I'm becoming more and more aware how so many people are trapped in their own mind-made prison and how few of them are aware of this very fact. Ironically but quite expectedly, the more "intellectual" one is generally considered, the more severe the "gravity" of this trap is.
One of the subtle ways in which our mind traps us is mental filtering. The more cognitive information we have about someone or something, whether we encounter them for the first time or have known them for a long time, the more liable we are to fall into this trap and then into the prison.
Even if someone you meet for the first time doesn't tell you anything about them "identities", which are illusions of the ego, you conceptualize them according to them external appearances and you preconceptions accociated with them. The more "identities" they disclose to you, including their nationality, education, occupation, status, etc., the more deeply you fall into your own mental trap and prison. Even names are illusions of the (collective) ego.
Many people, or to be more precise, their respective egos, seem to feel uneasy if they have no way to know their "identities". As a kind of experiment I've started answering the question where I'm from by telling them I'm from the world of souls. Since I'm more and more convinced that the soul is our essence, I'm very serious when I answer this way, but few people who hear this answer of mine seem to take me seriously and most people insist on continuing to ask me where I'm really from, to which I can only respond by giggling. ;-)