“our binders to a finite limited self awareness”
“Hellbent on being special and all powerful we want to stand out, we want to be noticed and we want to feel worth something maybe in currency, who we date and who we dare be seen with”
“I am sorry I didn’t have the time to return your call; oh so sorry I couldn’t text you back; oh no I totally forgot to text you back; oh gosh who does he think he is to tell me what to do in the name of guidance; oh look at her what a poser she knows nothing yet she will pose for the camera to project a vision of what she’s clearly not; what does he know as if; ya whatever she had it better than me just can’t stand her; he is successful because he didn’t have half the hardship that I had…” This is just a snap shot of the type of little stories we compile daily to maintain a sense of self that says I am better, or I know better or that I am above or below.
In fact what it is really saying is, “please love me”, “please accept me”. We don’t want to feel too proud to see our own limitations but we do. Why? It’s too darn difficult to face our shadows. Yep, really heart wrenching and teary. Apart from that we would tear down the wall of difference and really become vulnerable with zero defences. We wouldn’t be a fake special anymore. Why do we need to feel special at all anyway? Isn’t that just a notion borne of an unmet infantile needs? After all if papa or mama really made us feel like the most important person in the world then maybe just maybe we wouldn’t seek this sort of “special” acceptance anywhere else. What is adult or mature about wanting to feel special or loved? When we mature so do our goals visions and attitudes in life. We move with an altitude of wisdom through the trenches of life. No so, when parts of us remain developmentally arrested, in disarray and in constant “wanting”. It is these parts that prevent us from living fully conscious in the here and now as the past will coming back up until we can heal these parts through a thorough investigation and integration.
When your well of needs is full, you can move to the sharing of the overflow. Until then you do what you consider as the way to compensate for the lack you feel. You might feel you need to play mind games; you may screen your calls or messages or people you interact with. Why? To maintain a sense of self that is limited to your perception that is tainted with unfinished work. And it’s that unfinished work that makes us dependent on these immature crutches we have created. What happened to the days when people would call the landline which didn’t have caller ID?
It is not just the communication with one another through the mobile but just pit whole attitude towards each other in general. It stinks! There is very rarely a genuine sense of congeniality when we greet each other. We are only prepared to withstand each other as long as it teases out the endorphins and dopamine. Anything that remotely challenges our mindset or threatens to infiltrate our walls of difference is quickly “taken care of”. We simply don’t want to entertain the possibility of “what if I am not really special” to “why do I need to feel special”.
To maintain a sense of aggrandisement we will employ pride and prejudice. These have been used for millennia to discriminate segregate and create hierarchies – systems of “tiered humanity” to a very “tired humanity”. We are in the pits of this self imposed darkness daily. Whether we sign up to a larger than life size spirituality course, or to anthropology or altruistic living, it will all have nuances of pride and prejudice because even self realisation or self awareness is “tiered”.
One has to have the power of cognition to decipher what is pleasure seeking or what is seeking the “highest good”. Pleasure seeking will produce feel good hormones and what is for our highest good may feel far from pleasure and in fact cause is tremendous pain as we unleash the layers that the false sense of self has generated as our persona. Not only do we need the eye to see through our daily bullshit (all our stories told to ourselves about why we are so darn amazing and how we don’t need each other and how everyone else can fudge off including God for some), we also need the courage to work towards the source of the crapping which will show your the false self, and that false self once denigrated you can then celebrate in finding your true self.
But the challenge begins when you find that true self, after traversing so many troubled waters, grieving, shedding rivers until the cows came home. And that challenge is now in living that true self you have found to be your blueprint. Whilst you may have had a few bonfires to get rid of any falsity that is not yours, the smoke from the ambers will still linger and there will be plenty of chances for your mind to jump back to the false self. How well you wear you true self will be tested by old triggers and only with an honest awareness will you be able to wade through this. The danger of going solo without your awareness, is that you will fall back into the pits of self pity sense of entitlement victimhood all incognito because you see these are never that easy to pick up, they will create symptoms which we will identity as the traits when in reality they be not.
For example, an insecure person will avoid intimacy to control the other so that this will prevent any issues of abandonment and rejection and give the insecure person an illusory upper hand which will look like grandiosity to all else but actually a deep seated insecurity.
We can keep reinventing many personality types from the same false sense of self. They will have all the flavours smells and textures of the personality before but maybe the subject changed. So it’s like swapping a job of making crystal jewellery to photography and still feeling the need to market yourself, prove yourself and really stand out. Why do we need to stand out? It is when we drop all of these notions that we can get into deep inner work to figure out why the games of I am special.
Where is the need to be special, extraordinary or outstanding? Is there a defect in just being a “nothing” or do we have to be a “something” in order to thrive. Again this brings to mind the nature of competition whose root comes from a sense of “lack”. And “lack” is borne of a lack of self love.
And I don’t mean the kind of self love that we all seem to be indulging in which is an insecure need to attach to ones false sense of self so much so because one does not know how to love. To love the self is to love your whole self including the dark the light and all. These days, even than has become a fad and fashionable. Suddenly we all want to talk about our shame guilty and dark aspects so much so that being vulnerable has become our thing now. Again, when we start to show case even our dark side it becomes nothing short of performance of ones victim hood.
There is a thin line between being authentic and simply working from an old paradigm of you. Where are you on this continuum of you?