Intro - Deeper Workings Of The Human Mind
Back To Excerpts From Unfinished Book "The True You"
This was originally intended as the first chapter of one of the books Devon (Tao-Te-Chi Founder) was / is in the process of writing. It was written back in October 2004.
Before we can really get into the kind of information that I am sure you are hoping to receive by reading this book, you need to know something about the deeper workings of the human mind. Some of this information may become a bit dry at times and you may feel like just skipping this section. I assure you that to do so would only be to your detriment. In order to truly change something we must first understand it. It is after all the working of the mind that put us into the situations we are in and works to keep us there. Only once we understand this and the impact our mind has on or life can we begin to take control of that same life.
For most of us the Human Mind is almost an abstract concept, something we all know about yet really know nothing about. We somewhat understand the idea of the Brain and its functions. We even fairly well understand the inner workings of our physical bodies. In many ways we even believe we know why we are the way we are. Yet in it all there is so much that we don't know and what makes it worse is that we don't know that we don't know it.
Far too many of us have this idea locked in our heads that what I don't know can't hurt me, which of course comes from a culture that holds to the idea that "what they don't know won't hurt them". It is an easy extension to take what we believe of others and put it onto ourselves, after all we all share common threads and generally have the same drives and desires… no matter the cultural barriers. However this mentality of denial is not helpful, in fact it is tremendously harmful.
To understand how harmful it can be, denial must first be explained properly. Thus denial itself can be defined as a mechanism that allows us to survive is the face of mentally detrimental ideas, concepts and philosophies. It gives us the ability to walk away from things that we can not in our minds truly handle and feel would lead to vast suffering and pain. Webster's defines Denial as "the act of denying; a refusal of a request, etc; a refusal or reluctance to admit the truth of something." All of which means that Denial is best summed up as a means of defence meant to help us live.
Which is a load of garbage!
Denial isn't really about living, it is not about surviving the negative… it is about hiding and running away. Denial is a means of control and manipulation that only leads to vast amounts of pain and suffering. Pain and suffering that is hidden behind vast amounts of garbage so that we don't have to deal with any of it. Denial is a means to completely DENY life, ourselves and our own true path in life. Denial kills!
To really understand how harmful denial is lets take a little bit closer look at it by telling a story. A story about a woman name Susan. Now Susan was a wonderful lady, she worked hard in her life, always tried to live open and honestly. She was highly creative and even allowed art and creativity to be a huge part of her life. Susan even worked in an Art Gallery so that she could be surrounded by the art and creativity of others. Susan's entire life was based on and build around her own special and unique creativity… and she was very good at it!
Unfortunately for Susan one day she got into a car accident. It was not of her causing but she was the one made to suffer. She was hurt pretty badly and was not really able to move very much. She spent a great deal of time in the Hospital just to become whole again in her own body. Sadly for her she was not able to draw, paint or even write while she was in recovery. This went on for a long time and even when she was done at the Hospital she still could not again open to her creativity.
She went to rehab to help get her body working properly again and had to spend a lot of time each day just doing the simple tasks we all take for granted. The effort that she needed to simply live was draining and by the time she was done she had no energy left to do anything other than sleep. This became her life for far too long! Rehab, Survival, Sleep, Rehab, Survival, Sleep… on and on it went. No time for creativity, not time to enjoy life or have fun - it was simply too much to do and too hard to do it.
Eventually Susan's body become whole, as much as it could anyway, however she was still no better off. Her body hurt all the time and she was not able to really live even now that she was "whole again". After all of this Susan was very thin and weak, she in many ways was just wasting away. There was nothing in her life of joy and happiness. She was upset and miserable most of the time and in many ways just wished she would die. Of course what makes this all worse is that she does have a family. She is married and has two children, however they don't know what to do and spend most of their time worrying about her.
The reality of this situation was not the accident, it was not the rehab, it was not even the family. The situation itself became what it did simply because of creativity. Susan's whole life and everything she wanted was linked to her creative side. When she no longer was able to use that creativity because she was not even really able to move she became lost in her own life. She lost her drive and her joy in one fail swoop. Of course over time the pain of that loss become more then she could bear, especially considering the other pain and suffering she was going through. So she eventually shut out the creativity and began creating her "Denial" to make the pain of loosing her creativity go away.
