Your freedom
The day that you were born, was the last day that you were free. Why? Because from that day, you have been subject to a world of rules, norms, absolutes, values, ‘realities’, judgements, do’s and do not’s. You are comfortable with those things, because they are familiar to you, you operate within their constraints and their scope, and it is safe. There are no unknowns, no uncertainties.
Up to the time when you started to think coherently about things, you, or rather your mind was a blank slate for the most part, except perhaps for some cultural and genetic and circumstantial preconditioning that you inherited. But since that time, you’re conditioning begun. It starts of in subtle ways, initially. What were the first things that you were taught? What is right and wrong, and various beliefs and values. Shortly after that, in many people’s cases, religious rules, customs, rites and belief systems, whatever that might have been or not have been for you. You learnt about people, and who are good and bad people. Soon, a magnitude of expectations reared its ugly head at you. Be good, be faithful, be respectful, and strive to be a good citizen, set a good example, obey your parents and then obey your authorities. Those are the more obvious ones. As you grow older and more mature into adolescence, more and more subtle expectations are thrown onto your shoulders, whether you are conscious about them or not. Get good marks, get a good education, so that you can get exemption into university, study for a few years, and then land yourself a decent job. You are bound into a specific social class, and yourself definitions become engrained. Your self-image and personality becomes less malleable, eventually. You are this, you are that, and you convince yourself, even about what you are not. This means all of your limitations as well. I am this, that, lacking there, not good enough there...
You have been conditioned into who you are, what you have become, and what you are becoming. So, the question arises: where does the conditioning come from?
You have your specific and well defined ranking in your social circles, and you have your labels and frames that other people, inside and outside have hung around your neck, and you carry them whether you like them or not. You have the judgements that you think other people place on you, that which you project onto other people. Then there are your self-definitions, the labels and frames that you have hung around your own neck. I am smart, dumb, handsome, ugly, social, influential, likable, cool, uncool, etc.
These things are your paradigms, or your interpretations of your own reality, and they are acquired attributes. Most people are a product of their environment, shaped by circumstantial pushes and pulls of their lives as they grew up. Had you been born in a different country, religion, social class, race or culture, your realities surely would have been different.
With all of that said, here is the bottom line which I am addressing – are your paradigms and interpretations a hindrance or a help? If you think about it, most of your psychological limitations were learnt, just like you learnt to read and write and to do arithmetic. Most of your can and can not’s were acquired through your conditioning, shaped by environmental and circumstantial influences.
Who are you? So often you hear people talk about what they are like and unlike. I am this and that, but I am not like that. You constantly hear people defining themselves, sometimes positively but mostly negatively. Are you all the things you were taught, and that you have acquired through your conditioning? Are you your thoughts, judgements, labels, frames, interpretations and paradigms? Are you that which you have been tricked into believing you are? And yes, you have absolutely been tricked. If you want a really good explanation of why and how, go and watch the movie called The Matrix again, the first one in the trilogy. You have probably missed the point. “Oh, yeah that was a pretty cool movie...” you might hear yourself say. Cool? Not the word I would choose to use.
So who are you? More importantly, what are you? “I am a human being, of course”. Yes, you are a human being. And what separates you from most of the other ‘beings’ on the planet? Your consciousness. According to Descartes, “I think, therefore I am”, and that is such a philosophically profound statement. I think, therefore I am, and therefore when I stop thinking I cannot be no more.
The more logical statement then would be “I am, therefore I am able to think”. Ah, there you now have to permission to stop thinking for a moment, without having to fear the end of your existence. It simply does not make sense to equate thinking with being, as Eckart Tolle argues. “I am, therefore I am”. That is closer to the truth.
So where does all your conditioning fit in, all of the expectations that you carry on your shoulders? Human beings have a tendency to take themselves and their respective realities very seriously. Most of those realities are pretty limited, governing people and keeping them trapped inside clearly defined confines and constraints. Interestingly, even if those realities are limiting, that is where people are comfortable, and safe.
Are your realities and interpretations setting you free, or do they keep you trapped?
