Hello!
If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you read:
Before reading this part 🙂 Now onto more of how true self love will make us LESS selfish and MORE harmonious in this world, and why perpetual self help only makes us more chaotic.
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In our systems, we can never have enough to actually fit in - and this is engineered into our culture. There is literally no ceiling for how much we must have/be/do and what we must have/be/do in order to fit in is constantly changing - and this is all by design.
This then means that we are constantly being triggered to fix/change/improve/augment ourselves, leading us to a place where we can never look at our real pain and the system that CAUSES us pain - that triggers us into feeling unsafe and unwell, which then triggers the childhood program that that pain is due to not fitting in, which then is reinforced by our culture that is constantly changing what’s ‘in’, what’s ‘good’, what’s ‘important’ and what’s ‘valuable’ - leading to a vicious cycle where we are constantly on a quest to consume more in the hopes that one day we will FINALLY get to a place where we feel good - which is actually impossible because not fitting in isn’t our problem.
We are so busy trying to fix ourselves every time we feel the pain of the system, that we can never identify where the pain is actually coming from.
On top of that, we have been trained to see ourselves as only as valuable as the amount of money we make - that our time and effort is only something that ‘counts’ if it is in exchange for something monetary.
We Have Been Trained To Sell Ourselves To The System
We have been trained to sell our entire humanity to the system. We have been convinced that the way to a ‘happy life’ is to figure out ‘who you are’ in the context of what you like to PRODUCE, and to then produce that s much as possible - and if that production results in a lot of monetary exchange, we are told that this is what will bring us life satisfaction. We are told that if what we do ISN’T something that brings a high monetary exchange we are trained to see OURSELVES as less valuable, dysfunctional, broken or otherwise ‘not good enough’. We are trained to believe that ‘if you find something you love doing you will never work a day in your life.’ But the reality of this is far more imbalance than it sounds.
We are trained to see putting in 60-80 hour weeks at work as a noble thing. We are trained to see having a ‘side hustle’ that you do when you get home from your full time job as a good thing. We are trained to see sacrificing our health, time with our friends and families, rest, mental health and our ability to be connected to our emotions as a ‘normal’ part of what it means to chase success.
We have been trained to see any failing in our health, any mental/emotional distress we have grinding in the system, any amount of NOT feeling well, any amount of not being able to keep up or any amount of not being HAPPY as we work to keep up as a personal failure.
We have been trained again that if consuming something didn’t solve our problems, that the solution is then to produce more.
We have been trained to see the manufactured insecurity of little to no safety-nets, little to no community care, little to no capacity to have quality time off of work and little to no connection with ourselves outside of what we produce as a ‘necessary evil’ of the system, and that if you WANT these things - if you want healthcare, expendable income, time to spend with friends and family and the luxury of ‘off time’ where you don’t have to be working or maintaining something in your life - that you must simply work harder to get those things.
We have been trained to see people who have the luxury of time to care for themselves as ‘better people’ - as people who are making ‘good choices’ in contrast to those who don’t have those luxuries. We have been trained to see it as ‘fair’ that some people simply don’t ever have what they need because we assume that it is their productivity levels that are causing that, and that that is just a choice people are making.
We don’t see that not everyone CAN produce in the ways our systems demand that we do in order to have safety and excess. That if everyone DID our systems would all collapse because then there’d be no one to do those ‘low level’ jobs that are VITAL for our society to function - both in terms of generating wealth for those at the top AND in terms of practical necessity.
We are always going to need janitors, check-out clerks, people to deliver goods and services - and the fact that we all agree that these people should receive less than a basic standard of life in exchange for their service is a massive manipulation.
We have been indoctrinated to see everything that happens to us as a result of our personal will - especially when it comes to the ways we dysfunctionally COPE with the pain we experience in our current systems.
We are trained to see failing health as a personal failure rather than as a systemic issue that makes it difficult for MOST people to have adequate time and resources to care for their health.
We are trained to see not having luxury and wealth as a sign of laziness, weakness or low levels of drive and commitment.
We are trained to see mental health issues that come as a result of having to sell our entire beings to the system as a flaw we must pay for therapy to ‘fix’ so that we can get on being productive.
We are trained to see our lack of social connection and support as a result of us being socially inadequate instead of seeing it for what it is - a result of a system that drives us to be continually focusing on ourselves, that drives us to depend on corporations and power structures instead of one another, and that again drives us to be in a constant state of competition with one another.
We are trained over and over and over to see that luxury is the KEY to all happiness and freedom, that all people have the ability to create luxury for themselves, and that if you don’t, you deserve to suffer in whatever way you’re suffering.
So rather than being able to see clearly where our humanity is being compromised, where our discontent is rooted in pain that CAN’T be produced or consumed away, rather than being able to see where these systems are very much CAUSING the pain we’re in - again we’re continually triggered by this deep feeling that if we could just ‘fit in’ perfectly everything would be great, which drives us into self help, self improvement, overproduction and overconsumption over and over again, which causes us MORE pain, which drives us into MORE insecurity, causing us to go DEEPER into the system - and round and round it goes.
There’s Also The Existential Reality Of Being Alive
On top of all of that, the reality is that life is simply filled with existential questions and fears, as well as chaos and things we have no control over/no explanation for, and we have SO few tools for dealing with that that we are sucked into the idea that there’s a simple, consumable or producible solution to everything.
Our religious institutions have been roped into the same capitalistic schemes as everything else, often capitalizing on our insecurities, fears and doubts via telling us that we are inherently broken, wrong, bad, sinful and shameful - and that the way to soothe ourselves is to sacrifice our humanity to whatever religious patterns serve those who operate the religious structures. We are again continually triggered into a state of fear and doubt via the religious indoctrination that we get that we are not good enough, and this keeps us trapped in patterns of navel gazing and self obsession that lead us nowhere.
The self help industry is FILLED with people who are more than happy to sell us program after program, service after service, book after book and retreat after retreat - all promising that if we ‘just do it right’ we will liberate ourselves from all of the PAIN of human life. That we will be able to transcend our negative emotions, get rid of our coping, numbing and self sabotage, that we will be able to enter thriving relationships with perfect health and massive wealth - and that this is all to be ‘expected’ if you are really living your purpose and potential. We’re told over and over again that our suffering is rooted in our own behavior - and this fits perfectly with our childhood understanding of the world, but it DOESN’T fit perfectly into actual reality.
We are continually driven away from anything that would help us actually discover what we are and what we need, and perpetually handed a carrot on the end of a stick - if you just consume and produce enough, if you just become ‘good enough’ within the system, all of your pain will go away and you will be rewarded with an amazing life experience.
We are in real pain, we are just being told that the cause of the pain is something that it isn’t as well as being told that the solution to the pain is something that it isn’t.
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Let’s take one more break here, and come back next week to finish this up!
<3