She worked at this long and hard and in honesty that one thing became her pain. The physical body healed, the true pain from the accident went away, but the pain of loosing herself simply would not leave. It found a new outlet and because for her there was no transition from one pain to the next, and the reality that her denial was well in place, she simply did not realize that the pain was not longer due to her body.
This is the life that she now leads and spends all of her time in pain and suffering. The pain not due to her body being damaged but of her soul and spirit being broken. She lives in constant misery all because she is afraid of the pain of unlocking her creative side once again. The denial became too important to simply get rid of. Which really makes you wonder… why does she choose to live a life of pain and suffering so she does not have to live a life with pain and suffering?
That is truly what denial is all about… hiding the pain so that we do not have to deal with it. Of course as I hope you can see this is not really true. We only the hide the pain so we don't consciously have to deal with it… we do still get to deal with it however. In the end the pain is still there and it still have a major impact on our lives, we just get to lie to ourselves and believe that it does not exist in the first place. Which of course just adds more denial to the mix and we get to go for a ride on the denial roller-coaster of hell.
How sad it is for Susan that all she has to do is open to her creativity and unlock that part of herself that she has become so afraid of? What an amazing waste to simply waste away out of fear. The part that makes all of this worst of all is that it is 100% true. This in not some great story just to help you to learn… it is the life of a real person. Someone whose name and minor details have been altered to protect their identity, but a real person living this real life nonetheless.
Denial kills!
Understand that before we continue denial only gives us the ability to lie to ourselves that something we don't want to face it there staring back at us. It does not go away! In truth, more often then not, we do the things we deny on a regular basis and just make sure we don't see them so we don't have to deal with them. Remember denial is "a refusal or reluctance to admit the truth of something."
Far too often we use denial in our lives so we don't have to admit to the reality of what we really do to ourselves and others… But I am such a wonderful and good person, I can't be mean and spiteful. Of course she did look really fat in those jeans and I just needed to tell her for her own benefit. Well buddy was being a jerk so I felt I had to bring him down by telling him that I found his wife cheating with the tennis pro… he needed to know and it had nothing to do with the fact I am jealous of his success; even though I didn't really just tell him, choosing instead to devastate him with the news… but I am still a good person because I was only doing what was right!
Understand that Denial is the number one defence mechanism favored by Serial Killers, Sociopaths, Rapists and Child Molesters the world over… "Well after all they all asked for it… right?" Do you really want to put yourself in the same boat as these fine upstanding role models for our society? Of course not… that would be a horrid thing.
So if denial is such a massively harmful thing and only really leads to more pain and suffering why do we do it?
This now leads us into a position where we can actually begin to understand the working of the mind itself; the underlying influences and occurrences that allow for things like denial to happen in the first place.
The first aspect of the mind we should discuss at this point is the "Cost / Benefit Analysis". I am sorry to say that in some ways the business community had it right… at least to a degree. A CBA is simply a comparison between the cost associated with doing something as compared to the benefits of its success. In business it is exclusively about profits and hoping for success; however in the minds version of CBA it is a lot more complex. In the minds version of a CBA we create a scale, if you will, that weights the opinions in every situation, occurrence and happenstance. On one side of the scales are our faith and belief in our ability to succeed in the situation and on the other goes all the things that we believe will prevent our success.
The important thing to note is the word "believe". The CBA is not based at all in truth because it is based entirely upon our own perceptions; not the realities of our own life. I believe I will fail… therefore I will. However when we know we will succeed because we have a track record of success then of course our beliefs will match that success and we will generally succeed. This is of vital importance because if we don't truly believe we have the power to succeed then we will surely fail. That failure is complete and true because when we look at the world through that perspective we can only fail. Not however because of failure, but because we will not even give ourselves a chance to succeed.
The other side to the CBA is honesty. We walk every day and have no issues over our ability to succeed at walking. The reason is that for most of us we have spend countless years succeeding at walking. We can even be adventurous and run with the full and complete confidence of success. At least until the other factors begin to have a say. I am too old to run anymore, I am out of shape, I have asthma, etc etc etc. In short until we are told or convince ourselves that we can not do it we believe we can will succeed with near absolute certainty.
