#2: The Discipline of Desire

Every cage eventually teaches its captives to see growth, mastery and possibility as the bars of the cage. Where they shift from rebelling against the cage’s structure to mastering the conditions that keeps them safe and nurtured within the cage. To articulating the rules of meaning within the cage, to becoming the poster child for excellence and growth within the cage. To also see their now seamless compliance to the rules of the cage as proof of purity, of wisdom, of discipline and of strength. And to see others who are still not compliant as untamed, as less-than, as weak and as morally inferior.

The cage here is not literal. It speaks to the cage of our thinking, built by the infrastructure of our information diet and tamed by the cruelty of systemic-induced necessities.

It is the cage that doesn’t just convince us that freedom is reckless but totally shifts our understanding of what freedom is; such that our so-called advancement is masked under the guise of self-improvement.

We are deluded by the sales-pitch of freedom and if we ever have a moment of awakening, we wonder why we do not feel free.

Eventually, we stop calling it a cage and start calling it a system, a career, a purpose. Because the human mind must construct meaning. We must attach even foolish pain to a greater good…to a “God knows best” moment. It is this attachment that makes the cage even more sacred, even more functional.

And finally, the cage doesn’t need to persuade us to stay because now we think it is our choice after all. But is it though?

I’ve often asked those within my church community why they claim to serve God and while this question strokes our sense of morality. It reveals that in truth, we are domesticated by the cage. Our thinking, our wanting, and our knowing is bordered by a rehearsed need to stay in the cage.

When we inquire what success means to us, we are not defining. We are not seeing. We are regurgitating the desires we’ve been disciplined to have so we can “excel” within the cage. And to excel isn’t one we define. It’s one that is defined for us through the lens of another. So we are not who we are, we are who we are based on who they are.

Just take a look at trends, look at our fashion choices, our health choices, our lifestyle choices, even our so-called desires; Can we say that it’s really ours or are we looped into the matrix of collective desire?

When we allude to being the “highest” or “best” version of ourselves, what images convey this context? Is it ours or is it absorbed through modern propaganda? Is it a vision or a template?

If we truly look, we’d find that we do not imagine who we could be, we download it. The very metric of our advancement is doctored by the cage. Even our sense of progress is preprogrammed, designed to reward compliance with the illusion of evolution. We chase improvement, but the compass is fixed to the system’s own coordinates. We do not transform, we simply move through the conditioned logic. Optimized enough for high-performance but not nearly enough for true transformation.

And yet, in the subtlety of this captivity, genius within would yet beckon, often, taking the shape of disorientation or a crisis of meaning. But well, what can the conditioned mind do but act within the codes of its conditioning? So we see it simply as an opportunity for rebranding to service yet our allegiance to the cage. We reinvent still within the same framework—ever moving, never truly moving forward. And we call it purpose.

We don’t even know what we want anymore; we just recognize the emblems of “quality experience” and aspire to possess them. Not knowing who we are, we envy and strive for the trinkets of pursuits we do not truly desire. But we call it goal-getting. We call it ambition. We assume improvement and spend our lives “finding ourselves” without ever leaving the coordinates of who we think we should be.

And because the cage rewards effort and compliance, we experience the evidence of our pursuit and mistake our systemic compliance for growth. At least, we are better than others. And that’s precisely the idea; the illusion of difference —that we are better based on the rewards we can command in the cage.

This logic eats itself up when we recognize that our goalpost keeps shifting. That we are continually seeking an experience that always has a later date. That our accumulation is not enough; only relevant for proof that the cage is real and it works. Only relevant for submission, for compliance and for the illusion of dominance. Just functional enough to make us feel grateful.

Where it gets interesting is the cage produces two kinds of people; the one who mastered the system so much they become one with it and therefore, enjoy the rewards of the system. And, the ones who only work hard within the system, do not or have not mastered the system, so do not enjoy its rewards.

It’s an interesting arrangement because the first category serve as proof that the system works while the second, serve as evidence that the system is superior. But, neither is truly free. It’s like that guy who runs the prison block, gets all the incentive but still is within the four walls of the prison.

Now, here’s where the plot thickens. We are not unaware of the existence of this cage or matrix or system. No, we are not. We’ve been told enough to make us feel like we’ve transcended it. And we believe it.

In fact, our attempts to escape this cage only shows how deep it goes. From coaching to personal development to manifestation theories, we are handed a manual for navigating the cage under the illusion of transcendence. Apply it well enough and you’d have mastered the system but disciplined the self.

And the logic is simple: to have, you must first start from being, then doing. A true model for evolution; backed by science, scripture and of course—the cage. Because the cage doesn’t negate consciousness. It simply conditions it.

But here’s the pressing point. It is the idea that the very construct of this framework still functions with the same fundamental consumer logic. That is, HAVING.

So manifestation gurus who present a better way to “escape the matrix” still teach you to “align your energy to attract what you want”. But there is the problem. The matrix does not prevent you from having what you want. It only prevents you from seeing what you are. Because what you can want is already templated. So the matrix needs you to want or else, how does it uphold itself?

The logic should be simple but it isn’t because the domestication of our perspective already conditions us not to SEE or make SENSE of our reality outside of having. So having becomes the point.

Now, this is not a case against having but a revelation of the idea that our conditioned perspective of life is fundamentally about moving from lack to fullness, from incompleteness to completion, from inadequacy to enoughness. That there’s something to get. That you can “be anything,” but the metric of being must be externally defined.

This is the logic. It is consumer logic. The captive no longer needs the captor to hand out its reward, he learns to manifest it. To get it anyway. To call it into being through effort, hustle and faith in the system’s invisible order (oh, you can replace hustle with religious faith). But the reward remains the axis of meaning. He becomes his own captor.

Notice how we’ve built entire industries around liberation and empowerment. We’ve learned to say the right words about inner work, success, and authentic living. But watch closely: these too are organized around having. Having peace. Having alignment. Having the right energy. Having ourselves figured out. It’s fundamental insufficiency disguised as empowerment.

Being becomes the foundation we build so we can eventually have. It’s still outcome-based. Still oriented toward somewhere else, someone else, some future version of ourselves that will finally be enough.

Continually this ruptures. The system glitches. We realize that we want something “more,” but we have no discipline of thought to sit with ourselves enough to see who we truly are. To imagine what could be outside the template of the system’s defined excellence. To define what more is without externalizing it to reward, recognition, or the symbols of religion. To grapple with the complexity of our formless knowing. Not trying to truncate it to feature what is familiar.

And finally, more becomes recycled captivity. A pathetic attempt to remain validated, relevant and rewarded within a system where your consciousness has been held captive. In advancement or our so-called religious proclamation of “the will of God,” our desires are disciplined to ensure compliance to the system’s constraint.

We are not restrained, we are directed. We are not held down, we are funneled forward. We are blinded—not by bars or chains, but by the very architecture that structures desire, attention, and meaning.

Perhaps this is the ultimate subtlety: the cage no longer merely constrains, it orients. It shapes the trajectory of aspiration, the grammar of purpose, and the very categories by which we measure ourselves.

The question of how to live here; inside the cage yet unclaimed by it, will have to wait. Before we can live differently, we must first endure the un-ease of realizing how completely we’ve called captivity home.