Are You Living In Slavery?

There are worldwide, 37 million people in slavery. More than at any time in history.

The rest of us think we are free to live the life we want.

Think again.

We live enslaved, by our a conditioned minds.

I was working with a client recently. A really intelligent and sensitive man. 40 years old. I noticed how at times he seemed over apologetic with me. A little tentative, a little disempowered, fearful of upsetting me or saying something that I didn’t like. He started talking about his job as a senior manager in a retail chain and how he had a great deal of anxiety about a meeting he was to have the next week with his CEO.

He was overworking and very stressed because of it and had taken on a great deal of extra work because of his self-wrongeousness – his sense of inferiority –  and what he really wanted to do was to say to his CEO that he needed to give away some of his projects and focus on a more reasonable workload.

He was consumed by guilt when he thought about this. Essentially he felt that he was letting the CEO down, a woman whom he respected greatly.

A Conditioned Slave

So in what way is this man a slave?

He is a slave to the conditioned belief which has been injected into him which says that he shouldn’t let people down. He’s a bad person if he does this. He is not okay if he lets down somebody whom he likes and respects and whom has given a great deal to him.

This conditioned belief is a lie and the lie is his prison.

If you don’t believe that you are a slave to conditioning consider the following:

Do you ever get anxious about making mistakes, do you ever feel guilty or ashamed of what you’ve done, have you ever felt that you are not a good enough husband, wife, partner, father, mother, friend?

If so, you have been enslaved by the conditioned rules taught to you by parents, teachers and society which create all of this self-doubt.

Fear of public speaking is one of the biggest fears experienced by most people.

This is not natural.

You have been trained to be frightened of criticism and judgement because you fear not looking good, you stumble over your words, you don’t know your subject or someone thinks that you are plane…stupid.

Self-doubt is not natural.

Small children do not experience self-doubt.

It is injected into them.

It is a crime.

Do you have any idea of the number of lies that are controlling you in this very moment?

• I should not let people down.
• I should not let myself down.
• I haven’t made enough money.
• I’m greedy for more money.
• I’m superficial.
• I’m too serious.
• I should not be selfish.
• I should believe in God or, why is my faith so weak?
• I should not make mistakes and so I should be perfect.
• I should be more honest.
• I should be more kind.
• I should be creative.
• I should fit in.
• I should be unique.
• I think I’m gay.
• I’m sex obsessed.

Can you see how deeply limiting these beliefs are? They keep us locked into war with ourselves.

In this very short list there are many contradictions, for example you cannot be honest and kind simultaneously. There will be times when being honest will look cruel. And there will be times when, if you are kind, you will be dishonest.

Our culture lacks the sophistication to talk about these issues and very few parents and teachers know how to dialogue them with kids.

So we ingest a bunch of lies which simply create overwhelming guilt and devastate our Self-Esteem.

In addition to this there are also a whole group of conditioned lies that reflect binary errors, or all or nothing thinking.

Essentially, we have been trained to believe that certain situations in life involve a choice that is ‘either or’, at one extreme or the other. What our society fails to teach us is that there is a middle ground, between the two extremes which is wise and balanced and skillful and creative.

The extremes are off balance.

Here are some examples:

• If I’m not angry at injustice, I am condoning it.
• If I’m not angry when you hurt me, I am accepting your anger or condoning it.
• If I give up aggression, I’m passive – assertiveness is in the middle.
• If I don’t criticize you I am letting you control me – which suggests that we have to remain critical in order not to be controlled!
• If I forgive you I am allowing you to continue to abuse me – which implies that the only way to prevent being abused is to stay judgmental.
• If I’m not a success, I’m a failure – If you’re only thinking of life in terms of the binary opposites of success and failure you are doomed to the bipolar extremes of manic self-righteousness and depressed self-wrongeousness.
• I’m going to give up looking for a job because all attempts have failed – the middle position is looking ie drastically changing your CV to be more personal, emotional, less stiff and professional and learning to drop the desperation and anxiety in the looking and in the interview.

One of the reasons that we don’t look for the middle position is that we either don’t know that it even exists, or we don’t know how to articulate it – so this can be tricky.

Failure As A Kid

I am working with a 13-year-old kid who feels like a failure because she can’t do maths and science. I ask her when was the first time that she felt like a failure and she tells me it was when she was in grade 2 and didn’t do very well and she was held back a year. She was taught by the culture to believe that was a major failure and she believes of course that she is a failure and now every time she can’t do anything well or doesn’t fit in well or makes a mistake she feels like a failure and she gets depressed.

If she doesn’t dump this lie, she is going to live a lifetime of hell!

What abject pain have we visited upon this gorgeous little girl?

Anyone who perpetuates the idea that ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are facts is perpetuating this idea.

The middle position isn’t really a middle position because it’s not on the same continuum. It is outside of the paradigm of success and failure. It is saying that success and failure are just concepts, conditioned ideas and ways of seeing the world that are not the truth.

When a one-year-old child learns to walk and falls down and gets up and learns to walk again and falls down and gets up…they don’t say, “I’m such a failure, I’ll never be able to do this and I am going to give up.” Only an adult would say that because we’ve been taught to create depression with the belief system which says that we are either a success or a failure.

The fact that a one-year-old child never says, “I’m a failure because I can’t walk” in the first 10 steps, means that it is something that is been injected and brainwashed into us.

It’s a malicious and punitive means of control.

This brainwashing is causing you immense suffering and if you begin to realize that, at the deepest possible level, right down in your gut and in your heart, you can begin to let go of these lies, the noose around your neck that is throttling you slowly, to death.

This is Cultivating Wisdom.

I watched the most amazing interview with the fabulous TV Trevor Noah about nine months ago. The interviewer said to him, “Does the pressure to succeed not sit heavily with you?”

Noah replied, “No, I don’t see life in terms of success and failure it’s just a matter of ‘that didn’t work out’ and then I move on to the next thing…flowing like a river.”

How do I know that all of these issues and beliefs that we have and which we are enslaved in, are lies?

Because small children do not have such issues. They do not think they should be kind and not selfish and not make mistakes.

All of this is learned.

Which means that almost every time you have an anxiety or guilt, it is been conditioned into you, it is not your true nature, it is not natural you have been manipulated into believing this and it is causing you agony.

There are some exceptions to this. To be fearful when somebody is going to attack us physically or if we have no money and we are in danger of starving is natural, it is not conditioned, nor is the fear of heights and very loud noises – these are survival mechanisms.

Letting Go

The letting go of conditioned lies is the key strategy for escaping the conditioned prison that most of us live in.

In order to do this you need to begin to let go of the deeply ingrained belief systems which tell you that success and failure are the truth or that a mistake is bad or that selfishness is wrong. Until you let go of the lie and truly believe that it is a lie you will remain shackled to this persecution.

I spend a lot of time doing this with my clients. Some get it more easily than others. Those who struggle find it unsettling and then an immense relief replaces it.

Your entire identity begins to change when you no longer live in a prison of judgements about yourself and the great news is…

No prison is escape proof!!!

If you would like to meet face to face or via Skype to discuss anything arising out of this blog, please drop me a mail. realmark@icon.co.za