In each and every situation, no matter the circumstance or occurrences we automatically plug everything into the CBA. It does not seem like it when we are near absolutely guaranteed success because the scale is tipped so far to the side of success that we can not even see the other side. This is also why when we are faced with a decision where the options for success are so close to the options for failure that we need to spend so much time "weighing" the odds. There is in truth a reason why we use the terms that we do and in this case it is literally weighing the two opposing forces to see which we give credit to.
Of course since this is mostly based on our perceptions we can easily put our thumb to the side of the scale that we with to win. This happens all the time and unfortunately for most people is done exclusively on the failure side of things. This is also why so many people talk so much about "Visualization" and "Positive Thinking", they are trying to hedge the bet over to the side of success. When we can create a habit in our life of adding automatically to the success side of the pile we can naturally offset the scales before we even begin. This is not a bad thing especially when you consider that most people have already done it anyway to the failure side… so in truth it is a good way to put things back into balance so we can start with a the scales at neutral.
The problem with all this is that we have not touched into the true power of the workings of the mind. So far this has just been the wonderful surface level… the entryway into the deeper recesses if you will. Which means that we need to leave the lobby of our minds and begin the tour of the rest of the place.
This then takes us to what I call "Associated Mentalities", which are ideas, philosophies and beliefs that become interwoven and locked together due to the events and circumstances of our lives. Every last one of us have them and will always have them, the trick it to learn to mold and shape them to work for our betterment instead of our detriment.
The most commonly known and seen Associated Mentality is "Love = Pain". This is a very simply connection and usually happens at a very early age. Mom and Dad love me, Mom and Dad punished me and that hurt… thus love = pain. It is that simple to create an associated mentality and for most it seems near impossible to break that connection. Which is why you need to understand more about it and why and how it works… thus you can learn to break those connections and improve upon the things that happen as a result.
Looking back to Love = Pain… over the course of a lifetime we keep adding to it and it keeps getting bigger. My pet dies… ouch, we moved away from my best friend… ouch, just broke up with my boy/girlfriend… ouch, grandpa died… ouch… ouch… ouch… ouch! Every time we feel pain come because of love we add to the Associated Mentality.
The problem is that it does not stop there. Each new level of Love = Pain add new depth to that mentality however it also adds others. Looking at the pet instance… we have a great time playing around and have so many wonderful memories, of course we also feel such immense loss now that they are gone. All of this gets added to Love = Pain. Now we end up with joy, happiness, fun and love = pain, loneliness, sadness and sorrow. Of course when we have our significant other up and leave one day… and everything gets even worse.
Before they left we had lots of fun, planned on having a family, living the rest of our lives together. We had contentment, safety and life was good. When they left we feel abandoned, lost, we feel the family we were to have is now dead and buried etc. Thus the new dynamics of the Associated Mentality grows and evolves to become something more akin to: contentment, joy, safety, family, happiness, fun and love = pain, abandonment, loneliness, loss, death, sadness and sorrow.
As you can see it is now a much harder thing to have to deal with and this is still only the beginning of this situation.
To the mix we now add a new relationship. We have meet someone new and all of a sudden we feel joy. Uh-Oh! Now all of a sudden we find ourselves sitting in front of our little scale about to perform the ever popular "Cost / Benefit Analysis". The problem remember is that it is based on perception not reality and our current perception of love looks like this… contentment, joy, safety, family, happiness, fun and love = pain, abandonment, loneliness, loss, death, sadness and sorrow.
Thus on the side of failure goes all the pain, abandonment, loneliness, loss, death, sadness and sorrow. On the side of success all we have is this person standing all alone. Then to make it even more fun we bring out the dump truck and start pilling it on thick… not on the side of success, but on the side of failure. Out comes the baggage and old memories, out comes all the old pain of loss and loneliness. Compared to this the person has no chance of success at all.
However we then choose to hedge our bet and alter the scale a little bit… so we go and place two things on the side of success… our thumb to add weight in favor of this new person and our total and complete fear of being alone. Out comes the convoy of dump trucks, each loaded to the rim with lots of good, old fashion heavy FEAR!!!! Well now here this person is buried in a complete mountain of fear all on the side of success… so naturally of course we decide this is a good relationship and run into it with open arms.
