323. Conditioning Is Like Having Someone Else Live Your Life
Conditioning is not only somewhat subliminal (in other words, you’re not always aware that it’s happening), but the transition to falling under conditioning can happen rapidly. To put another wrench in the plan, we are virtually born being in a conditioned society. Whether it’s our families, religion, the economy, our environment, etc. We only know what we know. But we don’t know what we don’t know. And what we don’t know can be infinite. Needless to say, there’s a lot that might not be covered.
So the category of conditioning is pretty broad. But we can just say it’s “societal conditioning”. Essentially, anything and everything pertaining to the forces that be. However, the conditioning which tends to personally affect us more (versus as a collective), is the conditioning of those around us. We are molded by our parents, our friends, our significant others, as well as our bosses and coworkers. These people have significant impact on our life, whether it be indirectly or directly.
In terms of directness, this may depend on the level of perceived power or control that they may have. If you are contingent on your basic needs being met by someone, whether that be mentally/emotionally or physically, you may be unintentionally be playing up your strengths simply to satisfy them. Particularly if they are demanding. Keep in mind that the people who take advantage of others are unintentionally being energetically “satisfied” from these connections. So although it is a toxic and unhealthy dynamic, it’s ironically somewhat of an equal one. This is of course a problem. Not only are you not aligning to your own needs and your authentic self, but you’re driving away from the “point”. When you are obsessed with satisfying someone’s needs, you aren’t living your own life, you’re simply needing theirs.
You may say to yourself that there’s no one in your life that has that much power and control. But you may be surprised with how subliminal it is. even slight amounts of peer pressure are measures of conditioning and control. It’s certainly something you don’t want.
On some level, we are strongly and at times, positively influenced by those around us. But we don’t want to go down the road of only satisfying others and not satisfying ourselves. You may find that if you are overly interested in satisfying others, you are distracting yourself from the point of healing and helping yourself.
The question to ask is if you truly have control and autonomy over your life, or if you’re allowing it to be run by some type of external force? Does there always have to be somewhat of a balance in order to be connected to the collective? Maybe, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for people to be more entrenched in their authentic selves.
As you go throughout life, it’s not only wise to ask yourself if you are making decisions on behalf of yourself, but also on your best, most authentic self. You don’t just have to worry about the conditioning of others, but also the conditioning of your own fears. The second layer to this is that… you have perhaps two sides to yourself. The fearful side, and the optimistic side. You’ll want to make sure the loving one is running the show.
