As you come to know your self better, and the imperatives which drive your conscience, you begin seeking ways to break from commitments which don’t match. The process tends to be quite painful for most, particularly at first.
The single greatest obstruction will be materialism. No one says you have to divest yourself from every single material possession, only those which interfere with the process. Those which are necessary or useful to the process you should keep until events beyond your control take them. That means events which do not depend on your imperatives, which you should not try to control, also. As the process rolls on, the imperatives will speak more clearly on material goods and you will find yourself quick to drop anything which simply does not help, regardless of the value your fellow prisoners place on it.
But it’s not just material objects, it’s a whole host of relationships, habits, default choices, and so on. At some advanced point, you’ll be able to discern when any of those things is neutral, and you’ll know how to treat it so. But at first, just about everything not actively useful is probably harmful. No one can decide this for you. Shedding hindrances is like shedding shackles which make prison worse than it has to be.
Buried in those imperatives you will eventually find something which calls to your resources on behalf of others. This is more difficult especially for those who have always thought they were doing good for others in the first place. You have a great deal to unlearn about that. The most important help you can offer anyone, and by extension everyone, is simply acting on your imperatives. The greatest harm you can do is substituting someone else’s imperatives for your own. But if you can’t find a place where others matter, then you aren’t free yet.
Your abilities and resources are shaped by your destiny. The vast majority never come close to their destiny, so they die in prison. Your destiny is freedom on whatever terms are built into your character. In a sense, you don’t steer a single thing; you simply place yourself in the stream, and things will draw you forward to that destiny.
Prison is a living organism, the warden is a being actively and intelligently seeking to keep you blind and locked down. By the same token, your destiny is a living being. Again, you can imbue it with all sorts of flavors and traits, and none of them will quite fit, but that your destiny is alive and self-aware will become obvious if you are breaking free. It wants you alive, sane and wide open to the existence for which we were designed. It works out entirely organically, and actually requires very little active struggle, aside from the struggle to suppress the lies which keep you bound.
Thus, it should be obvious why you end up caring about others, because any Being who wants you free surely wants that for others. You must accept the burden of acting on your destiny as the one and only means to helping. Once you are free, you can afford to care, even when you are utterly powerless to actually do or say anything. Be sure you understand that the ability hate any other person is a prime effect of bondage.
Distrust is not the same thing, since you can’t even trust yourself, when it comes right down to it. A healthy distrust is simply cutting away the expectancy of support from another, not allowing anyone’s failure to change your commitments, and certainly not shaking your sense of freedom. The point is you aren’t wrapped up in commitments to things and mere ideas, but commitment only to your destiny, your imperatives. There are no goals, only processes, and how you deal with other prisoners is a critical element of your destiny. You offer your concern for their welfare within the bounds of your imperatives, regardless of what you can do, because the only thing you can give them that really matters is that sense of sharing their sorrows, their bondage, as you feel your own. Their response is their own problem, not yours.
You won’t need stuff nearly so much, because you’ll be free and powerful by what cannot be taken from you.