As you can imagine this relationship is doomed to failure from the start. If anything ever happens to that fear, whether it is to be removed because it is freed up or shifted over to the side of failure and everything collapses. Not to mention how fair is it to this other person that the relationship they are in really has nothing to do about them and is mostly based on being alone.
Does this not sound an awful lot like an abusive relationship… "If you ever leave me I will kill you", "If you ever tell anyone you are going to die"… etc etc etc. Does this sound like something you want to be a part of? Sadly most people live in this exact reality, though thankfully most people do not go to the extreme of the abuse. Instead they choose to abuse themselves and hid everything in the cloud of denial.
This is getting pretty hard to look at and deal with isn't it? That is because things are now getting too close to the truth for comfort… this is okay, this is natural and good. When we are done we will also help you to learn how to break free of this cycle and learn to become free in your own skin.
The problem with Associated Mentalities is that everything adds to everything else and in the end it becomes like a mangles mess of spider webs. The reason is that every idea, concept and mentality is a separate entity in and of itself, yet every time we use it we connect everything it is a part of to everything else that it is a part of. Then all of a sudden we have a mountain of pain and fear all interwoven and linked to the idea of LOVE. Of course the same it true for everything else… Money, Success, Happiness… you name it there is a massive Associated Mentality spider web to go right along with it.
The really truly massively hard part of working with all these Associated Mentalities isn't in the fact that they exist, it is in what happens with them because they exist. Just like in any spider's web… there is a spider. However, in this instance the spider is our reaction as versus some little creature waiting to pounce. What this means is that whenever any aspect or part of any of our Associated Mentalities gets touched, even if just briefly, then we trigger and upset the whole thing. Thus everything that is in the mix is all of a sudden piled high for us to deal with immediately. It is this fact that makes the Associated Mentality so hard to deal with.
If this ended there it would not be so bad, but once again remember the CBA? Every scrap of that Mentality Association gets added to the FAILURE side of the scales. None of the positive ever touches the success side, not because it can't but because we don't know how. We live a life focused on the negative and thus we end us focusing on the negative in all things… Mentality Association as work yet again. We see someone who looks or acts differently and we think they are nuts, not special or funny, not good… negative… NUTS!
All the judgments that we make throughout our lives from the first to the last one get added to this mix and the related Associated Mentalities grow and grow and grow. Thus in the end we focus on the negatives, judge everything and live the self fulfilling prophecy that we have created for ourselves.
The main reason this happens and get snowballed all out of proportion is due hugely to the way we evolve mentally. When we start out the entire sum of our knowledge fits on the head of a pin… literally. After all we have not even been born… we are save and comfortable in the womb and have no idea what a womb even is… but we feel safe and content. By the time we reach 30 we now have thirty years of experiences, associated mentalities, fears, dreams, desires, etc, etc, etc, all piled on top of one another. The mind, if you were to take a cross-section of all the information would now also look like an upside down pyramid. Everything begins at a point and ends up with a huge base that everything else new gets added to.
Lets take a moment to look at this structure. The only thing connecting it to the ground is a tiny point the size of head of a pin, while at the other end is a massive slab spanning miles across. How stable do you thing this structure is? How easy does it seem like it would be to knock it down?
Unfortunately this developmental process is also the number one reason we are TERRIFIED of change. This one aspect it the power source for most of our fears, and is in truth the one thing that causes us the single most pain and suffering in our lives. Not because of what it is, but because of… you guessed it… our "Cost / Benefit Analysis."
We have on one side of the scale this mammoth structure that spans miles all teetering and tottering and ready to collapse… all it would take is a gentle breeze and down it comes. While on the other side we pile up all our fear of what would happen when it does. Once again not based on the reality but the perception.
Thus we end up with people who are so completely terrified of change or anything new, not because they really are afraid of it, but because they are afraid of what will happen when it gets added to the pyramid. They basically are scared that everything will tumble and collapse and so they focus a huge amount of effort to keep everything just the way it is… to maintain the status-quo and ensure that the boat never gets rocked.
Associated Mentality, Cost / Benefit Analysis and the Reverse Pyramid… all adding to the wonderful complexity of life… and pretty much hosing it for all of us!
So here we find ourselves stuck in a sea of garbage, fear and more fear. Here we find ourselves sacrificing our lives so that we can simply maintain things the way they have always been. Yet sadly this is not the end of this situation. We have yet to even get into family structure, the debate about environmental or genetic factors in our development or even the reason why we feel we have to be this way.
