Clarity of Innocence

Can we be immune to other people’s opinion?

In our best possible condition, are we more, or are we less dependent on the approval of others?

Wouldn’t we expect self-sufficiency to be nature’s preferred condition?

It’s not though. That’s not who people are!

We all need the acceptance of others.

We crave it with every cell of our bodies!

We need appreciation, approval, respect, and support.

We are helplessly, and hopelessly dependent on it!

The support has to be for “who we really are” though!

We have a right to live our own life. We have a natural right to be ourselves.

Receiving support for “the way somebody else wants us to be”, not only doesn’t help, it damages or else destroys connection with our self-esteem!

To be supported in our own driving force to manage our own life is the natural way of all life. That’s all we want and all we need.

These days, nobody gets support for who they are. Not in this world!

That’s all that’s wrong!

Fixing that means a lot of change!

It also means trust comes back, community follows, and feeling good happens, for all of us!

Outside of basic survival, all this trouble is happening, because we are not being granted our one critical need.

In these unfortunate times, nobody gets that all-important approval.

Sure we get approval! For being what somebody else decided we should be!

When being truly ourselves, are we are at our very best? There is absolutely no doubt. The difference is huge. Everything is better. Health, internal connection, connection with the outer world, inner peace and happiness, cooperation, common sense, the list goes on and on.

Non-destructive, compassionate, and fully connected with our own bodies, feelings, and the environment, we are playful and happy. This is easily tested!

Unfortunately, in these times we get our own identity’s thoughts and behaviors rejected.

It starts in infancy.

Our identity powers us into our all-important drive to cope with the world.

Our caregivers stop us though, and we are made to behave!

To us, that’s absolute disapproval of everything that our identity is trying to express and accomplish!

Our very identity feels disapproval!

With every child on the planet feeling this way and then growing up into a troubled adult, is it any wonder we have a society full of conflict?

As simplistic as it sounds, reverse this and all the trouble goes away!

No other life refuses to allow their offspring to proceed as themselves!

When it happens to us, we no longer trust the person doing it. Trusting disapproval would be a form of suicide. It is death to our identity!

Admittedly, it’s hard to accept, that’s this is all that’s wrong!

Fix that single issue, and the world unfolds back into it’s natural condition of trust, acceptance, and feeling good.

Trust alone fixes just about every problem any of us suffer from. Even poor health turns around if there is time enough, and if it’s possible.

Trust only happens when our existence, and our behavior get approval, when we express our true and original identity!

We need approval. To a human, trust is our whole world!

Whether we like it or not, we are all hard wired into being super-sensitive about what others think of us!

Yes, admittedly most of us do indeed work hard at not caring what others think!

Considering it though, could it be that we only do this after we have been hurt so much, we want to escape painful feelings? Is it a form of hiding out?

This observation is simply one more way of recognizing the disconnection we all suffer from, in our very early years, during these times of conflict and trauma.

It shouldn’t happen, and it marks the end of our perfect health, and inner cohesion.

With the amount of hurt we all feel from having our progress blocked, do we defend against allowing the opinions of others to matter? We try! It has no chance of working. We would have to rewire our identity for it to work!

The reality? Approval is vital to us!

We need approval. Our health and happiness depends on it!

Unfortunately, the approval we now get from others is at an all-time low.

The approval we get is for being somebody else!

We only get it from obeying. That’s not the real us though. We get approval for being what others want! That only provides a false confidence, dependent on our behavior matching their expectations.

After obeying, we are always a worse person than we naturally were. That’s why we have all this conflict. It’s not natural or necessary at all!

It’s easily tested! Allow and support a child’s natural identity, and enjoy the benefits. Free children are co-operative, happy, helpful, and playful.

The problem is people don’t want that answer. It takes away their power. Short-sighted people would rather get their own way right now, than live in peace, harmony, love, and trust, but without the opportunity to demand their own way.

The condition of the people around us reflects how conflicted our world is. It is no longer safe to walk along the side of a road anymore! Auto-immune diseases are rampant. People in hurt, don’t have the energy to care about the environment!

Our reaction to the disapproval of our identity? Sadness, despair, anger, and then some chosen action to improve the situation, which unfortunately always makes things worse.

We are generally stuck with whatever approval or disapproval we felt in our childhood.

If we sensed strong disapproval in our early years, those feelings are just going to keep coming back!

We find it hard to do therapy on ourselves! We seem to need the help of others?

Why is that?

Because of our need for approval, of course!

Every one of the issues we are trying to resolve, have begun with someone else’s disapproval, at some point!

We need the approval of another person, who is equally important, before recovery can ever become possible!

Once we have that, we can accept our own feelings, because now, they are not our fault. Doing that, allows us to integrate the resultant feelings into our inner world.

At that point that particular disapproval no longer dynamically affects our life! We no longer use continuous energy to keep that feeling as far away as we can.

We all have secrets. Every single secret, came from somebody’s disapproval.

