I expect this evaluation is going to be a surprise to most people.
The whole purpose of self-improvement is to return our inner world to the condition it was in, at our own beginning!
We all carry hurt. We shouldn’t. It’s an accident.
The difficulty of healing ourselves depends on how much damage we have suffered.
People in therapy begin with the present, and then work their way back to childhood issues. Is there a reason? Early childhood is when the damage happens, that’s why.
Lets look at life on our planet.
Every life is driven from within! Nature allows that.
Mankind needs to get over itself, and allow other life their own right to do that, as well!
Life has needs. Some are obvious. One is critical, but invisible.
What could it be?
The right to exist, as the one and only unique identity, that each life can ever be!
Nature provides this absolutely perfectly. Every life gets full support in developing into the only thing it can ever be, and still remain healthy.
In natural conditions, every life lives out loud!
Except people!
People do not live out loud. We hide our feelings, wishes, hopes, and dreams.
We certainly didn’t hide anything when we started out! We found that hiding our secrets became necessary, somewhere along our way.
Why?
Because our identity is fixed.
When we get requested to be different than the one thing we are, and the only thing we can ever be, we cannot do it.
We are a lion. We cannot be a sheep at the same time.
But we can pretend!
The one thing that we can do to please others, when they don’t accept the real us, is to hide all of our qualities, that they are unwilling to accept from us.
And that’s what we do. We pretend to be the sheep that they want! Does this sound healthy?
It causes hurt. Big buckets of it. Our identity is never going to accept concealing most of itself. It will never stop it’s pressure to be complete.
If we cannot be ourselves, we hurt.
But wait, it gets worse.
We cannot survive this much pain. We face the choice of dying, or removing ourselves from our feelings.
And that’s what most of us have done. Now we cannot participate in our own feelings.
Our identity originally used it’s instinctive resources to guide us. It did this through our feelings.
Without our feelings, we lose that connection. Then we don’t know who we are. We cannot feel our identity any more. We don’t know what we want, or who we are.
As if that weren’t enough already, the way back is blocked.
We were in pain when we disconnected from our feelings. We were feeling shame for not being good enough. We felt guilt too. There is monumental fear, as well, in abandoning what is a big part of ourselves.
We are locked out of our own feelings, and consequently our identity, by intense, overwhelming pain, fear, shame, and guilt. That’s why we don’t like our own writing, our own faces, and our own qualities.
We certainly didn’t start out this way.
To work our way back, is to challenge these feelings head on! So we normally avoid this hurt.
And that’s where we are. Stuck and hiding, and to face any of it, causes massive hurt.
What to do?
Our first job is to allow our children to be themselves. We have to accept who they are. We must no longer try to remake our children, into what we prefer. Who they are, has been fixed since conception. If we cannot allow them to be themselves, we shouldn’t be having children!
If we can do that, the immediate cooperation we get, is going to astonish everybody. It actually happens, just like that.
Our demands for obedience, were never about helping anybody. They were always about the needs of us. It helped reduce our hurt.
Children can and will readily cooperate! They just rebel at being something else. Ask them, and they will give you anything. Really. Except for one thing. They won’t voluntarily turn themselves into what we want.
Shouldn’t that be enough? It’s enough for nature.
Our next job is to recover our own power. We do that by owning every feeling we have. We open up and live out loud. If that hurts somebody else, they need to grow up.
The results will surprise most. We rapidly become a better person, not worse.
We also become powerful in our own right. Just like a baby. Ever noticed the power of an infant. To feel like that is the best gift you could ever give yourself.
I believe that outlines the entire situation, quite accurately.
What an unfortunate development. All this conflict, hurt, and misery, for no good reason whatsoever.
Remove the hurt, and people become trusting happy, cooperative, and playful. That’s what people really are.
We need to stamp out hurt. Respect life, in it’s uniqueness, and we each get to live in love and trust.
If we wish to really live, we must first grant that gift to others.
Sounds like karma to me!
Good luck on your journey. Thanks for letting me ride along.
Norm.
I welcome considering other thoughts.