That is because right now we need to focus on how to deal with this and help to reduce it's impact upon our lives before we can really begin to add the rest of this picture.
To begin with lets look first at the Cost / Benefit Analysis… how do we make work more to our advantage and help to add to the options for success? In one simple word… TRUTH! The reason the CBA gets so messed up is because we don't look at what really is, we look at what we think it is. Which due mainly to the impacts of the CBA, Reverse Pyramid and Associated Mentalities ensured that we lacked the most vital and powerful component into our own lives… SELF-TRUST!
When we truly believe that we are going to fail then we do. Because everything is so unstable, and because of the other factors we will discuss later, we truly do believe we can not succeed. Thus we completely lack faith in ourselves and thus we fail at our own lives. However when we add one special key into all this mix we can completely change the dynamic of this whole situation. That key is called "One Degree of Separation".
How many times have you felt or heard about someone who "pulled themselves out of the situation and it was as if they were watching themselves do what they did as if were outside looking it"? That is one aspect of "One Degree Of Separation". This alone is a powerful tool and can be one of the best things that can happen to us… however that is not the aspect I wanted to talk about here in this situation. We will come back to it however as it is worth learning about.
The aspect I want to talk about related directly to the Associated Mentality and since it is the main contributor to all of this nasty puzzle should be looked at next.
One Degree of Separation requires that we first be open and honest with ourselves, it requires that we at least have some faith in ourselves and requires that we be willing to look at the truth. In this instance lets look back upon the Love = Pain mentality. We now have the idea that contentment, joy, safety, family, happiness, fun and love = pain, abandonment, loneliness, loss, death, sadness and sorrow. When we can truly look at this and see if for what it really is then we can begin to deal with it on a real level. When we remove the denials and lies that we tell ourselves or have been told by others, then we can take control and add One Degree of Separation to this equation.
In this instance lets first look at "Joy"… joy does not really need to be connected to pain, abandonment, loneliness, loss, death, sadness and sorrow because by itself Joy is Joyful. We allow joy back into our lives and all of a sudden things get lighter. Then we take Loss and realize that loss isn't connected to contentment, nor to happiness, fun or love. Now we end up with something more closely resembling safety, family = abandonment, death, sadness and sorrow. So we go a little further and realize that family isn't about any of those… all of a sudden we have these pieces flying free of this nasty spider's web of garbage.
We need to do one more thing in this situation and that is to add honesty. In honesty we can re-write the Associated Mentalities to become what they truly are. We combine the things that do truly connect with the others things that truly connect and end up with something more akin to: contentment = joy = safety = family = happiness = fun = love = contentment and pain = abandonment = loneliness = loss = death = sadness = sorrow = pain.
All the negatives all of a sudden link to all the other negatives in the demonstration and end up forming a circle the never starts nor ends, but is entirely honest. The positives end up doing the same thing. Then of course we can once again add One Degree of Separation to this picture and add the simple idea that "pain lessons with time". Thus we end up with an ever shrinking pain based mentality that will most likely never go away and once in awhile will grow because something happens, but all in all the burden of all that garbage is gone from our life. We then can do the same for the positive and add "Nothing Lasts Forever" to it all. Thus we can remind ourselves that loved ones will pass on, the flowers will wither and fade with the seasons, happiness will dissipate… but thorough it all it will come again bright and new and life will generally be good and wonderful.
Of course now when we head back to the CBA we have more tools to work with for success; where before we could not add anything to the positive success side, we now have vast amounts. We have our great Associated Mentality with love we can add, and we also end up with something more important… Self-Trust. We know that we can trust ourselves with the hard stuff because we just took a huge amount of it and used it to make our life better. This alone will open the doors to a complete domino effect of change and success.
Which now brings us back to the Reverse Pyramid. The difference is that this time we come with the complete and sure knowledge that we can do something, that we can handle change and the pain that may come from it. In short we come ready to kick out the supports that we have erected and are prepared to deal with our whole world collapsing. Of course it never happens because in truth all you can do is destroy the structure of the pyramid… not the building blocks themselves.
