the keeper of the keys

when we are our own jailor and bailiff

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Diamond-Michael Scott

aka The Chocolate Taoist

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In life, we are both the sculptor and the stone, the weaver and the thread. We traverse this existence cloaked in the illusion of external chains, mistaking the shadows on the wall for the bars of our confinement. 

Yet, as Lao Tzu whispered through the veils of time, the greatest prisons are those we build within, with our own thoughts as the bricks and our fears as the mortar.

So let me boil it down…… 

…….I believe that we are our own jailor and bailiff, sentencing ourselves to the dungeons of doubt and despair. We cling to these chains as if they were amulets of protection, each link forged from the molten fire of our conditioning. 

The desires for approval, security, and certainty crystallize into iron bars, invisible yet unyielding, until we forget that the lock was fashioned by our own hand.

In the Tao Te Ching, it is written: “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.” And yet, how tightly we grip the illusions of control and permanence, not realizing that in grasping, we become entangled in our own web, a spider trapped in a snare of its own making. 

We project our freedom onto the world outside, demanding that it conform to our will, while we relinquish the only true freedom there is: the sovereignty of our inner realm.

Like Zhuangzi’s butterfly, dreaming of a man, we flit between the realms of illusion and reality, unsure which is the dream and which is the dreamer. 

The cage we inhabit is woven from our unexamined beliefs and unchallenged habits. We pace within, cursing the heavens, unaware that the key dangles around our neck, within easy reach if we dare to look inward.

In the libertarian tradition, freedom is a birthright, the sovereignty of the individual standing as a bulwark against the encroachment of the state. Yet, how often do we surrender this birthright, not to a tyrant king or overreaching government, but to the insidious despotism of our own mind? We abdicate our throne, becoming subjects of our compulsions, prisoners of our own making.

The ancients knew that true liberation is not bestowed, but discovered. It is not won through battle or decree, but through the quiet alchemy of self-inquiry and inner stillness. 

In the Taoist way, we find that freedom is not the absence of restrictions, but the transcendence of them. To flow like water, to bend and yield without breaking, this is the freedom of the sage who has made peace with his own nature.

Personal sovereignty begins with the recognition that we are both the captor and the captive. To see the bars, not as a punishment, but as a mirror reflecting our deepest fears and desires. 

Each barrier, each wall, is an invitation to ask: Who built this? For what purpose? And, more importantly, who holds the key?

The Sage understands that the only true authority is the one we grant ourselves. Like the puma, moving through the wilderness with silent grace, we must reclaim our wildness, our untamed essence, beyond the fences of societal expectation and self-imposed limitation. To stand in the fullness of our being is to embrace the paradox that in yielding, we become unbreakable; in surrendering, we are freed.

To live as a sovereign soul is not to shun the world, but to dance with it, unencumbered by the need to possess or control. It is to recognize that the only prison is the one we refuse to see, and the only liberation is the courage to turn the key and walk into the unknown.

Thus, the Tao teaches us to live without the fetters of mind and heart, to move with the currents of life, unbound and unafraid. For when we dissolve the boundaries within, the world outside becomes a vast, open field, where the only limit is the horizon of our own imagination.

We are the keeper of the keys, the architects of our own emancipation. The question remains: Will we choose to turn the lock and step into the boundless freedom that awaits, or will we remain in the comfort of our familiar chains, gazing longingly at the sky, dreaming of the flight that could be ours if only we dared?

The choice, as always, is ours.