A Word On Conditioning ~
Modern psychology tells us that by age four, we are completely set in our ways; our learned behavior influenced mainly by our parents and anyone else who had a shot at shaping us during that time. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it – four years - that’s exactly how much time we were given to absorb everything in our midst and become essentially who we are, and who we will remain the rest of our lives.
Of course, it’s not really who we are. It’s just that the conditioning is laid on so thick during the first few years, and we happen to come into this world as completely open canvases waiting to soak it all up. But underneath all of that shaping, still lies the true being that we can potentially become; the soul of who we are and who we are meant to be. Who are we really? For most, the conditioning sticks for good, and we move through life as, more or less, that same four-year-old. Yes, we grow bigger and smarter, and change physically. We develop new interests and meet new people. But our general disposition regarding the way we approach and think about life rarely changes.
Do we have the power to strike the massive heap of conditioning upon us and return to who we truly are? Yes. Is it easy? No. During the course of history, people have turned to many sources for major change. Meditation, introspection, shamanic methods, spirituality, religion, psychology, and medical drugs – these have all been used toward this end. Are some methods better than others? How would you choose to approach change in your life? Is it okay to accept our conditioning and live our lives according to how others have molded us? Or do we want to experience the novel path of creating ourselves?
At the very least, I believe it’s important to ask the questions -Who am I now? Who do I want to be? What is it I’m meant to be doing on this planet? Then one can begin an internal dialogue, and venture further if interested. A simple way to begin this process is to sit down, close your eyes, and focus on who you are. Simply meditate on your life in general; then, specifically, focus on who you truly are inside. Perhaps you will discover a side of yourself that has been waiting to emerge. By allowing the mind to wander around the idea of who we are, we can experience a new perspective of ourselves that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Try it. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
Nicholas Pallos
“Do we have the power to strike the massive heap of conditioning upon us and return to who we truly are?”
Makes me wonder if we’ll ever know what or who we are.
You bring up psychology and conditioning. I’d like to take it a step further and bring up the process of identification.
It sounds strange, but there are times that I think that the very act of identifying with a subculture or group or idea kind of distances ourselves from who we are. We think we are what we identify with — whether it’s our occupation, our politics, our ethnography, gender and/or sexuality. And in becoming these things, we get distracted from figuring out who we are.
In general, I think we’re conditioned to identify with something. For security reasons of the human psyche. It’s like saying, “HEY! I’m one of you! (So please don’t hurt me.)”
So then it makes me think — when we strip away everything we identify with — nationality, religion, subculture — what’s left?
Maybe the who and what we really are is something that cannot be contained in human language, but instead is something expressed when our everyday minds momentarily leave the everyday realm.
I dunno. Maybe that sounds too hokey and hippy dippy.
In any case, very on-point topic of discussion.
These are important points! It can be so difficult to consider our lives without the constructs (such as religion and nationality) we’ve worked so hard to maintain as our identities. But what is underneath it all? I was talking to a good friend recently about the limitations of the English language – how some of the things we wanted to discuss were simply not discuss-able. But one can at least say that who we truly are is novel, and it is powerful. It is YOU-ESSENCE. It is what you came in as, and what you will leave with. It’s my opinion that we all have a purpose, but the heavy conditioning disguises and confuses our purposes for being human on this planet. All we can do is be in a state of intention toward truth. That is where it begins.