We are exposed from
childhood to several rules or expectations about how life should be.
For example, we are
taught how things should be in an ideal life, how we should behave, what and
how much we should eat or not eat, what defines beauty, what should we expect
out of love, what is a good marriage and what isn’t, what constitutes success
and what does not, what is right and wrong, good and bad etc.
As children, we are rarely taught to question
rules. We are not taught to ask “Who says so and why?” In essence, as children,
we allow ourselves to get programmed into believing rules and beliefs blindly.
We grow up with this subconscious programming
and whenever we encounter any situation in adult life, we subconsciously check
on our rules before acting upon it.
To understand this process of how we assess the
rules consider the following example:
Read the following words--wtaer, etarh,
cmoptuer,sinwg, bkie.
Can you make out the meanings? With a little
focus, you can.
(The words are—water,
earth, computer, swing, bike)
Even though the letters are jumbled up, the
words seem familiar. You can guess the meaning because whenever you encounter
an unfamiliar word you cross check it with the most recent familiar memory of
it in your mind.
As long as the first letter and the last letter of the word remain
intact, you can place it. You identify a word by its first and last letter and
you do not read the whole word always. That is a rule for reading in the mind.
Similarly, each of our life situations has similar rules. We identify any
activity as being familiar by identifying with its first impact. If we have
encountered a similar emotion in any situation, we generalize that experience
and impose our impressions from that experience onto the present experience.
Once we check on the first impact and identify that activity as being
familiar, then we immediately check on the memory of the similar experience
again to find out the last impact of that experience.
Knowing the outcome helps us to
understand what we need to EXPECT in the present experience. That earlier memory of the experience has a
belief or rule ingrained in it which guides us whenever any similar situation
arises. We thus, pick up the rule and act upon it. We do not try to go deeper
and try to find out how the rule was made and why we acted the way we did in
the earlier experience.
We usually just pick out the last memory stored of that experience and
relive it at the feeling level without bothering to check what goes in between.
For example, if a person is beaten up in
childhood for arguing with elders (who are in authority in childhood) it is
possible that the person may get so afraid subconsciously, that she may not do
so as an adult also. By not getting into arguments, she may become inhibited as
an adult. An excessive shyness may develop which would develop
misunderstandings between this person and other people.
Whenever this person has a conflict with
someone older, she keeps in mind the first part of the rule which says ‘an
older person is in authority’ and the last part of that rule which is 'Don’t
argue with anyone in authority or you’ll get beaten up emotionally'.
So the person may choose not to clarify herself
and feel suppressed even if the older person wants a clarification or an
argument, because that is what the rule stored in the mind says. It is easier
to follow the rule blindly than go through the exercise of trying to understand
her inhibition. .
In other words, usually, we may forget to
check on the middle part of the rule which explains why it was made.
Excerpt from book CREATION OF HAPPINESS : THE ENERGY WAR , a soul's perspective
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106783843/Creation-of-Happiness-The-Energy-War http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/11/prweb10094296.htm http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/swati-shiv/creation-of-happiness-the-energy-war/_/R-400000000000000832982
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