Why Are You The Way You Are? - Transforming Your Unconscious Conditioning And Becoming Who You Want To Be

Below a certain level of consciousness, where the individual only cares about the question "What About Me?" is the tendency to objectify and instrumentalize whatever he or she lays their eyes upon. Those who preach certain ways of action, but do not apply such ideals to their own standard of living is certainly trying to manipulate an image of goodness to obtain material benefits through others. Yes, I'm talking about you. One need not be ashamed of their own humanity, but through this recognition he is left with no choice but to change his ways. We will explore in this article how you can transform yourself. Let's begin.

Righteousness Is Selfish

Why would anyone hold standards of righteousness, compassion and ethical behaviour when it undemines their own capability to survive? Through many series of evidence we are proven again and again that one does not prevail victorious in material circumstances when a person holds themselves to such a standard.

The best explanation for this is through the spiritual concept known as karma. Karma is not a holy man up there judging your good and bad deeds, but simply cause and effect. The mind is highly impressionable, and when we are born the mind is empty and devoid of self construction.

Through repeated karmas (action), we create mental impressions and habituation. Lets say I repeatedly have a certain series of mental actions when I perceive something. Now when I see that thing, these series of thoughts now activate. Since you need to survive, these thoughts are now intrpreted through a layer of self survival, you know this as emotion. Reinforced again and again, these emotions now become action in the external world.

Now repeatedly you take the same actions, then you make another mistake of conceptualizing this as "yourself." How disasterous. Your identity now creates a certain smell, this smell of yours attracts the corresponding external situations known as your life.

So is your life full of love or full of chaos? If one embodies compassion in thought, emotion and action, then certainly a smell of compassion would reflect in his surroundings and taint his perception of other human beings. The enviorments he seeks and the people he is attracted to, like a bee and a flower attracts that certain tendency.

Like this it goes on. Why do we not have love? Why are we not rich? Why are we not focused? Well the culprit is likely in your smell. You do not exhibit the right tendencies nor perform the right actions to attract the corresponding enviorement whether it be externally or internally. Mental, emotional and physical actions are all out of control and goes on autopilot.

Managing Established Karmas And Dissapating Them

Pride, anger, jealousy, greed and ignorance. According to Mahayana Buddhism, these are known to be the worst types of karmas that poisions and destroys our lives. Lets take anger for example. When you perform angry thoughts, emotion and actions, you taint your perception and enviorement into one of hostility, distrust and suspicion. Now, continuosly you attract potentially violent circumstances in the external world as you disregard evidence that proves otherwise.

Is cause and effect pre-determined? Not so. It only increases the likelihood of you getting yourself into a undesirable situation. Karmas do not dictate what happens, it only taints your perception. Something like wearing coloured glassess. Since you only see and perceive certain things, you perform certain karmas, and the likelihood of that situation manifesting itself increases.

The Bodhisattva Shantideva suggest that when the five poisions arises in one's thought and emotion, one should "sit like a log, unreactive to all external and internal cirucmstances." This prevents the next layer or karma, action. Since thought and emotion has occured, but no action, the tendency is said to "exhaust itself" as no reinforcement has occured, thereby freeing you from that karmic affliction.

Is all karmas bad? Not so. The "righteous" thoughts, emotions and action such as compassion is also karmas. The only difference is that these karmas invite beneficial circumstances for our lives. Within tradition, these beneficial circumstances are used towards enlightenement and liberation of all karmas, transcending the cycle of samsara. These circumstances are said to be:

1. Freedom from disease. A healthy body and mind in which one can practice meditation without obstructions
2. Wealth and resources. The freedom and control over one's time to have the freedom to practice meditation
3. Safety. A stable enviorement where a person need not worry about his right to exist
4. Access to spiritual masters, traditions and education. So that a person have the correct education and techniques to attain the final result.

Practicing And Embodying Dignity

The book "Dignity" by Donna Hicks provides us a good framework in which we can practice compassion. When a saint asks us to be compassionate, I have mostly scratched my head and asked what that meant until I read this book. The Dignity principles are said to be:

1. Acceptance Of Identity. People are free to express their authenthic selves without fear of negative judgment, prejudice, or discrimination.
2. Inclusion. A feeling of belonging and acceptance in the enviorement.
3. Safety. A safe physical and psychological situation. Ability to be open without fear of exploitation
4. Ackowledgement. Affirmation in another person's thoughts and emotions. They dont feel like a ghost
5. Recognition. Praising the positive contributions of others to one's life.
6. Fairness. Treating people equally according to a commonly agreed upon set of rules.
7. Benefit Of The Doubt. Seeing the humanity in others and refusing to demonize or characterize them
8. Understanding. Taking an effort to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. Patiently allowing them to express themselves without interruption
9. Independence. Empowering others to act on their own behalf.
10. Accountability. When you have done something wrong, you take responsibility for it.

