Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.

Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

Walls

Without reflection, without mercy, without shame,
they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about.

And now I sit here and consider and despair.

My brain is worn with meditating on my fate:
I had outside so many things to terminate.

Oh! why when they were building did I not beware!

But never a sound of building, never an echo came.
Out of the world, insensibly, they shut me out.

make sure
the walls
you build
to protect yourself
do not become a prison

I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.

Sometimes I wonder,” I said, “if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn’t make sure first that they can defend themselves.

Walls aren't put in our life to stop us, they are there to test how much we really want somthing.

Rather than going after these walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them, and smell them and get to know them well. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build these walls: what are the stories we tell ourselves? What repels me and what attracts me? Without calling what we see right or wrong, we simply look as objectively as we can. We can observe ourselves with humor, not getting overly serious, moralistic or uptight about the investigation. Year after year, we train in remaining open and receptive to whatever arises. Slowly, very slowly, the cracks in the walls seem to widen and, as if by magic, bodhichitta is able to flow freely.

what I wanted
was to be willing
to be afraid

When I got the chance
I asked them a slew of questions.
They offered to burn me;
it was the only thing they knew.

Because your self-preservation instinct keeps telling you, “Unless you have walls you are not safe,” unconsciously you keep building them. Later, you struggle with them. This is an endless cycle. But creation is not unwilling to open to you the doors to the beyond. It is not creation’s unwillingness that you are struggling with. You are struggling with the walls of resistance that you have built around yourself.

We think walls protect us from enemies, but walls are what create enemies in the first place.

My guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect...

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?