Nowhere else in nature does any life suffer from chronic disapproval! Mankind has invented this!

Through our hurt and our pain, we all still secretly struggle, in different ways, for the approval we never got!

By this time though, what we do usually works against us being accepted.

That’s partly because with so much disapproval, the only thing that works, the only thing everybody is looking for, is approval for themselves! While hurting, it’s difficult to approve of those others who also need it.

Give others approval, no matter how bizarre their behavior, and their healing can begin!

A leap of faith!

This brings up the most urgent piece of information in this post.

With very few exceptions, people live in conflict.

They try to do everything right. They do the best they can, and what happens? Another fight with somebody! It just keeps happening.

Meanwhile, down the block, a couple lives with love, respect, and unlimited mutual approval.

We all want that!

It hurts to see it though, when we live with so much disagreement no matter what we do!

What’s the difference?

The bottom line is “everybody has a right to live from their own identity”!

People have a natural right to be themselves!

The difference? Some people can actually allow others to do that!

It’s not easy. It means ignoring and defying most of what society and the media is pushing at us!

Being that, and doing that, makes us the best person we can be. Life is all love and support.

Wanting the right to be ourselves is easy.

Yes, we all want that right!

There is another side to this right though.

No, not many want to grant it to others!

Well, the loving couple knows how to grant that right to each other!

It’s that easy.

Why can’t we grant that right?

Mankind has come to believe many things that simply aren’t true. Not natural either!

Those ideas are stuck in people’s heads. Nobody can talk them out of it. They cause conflict, but the steps are so convoluted, it’s impossible to argue.

Those ideas, precious to them, just keep getting in the way of allowing others their own right to be themselves.

People, expressing their identity, where it hurts absolutely nobody, get firmly stopped. Doing reasonable things, they get corrected anyway.

Defending innocent people, who are being victimized by a controlling person, they are seen as troublemakers.

The ideas are the problem!

When our idea interferes with another person’s normal and safe behavior coming from their identity, and we have a problem with that, we really need to have a look at some of our own ideas.

We are wrong!

There can be no peace with these ideas in existence.

As long as we believe these things, our own lives will suck!

We may get our own way, but we will pay for it, in hate.

We have become the person we despised when we were young.

It’s time to reclaim our life, and become loved.

When our ideas attack other peoples identities, how could there not be conflict?

Is getting our own way worth more than own happiness through feeling loved?

The sad truth is, get rid of the ideas, and the trouble stops.

A person entering therapy to reduce conflict, and regain inner strength is in the condition of still believing many of these well intentioned, but faulty and aggressive ideals.

These beliefs keep putting them into conflict. Conflict is the last thing they need in these moments. Ironically, they are unintentionally causing their own conflict and rejection, all by themselves.

Would therapy be harder without the support of our own families? What do you think?

Of course we need that support. Meanwhile our own ideas of right and wrong, still cause us to attack others!

Nobody is going to give us support while we continuously attack their right to be themselves!

Actually, it gets even worse and more convoluted than that. Others demand we behave a certain way. We, doing nothing destructive or disrespectful, say no! Strangely, they feel disrespected and controlled because they aren’t getting their own way. Next thing we know, social media regards us as controlling! They think we are bossy. Bizarre, but true. Apparently, we are controlling because they feel controlled when they don’t get their own way.

Anybody who desires loving relationships, free of conflict, has the job of ridding themselves of these unnatural beliefs.

Other people all have a natural right to be themselves!

Get used to it! Get over it! Objecting is silly. It’s obviously true. People have rights.

We don’t have rights over other people! With our respect, they will behave far better than we ever demand anyway.

Really, how could anybody seriously disagree!

The problem seems to be, people just can’t do it!

Other people supported in their need to be themselves, are at their very best. This is what we want!

Do we feel a need to interfere, and get them on the right path?

If so, we are doomed to live in conflict.

We also live with a complete lack of approval from others!

Why, on earth would anybody ever settle for a life, such as this?

Probably because they don’t recognize better as being possible, simply cannot change ideas, or can’t find a way to accomplish a better life!

Bully others, and forget ever getting support or trust. The natural laws, of the right to live our identity, are being trampled.

Try getting better, while living with all that conflict!

How could other people ever be expected to give us support, while we are attacking them!

People in therapy plug along, changing ideas as they remove their own stress. It’s slow. The ideas slow down recovery and the acceptance of real feelings.

Sometimes the ideas can even actively prevent healing.

The answer is to change ideas as soon as possible!

It takes a while. It also puts us in a whole different world, one without stress! One with trust!

That’s a leap of faith. Not much of a leap. The entire natural world works just fine that way. People live happily that way without conflict.

The barrier to letting go of these controlling ideas is fear, and fear only. If fear is going to be allowed to win, is therapy even worth trying?

This blog is part of clarity-of-innocence.com

Thank you for your interest.

Good luck on your own journey,

Take care,

Norm