Such principles of inclusion is beneficial for cultivating and reinforcing good karmas so that your smell will attract good external circumstances. External survival requires the goodwill of your community anyway. Society needs so many people to play their part for us to exist and survive. To harm and undermine another person is to harm and undermine yourself.

If someone has done something wrong to you, remember Shantideva's suggestion to simply sit like a log and do not react. You do not want the inheritance of someone else's bad karmas. I am sure you have enough nonsense to deal with. Retaliation may feel good in the short term, but you have doomed yourself of another negative tendency that will multiply in the situations in which you exist!

How Attraction Happens Under This Model

Since I am not interested in preaching ethics to you, I will connect this mystical topic into practical dating action. We have established that karma is the tendencies we exhibit in our thought, emotion and external action. Such tendencies eventually lead to one person being identified with them, solidfying that tendency. Since it stuck around the Self for a little too long, it becomes their smell.

You must know that this primarily affects you, especially in the matters of perception. We cannot perceive anything beyond what we cannot understand. Whatever you think you understand is what you perceive and see. In my last article, "Principles Of Communication" I have already established that a person does not understand the same things even though they are looking at the same thing.

Your smell and tendencies are observable to others, but not to yourself. This gives off what kind of bee will be attracted to your flower. The complementary tendency which finds your tendencies desirable will come forth. For example. If you are well acquianted with the topic of dating, you are likely to be a master of self expression and managing your self image. Do you not notice that you tend to attract many shy women who aspire to be confident themselves?

Similarly what you find attractive will be according to the limitations of your self concept. What you find desirable is only to the extent of what you understand to be desirable. If you find money to be desirable, then you will be attracted to competent and ambitious individuals. You will start to join and mingle around cultures of ambition and competence, increasing your likelihood of meeting an individual that can match up to your desire.

Eitherway, desire and attraction is a certain sense of discrimination. If you desire one thing, you must be averse to the opposite. Attraction robs us of the opportunity to consciously choose our partners that is most beneficial for our life. When attracted to someone beware. When averse to someone beware. That is the working of your smell and pre-programmed instincts of survival.

Manifestation

I have always been allergic to this word since the New Age Community has thrashed it so badly. Despite popular representation, manifestation is not praying and wishing for the best. Manifestation is calling upon something that is larger than yourself to embody their "Divine" qualities. If no attempt at embodiment occur, then you might as well not waste your time attempting to manifest anything.

Lets say you want to manifest love and belonging. Thats why you bother with dating right? Perhaps the first step is looking at who are the embodiments of love and belonging. Unfortunately, likely there is no one around you who demonstrate such characteristics, so if there is no one, then you can use a God Of Love as a placeholder.

Lets use the God Parvati. For simplicity, we shall reduce her to three qualities. Unconditional love, Patience and Loyalty. Now you have to ask yourself, how much unconditional love, patience and loyalty you exhibit in your daily life? It is not enough just to meditate upon these characteristics and then forget them once you open your eyes.

If you truly want to manifest something:

1. Acknowledge that certain things are beyond you. You may not know how to love, become wealthy or attract beneficial circumstances. Such a thing is a hard pill to swallow
2. Humbled by our humility we attempt to look for examples that embodies the qualities we wish to embody and acquire.
3. Close your eyes and contemplate what it is like to become these qualities. What sort of karmas? What would you think, feel and do?
4. Embody and practice these new patterns in which you have imagined into existence.

Change

You have determined the desired outcome. Awesome. You have identified the personal characteristics required to get that outcome. Great. Now how do we change the existing you into that?

The key fundamental idea regarding change is always to look at what you are protecting. You have an idealistic outcome you wish to become, and you have the reality in which you are currently participating in. Notice this process of becoming more and more. Do you see that who you are t0day is the desire of yesterday? Change moves in three predictable sequences:

1. Deconstruction of the current identity
2. With a blank slate, nurture and cultivate the new karma
3. Let the karma grow and become the next identity

A resonable objection is: "I just took all this time destroying my identity, I dont want to create another one." Resonable. In this case you need to seek to raise your awareness so that these identities are like suits of armor. You can put them on and off whenever you like. The key is that you do not mistake this new identity as "You." It is only a front in which you put up to achieve specific external circumstances and results.

Where you get into trouble is when identities are stuck to you like glue. Certain things and domains of life require certain identites to function and work well. You might need strong boundaries at work, but bringing that home into the family might destroy your sense of belonging and love. So cultivating awareness through the meditation and tradition of your choice is key to not get stuck in your glue.

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed this highly metaphysical account of change. Such change as in the ideas presented here have the possibility of change while not becoming entangled. Unconscious change, in which you accumulate more and more identities eventually becomes depression and suicide. One needs to cultivate certain tendencies and skills for external survival, but need not become attached and stuck with them. A strong distinction between what is you and not you is the basis of all spirituality.

That's it for me. Best of luck. Please check out my other posts and practice everything holistically. Send me an email if you want a specific topic written. You can see "coaching" to see if I have room to onboard new students.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.