the very same material?

It feels like an impossible riddle. But the answer is both simpler and more profound than you might imagine. It doesn't involve fighting, suppressing, or even changing our thoughts. It involves a fundamental shift in our relationship to them.

The First Move: You Are Not the Tool

When faced with painful, anxious thoughts, our first instinct is to ask, “If I shouldn't use this thought, what should I use instead? Positive affirmations? Distraction? Willpower?” This is the wrong question. It assumes we need to replace one mental tool with another, like trading a hammer for a wrench. The solution is not to find a better tool. It's to realize you were never the tool to begin with.

Imagine a master chef holding an incredibly sharp knife. The knife is a magnificent instrument, capable of creating works of art. But if the chef momentarily forgot herself and believed she was the knife, her existence would be a nightmare. The act of chopping would feel like a terrifying act of self-mutilation. Her power as a chef lies not in the knife itself, but in the crucial fact that she is the conscious, aware presence that can pick the knife up to use it skillfully, and then set it down when the task is done. We are the chef. Thought is our knife. The path to freedom lies not in finding a new tool, but in rediscovering our true identity as the user, not the used.

The Master Key: The Silent Space of Awareness

So who is this “chef”? Who are we, if not our thoughts? We are the Awareness in which all thoughts, feelings, and sensations appear and disappear. This isn't some mystical, far-out concept. It's the most intimate and immediate experience you have, yet it's almost always overlooked. It is the silent, changeless background upon which the noisy movie of your life plays out. Think of it like this: your thoughts and fears are the scenes in a movie. They can be thrilling, terrifying, sad, or joyful. We spend our lives believing we are the characters on screen, trapped in the drama, rising and falling with the plot. Our true nature, however, is the movie screen itself.

The screen is not affected by the fire in the movie. It is not wounded by the battles. It does not die when the hero dies. It is the silent, spacious, ever-present container for the entire show. The scenes appear on it, play out, and then disappear. The screen remains, untouched and unharmed. You are the screen. You are the sky, and fear is just a dark cloud passing through. You are not the cloud. The discovery of this simple, profound truth is the master key to your cell.

The solution isn't to break the lock, but to use the master key that changes our relationship to it. Great thought that I found: " The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is the silence the mind ". This thought is somehow assuming the same concept self and thoughts are different

The Three-Step Escape Plan

Knowing you are the screen is one thing; remembering it when the scary movie is playing is another. This requires a bit of practice. Here is the escape artist's three-step plan, a practical method you can use the very next time you feel the walls of fear closing in.

Step 1: Hear the Alarm
That familiar feeling—the tightness in your chest, the sinking in your stomach, the racing mind—is not the enemy. It is a friendly, non-judgmental alarm bell. Its only job is to inform you: “Attention: you have momentarily forgotten who you are. You have mistaken yourself for a character in the movie.” When the alarm goes off, your first job is to do nothing. Don't fight the feeling. Don't resist it. Simply acknowledge its presence without judgment. “Ah,” you can say to yourself, “there's the alarm. Thank you for the signal.”

Step 2: Take One Conscious Step Back
This is the critical move of dis-identification. You create a tiny sliver of space between you (the screen) and the thought (the movie). The most powerful way to do this is to simply change your internal language. It's a shift from being fused with the thought to becoming the observer of it.
For example, instead of thinking: “I am anxious.”
You mentally rephrase it to: “I notice a feeling of anxiety is present in my body. I am aware of the thought that says I might fail.”
Can you feel the immense difference? “I am anxious” is a statement of identity. It's a prison sentence. “I notice a feeling of anxiety” transforms you into the witness. You have just taken one step back from the thought and become the audience for the movie, not the victim in it. In this space, you can breathe. The fear's hypnotic spell is broken.

Step 3: Ask the Right Question
Now, from this place of calm, spacious awareness, you can choose to pick the tool of thought back up—but this time, consciously, like the chef picking up the knife. The question you ask is no longer contaminated by fear. Let's return to the entrepreneur who wants to become a billionaire and is paralyzed by fear. His old, fear-based question was: “How can I find the certain path to become a billionaire in two years?” This question demands certainty from an uncertain world and guarantees fear. From the space of the witness, he asks a new, liberated question: “What is one intelligent step I can take today that explores the direction of my goal, remaining open to where the process leads me?”

Living Outside the Walls: The Joy of Hit and Trial

This new question is revolutionary because it redefines 'failure' and fully embraces the messy, beautiful reality of hit and trial. The identified mind, the prisoner, sees every 'miss'—every step back from the goal—as a devastating blow to its story, as proof of its own inadequacy. But the aware mind, the 'chef', sees every miss as invaluable data. It's not a failure; it's a discovery: “Okay, that path doesn't work. I have now learned something crucial about the system.” This is the beauty of the process. Each hit-and-trial, especially the 'misses', refines our understanding. We gain priceless knowledge about the real-world territory, not just our imaginary map. With this new knowledge, our brain, the architect, can draw better, more accurate blueprints for the next step. The process becomes a powerful, exciting learning loop, not a terrifying tightrope walk. The fear of uncertainty vanishes, because the goal is no longer to perfectly execute a fictional plan, but to intelligently learn from unfolding reality. The answer is not in the destination; the answer is discovered in the process of taking the next step.

This practice is not about creating a life free from problems. It is about cultivating an inner state of freedom that is no longer dependent on external events. It is about reclaiming the immense energy we waste on the internal drama of fear and using it to create, love, solve, and live fully. Fear will still knock on your door. Anxious thoughts will still drift across your sky. But now, you don't have to believe you are the cloud. You can greet them at the door, see them for what they are, and let them pass by. You are the architect, not the prisoner. The day is yours to build. What will you create?

Part I