Has this thought crossed your mind, "How can I soar like an Eagle if I'm trapped like a Rat"? If this or something similar troubles you, it is very possible that you are in an Emotional Prison! Just like a four walls, barbed wire, locked up and armed guarded jail, it is possible for us to put ourselves in a prison where our innermost being is wedged in behind our own feelings. Over time a sense of a deep and internalized oppression grabs us, our lives feel like they are out of control. We start to act in violation of our beliefs and values. The emotional hole we are in gets deeper as we dig our way into what seems to be a bottomless pit. Eventually we arrive in a place where our emotions control us, we are in prison! Our behaviors have become obsessive or compulsive, and we may have developed addictions. Relationships around us are deteriorating and may have crumbled into the dust. Unknowingly we are hurting the people who we love or those that love us. Our walls have become things like anger, approval-seeking, or attention-getting. Our prison's barbed wire is the messages that the world sends us, like "you are not good enough". The armed guards are our friends and family who try to keep us trapped with their manipulation or coercion. We are firmly planted and sealed in our own unique and personal emotional prison. If what you have just read describes you or a person you care about, don't despair, there is hope! As surely as an individual can get into an emotional prison, he or she can get out. The "Emotional Prisons" series of books will help you to gain an understanding of what an emotional prison is, and what it looks and feels like. It will show you how people get into this dilemma and point the reader to actions that can be taken to get out of jail. Just like a physical prison there is a door with a lock, and a person who has the key, his name is Jesus Christ. In this first book the author describes and explains what a soul is and how it works. Then we see how various events in our lives combined with normal life stages combine together to point us to an emotional prison. He introduces us to a new four factor method of analyzing the reasons why we get into trapped emotional states; it is called SPAR, for security, performance, acceptance and responsibility. This book then sets the stage for book two which looks at actual emotional prisons.