The reality is that the only reason the Reverse Pyramid happens in the first place is because of a lack of Self-Trust and Honesty. Things got out of hand because everything else got out of hand and it simply followed suit. Now that the rest is open and real so to can the Reverse Pyramid become.
Sure everything will come crashing down and yes it will most likely be a painful and scary process. The difference is that you will come knowing you can handle it, which you may not yet have, and will be ready to deal with it head on. In the end this will spark a huge time of change and growth as you get to rebuild this structure into any shape you choose. You get to rebuild your own life into… you guessed it… YOUR OWN LIFE!
At the end of the day this new structure will be more stable, fear will have been removed and honesty used as the new mortar to hold it all together. This will of course give you vast more amounts of that Self-Trust stuff that can used to completely flip the scales towards success before you have even added anything else to the mix.
Just imagine how free your life could be with the complete and absolute belief in yourself?
Of course now that we have given you the power and knowledge to take control of your own life we need to include those other factors that we left out earlier.
One of the biggest problems that we have when we are born is the complete and absolute belief that we are the center of the universe. When we first became aware floating in the womb our very first conscious thought is the realization that when I close my eyes the world ceases to exist. In this situation we have no outside information to show to us that things are still happening without us. We have no one to tell us otherwise. Thus we know with absolute certainty that we are the center of the universe.
If allowed to continue into our childhood then of course this idea not only gets perpetuated… it becomes entrenched. When this happens it becomes not a concept but a fact of life. It progresses from the idea that I am the center of the universe to the fact that "I" AM THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!!! As you can imagine there is not a whole lot of room in the universe for too many people with this idea and therefore those that have it must defend their territory at all costs. Hopefully by this point you will see that it is not real, it is just a Negative Associated Mentality being used in a Negative Cost / Benefit Analysis for the sole means of making "me" feel powerful and important.
This is the root of why children only really seem to care about themselves in the beginning and it becomes the source of selfishness and arrogance in later years if not dealt with. Of course there is really only one sure fire cure for this and it is HONESTY! When we admit to the reality that we are not the center of the universe, however we are an important and vital part of it, then we get a few major benefits: 1) It is a lot of work to both be and maintain your authority as "Centre Of The Universe", especially when so many other people want the job. So to no longer need to be in this position eliminates a lot of stress and weight from ones life. 2) As the Center of the Universe someone always wants something and self gets lost in the shuffle. However by simply being an important part of it then we get to be ourselves and live our own life instead of the one we feel imposed into. 3) No one really knows where the Centre of the Universe really is… the universe moves and shifts all the time, things rotate, collapse, collide, etc, etc, etc. So in the end no one really can say where it is or what you get when you get there… A little bit confusing when your supposed to be there and have no idea where THERE even is!
To be completely honest there is no one person that is the Centre of the Universe, there will never be one person who is and no matter what anyone else says… THEY ARE NOT IT!
We each have our own special place in the Universe and we each are just as important as everyone else; the only difference is who we are and what we are here to do. This is vital information because in honesty your boss is not BETTER then you are, he is simply higher up in the company. Bill Gates is not Better then you… he just has more money. Wayne Getzky is not better then you… unless you play hockey… then maybe he is… who knows, he doesn't play anymore. The point is that we each have our own gifts and potential and to be really happy means we need to find and live it… instead of trying to live someone else's.
This then brings up the idea of the Family Structure. This is something that should pay a little bit more attention to because it can open the doors to a world of problems if let get out of hand.
With our family we also get to start out life with the complete and absolute belief that our parents are… PERFECT! There is no one better in the known universe then our parents when we first come into the world. They give us everything from food, life, safety, warmth etc. Every thing that we are and have comes from them.
Of course as we grow older and wiser we begin to see things change however the foundation has still been set… no matter what else happens in life. When Mom smokes it sends the message that a Mom should smoke. When someone has a Mom who doesn't it seems weird and odd and in the end can be a huge factor in why someone is marrying the person that they are… in this case she smokes and he wants a family. This may seem odd now that you have grown up and evolved… but I assure you it is true… remember the Associated Mentality? This is just another type of one.
The family structure can be a wonderful thing to instill morals, values, drive, dedication, honesty and integrity. However it can also be the number one contributing factor to lying, denial, pain, misery, lack of self and lots more. In truth what we get from our families and the lives they live we get to carry for the rest of ours. If we get good and wonderful we end up with good and wonderful.
