It’s worth considering how challenging it is for humans to recognize our own behavior as potentially improvable, questionable, or in need of refinement. This requires a refined level of self-awareness: understanding where we’re from, how we were raised, what our parents believe… then comes the understanding of what triggers us, why it does so, how we could heal this. Finally, we have to deal with cultural heritage and baggage, and then still one might ask the question: who or what are we truly?
This process of self-reflection is like building an inner library of personal knowledge. It provides a framework to live life in an increasingly integrated manner. The initial assembly of self-knowledge typically begins after the age of 21. It manifests uniquely in every individual, often addressing the big existential questions like “Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Are my desires aligned with my purpose?” The immense popularity of public figures who represent a Father or Wise Uncle figure to generations of young, hungry, and seeking individuals is a testament to the ongoing activity in the realm of self-knowledge and self-improvement.
In this phase, people typically engage in stabilizing activities: going to the gym, choosing fruit over bread for breakfast, adopting a mostly plant-based diet, planning and executing goals, honing social skills, and so on. These practices incredibly empower and stabilize the individual, who’s exploring what He or She Can Become in the world. This stage is fantastic because it helps alleviate unnecessary stresses in one’s perception of the outer world by changing how one interacts with and moves through it.
The Outer World refers to everything that isn’t in your head: the physical, cultural, physiological, chemical, conflicts, dangers, and so forth.
In contrast, the Inner World governs an infinitely deep well of possible connections and perceptions. Your subconscious processes about 120 Gigabytes of raw data per day, yet the brain adeptly filters 99.99% of all this data (consciously, we only process about 0.25Mb of data per day), followed by a neat prioritisation mechanism, constructing a world experience that aligns with the forms and boundaries of the Outer World.
The stabilising nature of self-improvement creates space for rare glimpses into the Inner World – noticing your thoughts, inner voice(s), and internal judgments. This expanded awareness gives one the increased capacity to “De-Magnetize” the Outer World from the Inner World, and slowly introduce change to these systems.
Personally, this has lead to entertaining philosophical ideas as guidance for actions and morality. For instance, one of my guiding axioms is “Asking questions leads to Truth,” and another is “No question should be off-limits for inquiry and investigation.” Developing and internalizing good philosophical concepts enables Trust to take root in one’s life. Trust is a feeling that allows one to “flow with life”: there’s no haste, and everything happens in its own time. Equipped with guiding principles, the game of self-improvement evolves from merely stabilizing to growing and expanding.
Depending on how deeply one wants to declutter and rebuild their innate value system and morality, they might even question cultural norms, worldly conflicts, or their own moral compass.
Consider for a moment how challenging it is to break through deep-seated cultural patterns. When raised in a culture, every aspect of one’s being is steeped like a teabag in the viscous fluid of values, rituals, and habits of that culture. It need not be religious; it can be as simple as a type of dish eaten culture-wide, usually with family or friends, on a Friday evening.
This work can only be done by engaging in space-creating activities that allow, in the realm of non-action, the decluttering of what’s yours (your bullshit, baggage, and pearls) and distinguishing that from others’ stuff (their bullshit, baggage, and pearls).
After recognising what’s yours and what belongs to others, patterns can be broken.
Of course, a broken pattern is just a term to induce the perspective of Freedom in the reader’s mind. In Truth, we don’t need to be victims of these patterns and wish to “break” them, but in many ways, we are enslaved to certain bigger patterns. For example, we’re objectively affected by Earth’s tilt creating seasons, the Sun’s potentially harmful radiation, opposing political views and wars in parts of the world we haven’t set foot in, and let’s not get started on the vast space for intoxicating content on the internet!
Are we truly victims of our circumstances, and our chained-by-gravity limited existence on Earth?
The real answer to this victimhood inducing question, my friends, is complex.
It’s complex because it depends on your unique ever-changing perspective on any given issue.
Allow me to be blatantly controversial yet completely neutral by stating, “those who read certain things about Flat Earth, think a certain way about Flat Earth”. Now replace “Flat Earth” with any global, political or personal issue, and you’ll grasp the concept.
The real answer is that we want to be Free, free from being a victim, yet how ease is it to shift blame and responsibility onto the outer world? You’d be surprised how easy it is for people to think like this: if only politician X would do Y, if only my father/son would believe in Z, if only inflation rates would get lower, …. THEN I’d be free. Bullshit bro! BULLSHIT! This is now how it works! Freedom is an internal state that fundamentally emerges from the inner world first, and by conservation of momentum, becomes manifest in the outer world for others to enjoy.
Freedom is the human capacity to allow uncontrollable events unfold around us while shifting our perspective on them, and taking full responsibility for what we do have control over: our attitude. It is about flow and acceptance. Freedom is trust and love. It is feeling the cold wind against your bare back, with only your radical accountability as a backup, to protect you from losing too much warmth.
Eric Fromm wrote a wonderful book called “Escape from Freedom”, and it beautifully argues why most human beings in modern society prefer comfort over privacy, slavery over freedom, and corrupt leaders over someone who’d tell the truth. I urge you to read this book to make sense of yourself an the crazy world we’re in.
The gauntlet put in front of everyone asks us something like this: do we have the guts to let old parts of our being die, and choose freedom and love, over victimhood and self-service?
This, my friends, is extremely challenging work, the opposite of spiritual bypassing, and I wish blessings and support onto you, if you’re one of those beings who have dared to be divine.
