Walking The Path Less Trodden
Growing up it’s always the differences that we fear in ourselves and tend to ridicule in others. We are a cruel species. There seems to be a comfort in being exactly like everyone else or being different in a conformist way such as punks, goths, teddy boys etc. etc. It is comical really that even the rebels need a support group to be different in. And then return to the fold a little later in life when the phase has been satisfactorily completed. The truly different have no comfortable place in society. The feeling is always one of being an outsider.
Being the same or falling within the normal parameters of looks and behaviour means we attract less attention. We do seem to be valued more as normal if we do fall within certain invisible and visible parameters. However, we still all think we are being true to ourselves.
Part of this process is a gradual acceptance of our imperfect perfection and realizing that we are a process. We are constantly changing. Never a fixed object. No matter how much we try to remain rigid and unchanging, we change in every moment. The funny thing about our situation or one of them is that we are all feeling isolated by the “fitting in” process but never once stop to think that others are suffering in similar ways.
We are all trying to be what others, society in general and big business think we should be. We get hopelessly lost wearing dozens of masks to fit in with what is normal because we don’t believe we could ever be good enough and accepted just as we are. It even becomes difficult to know who we are – we have become so buried beneath so many different roles that we have played for so long that we think that is who we really are. There are many roles to fit all our situations. If we think about it, it becomes obvious how we change to fit our many roles. My Irish father even used to change his voice to meet what he thought was expected of him. Trying to lose his accent was his way of becoming more acceptable in a time when he thought being Irish would hold him back from success. Just another example of something we are all doing all the time.
We want to be loved and highly thought of. And we will become whatever we need to become to be popular and successful – encouraged by society.
This process of belonging guarantees the creation of many fake personas and allows the profit mongers to gain by manipulating who we need to be in every situation and changing the personas frequently for new gain. Who is in and who is out is a never-ending process and there is no success if you are considered outside of the norms.
If we remain unaware we are formed by big business and our need to fit in with the norms. This, in turn, makes us popular with others like us. Maybe even to be awesomely heroic in other’s eyes. The force is strong and gives the person of high-status power which has been considered by many to be some human beings driving force. The will to power.
We are creations of natural selection and our culture which shapes our minds and bodies until we wake up and refuse to play. We then begin to question everything, sometimes outwardly but if we are wise and don’t want to piss all others off we are a little more inward with our questioning. We refuse to accept as self-evident much that we have been sold as the truth and become curious as to the many other options available to us.
This moment illuminates just how ridiculous our conditioning is in many ways and tends to isolate us from the happily conforming others that believe whatever they are told as the one and only truth.
It becomes difficult to be with those that continuously spout the conditioned beliefs at every moment. As we can’t argue every point with them. And nobody likes to have their philosophies for life questioned at every turn even if they are only second hand and fake. I find time spent with my family exasperating but I am learning to shrug and let everything go rather than get into discussions that others will never understand. Trust me! Unless they are ready for change they will not even get what you are talking about. Remember their thoughts, ideas and beliefs are gospel for them. They will be amazed you even have an alternative thought and will think you are crazy or heading that way.
The best you can hope for is “you have some funny ideas”. I have heard that often. Often the only thing different is the fact that one reads and keeps a truly open-mind. Frequently our friends change as if by magic. New friends seem to vibrate at an energy more closely to the “crazy” (not really) energy you will now be emitting.
This is the price we pay when we begin to find our true nature and begin to manage our ego better and understand that if left unchecked our ego will run our lives for us. Natural selection and cultural norms (nature and nurture) have conditioned our actions prior to this moment. The time for unprogramming has arrived and will never stop once awareness has begun. Time to realize some of the unlimited potentials each of us has. Life becomes exciting when viewed through the awareness that all we thought we knew as certain up to now is probably wrong and we have many other choices and a power to create that we have yet to consciously realise.
We now celebrate being slightly different. No apologies. We begin to find our true nature and manage our egoic mind which when compared to social norms (unmanaged mind) is very different indeed. Unlike our ego, our soul whispers(awareness) and we must learn to listen to that part of us that until now has mostly been drowned out by the controlling ego. We realise that what we see as reality is mostly created by our own minds. There are no things in themselves. We unknowingly create what we see. The acceptance of this fact empowers us to start to slowly transcend our conditioning. We move further away from the norms moment by moment. These are ego driven and we still must juggle living in our cultural setting whilst edging closer to working with our egoic mind rather than being ruled by it. Being dragged back into a full-on ego world of wanting, judging and being right is a constant threat. We see it all around and in the media daily. Our progress is not a straight line as with any goal we zig-zag back and forth between ego-rule and ego co-operation all the while endeavoring to harmonize our conditioned behaviours with chosen behaviours that better suit us as individuals and as societies. It is not easy to enlist the help of a fearful ego to help find our sweet spots for living the good life. But that is the task we face.
There is no feeling comparable to being in flow with oneself (fear free) which is one and in flow with all there is. A peace that makes turbulent ego mind a less and less attractive place to live one’s life. For many this is God mind, The Tao, enlightenment or the higher self – all good and it matters not what words we use. Arguing over details has cost and is costing mankind dearly and stops our evolution to higher vibrations and a better existence. The same can be said for all 21st-century distractions and addictions. We all want the same thing. And it can’t be purchased online and delivered next day.
For me – religions are each worthy ego management systems run by the very ego needing to be managed (it can be no other way) and as such difficult to progress but difficult is not impossible. We all have that issue – trying to become less ego conditioned whilst using that same ego mind to change. Hmm! Crazy but true. This is the point when we realise that our language is not able to describe what we want it to. A language is an ego tool and we are attempting to step outside of ego. One of the reasons so many psychedelic trips are unexplainable is because they take the mind outside of the egoic-mind to a place that we have no words for. Possibly the same as dream world – where things happen that are impossible in the egoic-mind world. Everything just flows into one when compared to the fixed categories, lines and edges to be found in our egoic world. Outside of the egoic mind there seem to be Salvador Dali like worlds. Maybe worlds closer to what is really out there before our brains process the energy. Or maybe nothing at all but the energy and a will to power as believed by Friedrich Nietzsche. – Energy + will to power + human brain (mind) = the apparent world we experience.
Becoming comfortable being slightly different and inflow is the mature progress road. Dare to be different. Break free from ego prison. Choosing to love over fear dissipates ego as poor ego behaviour is created by fear.
What a buzz to know we can change totally. What a project for life to rediscover our possibilities and our most primitive sacred nature.
Natural selection is where we can find many of our whys when it comes to behaviour and understanding. Evolutionary psychology explains much and neuro-science shows how the brain reacts and really works. Once we realise how little control we actually have over our thoughts and behaviours we can then begin to work with what we are to make changes and to better understand the worlds we are creating and the people that we share those worlds with. I say worlds plural because each of us interprets our experience uniquely and as such we are all having a purely personal experience. But we are having that experience with millions of others. Wow! – Enjoy your day –
HUMAN EXPERIENCE 
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