The catch to this is not the image of what we get… "Oh we are good and wonderful, we go to church every Sunday and the neighbors love us." All the while Dad is a workaholic and Mom is cheating on him with the Pool Boy! It is not the surface stuff that gets carried it is the underlying. However added to this is some of the surface, as an example in this case we also get to pass along all those wonderful skills and techniques we have developed to fool all those people that actually think we are a good and wonderful family. Which of course means that the next generation has way better ways to hid the garbage then the one previous.
This does not mean that you are now doomed to live this existence for all eternity. What it means is that you now have to work a lot harder to help lessen its impact and help teach the next generation how to continue the trend. Of course as we have shown earlier by simply crashing the Reverse Pyramid and re-building to become who we really are goes a long way to getting rid of this garbage and helps to free you up… which of course you also get to pass on to the next generation. See how this works?
Family creates the foundation of everything we believe and if not careful we can do a lot of harm to not only our children but to also all those others that we have dealings with in our life. The only sure way to allow all the good and honest stuff to happen is to… well… be honest with yourself!
When we lie to ourselves and hid everything behind denials we have not gotten rid of them, most times we have only really hidden them from ourselves… not everyone else. Thus everyone else can still see them and are usually still affected by them. Looking at Dad as a workaholic… his denial is that he is doing it to help his family, when in fact he can't stand his wife and detests being at home with the kids which make too much noise and he feels like he is going insane… so of course he is a wonderful provider and Father because he gave them a pool in the back yard, a Playstation in the living room and lots of clothes in the closet. Besides, it doesn't really matter if he is around anyway… they really don't care.
Which as I hope you can see just opens the doors wide for all kinds of issues, garbage and baggage in both his life and that of his wife and kids… all just because he didn't want to face the reality that he married her because she smoked!
Honesty is the best policy in all situations. In some cases you may get into trouble, sure, but in the end your soul will be clean and usually most people do respect honesty when it is honestly given.
This now takes us to the final point in our discussion on the workings of the human mind… the debate between genetics and environment. For those who don't know there has been going on for a long time a discussion on whether we evolve and develop the way we do because or genetics, the make up of our minds and bodies, or because of environment, outside factors such as financial situation, social standing, friends etc. This debate has been going on for a long time and will most likely continue for a lot longer. However I will let you in on a little secret that no one really wants to face yet… BOTH ARE RIGHT!
We naturally have our own gifts, talents and ways of looking at the world around. These we are born with and are a vital component of who we are. As we grow and evolve those grow and evolve with us. This is why some people excel at math while others simply can not wrap their head around it. Some can play the piano where others can only mash the keys. The root of these things is in the factors of our genetics… not the success at them, only the talent for them.
If someone has the "Musical Gene" but is never allowed to go near a musical instrument then that talent will never really be allowed to emerge. Conversely someone who has the talent and has been playing the piano for a few years but has an overbearing parent who forces and pushes them to play may all of a sudden loose the ability to play… not because they loose the talent but because now the Associated Mentality dealing with their ability to play has become soured and rotten by the events of their playing.
Genetics gives us the ability and talent to make it happen, but it is the environment and external factors that allow it to happen. Without both then something is missing.
This is also where we get the feeling of being drawn towards something. When we have the talent and gifts needed to do something but never had the external connection to it a lot of time the mind will become drawn to the things that will spark that same gift. In music it could be that are drawn to the guitar solos because you want to play the guitar, or you feel alive while watching a play because you yourself want to become an actor. The things we get drawn to play an important role in our own development and understanding of self. They help us to see what we really want in our lives and in many cases need to become whole and complete.
When we are children we are required to live within the limits imposed in us by our parents and family. The question is… why do we still live under them when we are now free to make our own choices?
There is a great deal more to this puzzle however the goal was to show you how your mind works and detail the things that will get in the way as we progress through the rest of this book. I highly recommend that you come back to this section whenever you begin to feel lost and confused and see if anything here triggers the answer to the question you may not know how to ask. You may be surprised at how much of your life is controlled by those things we have discussed here.
Remember - trust in yourself, be honest with yourself and try to live the best that you can - life will work itself out if you do these simple things.
Copyright October 2004 - All Rights Reserved
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