Evolución a través de la historia

Figure 7B. The size of the gap varies from person to person. “Who we really are” and “how we appear” are separated by the feelings we memorize throughout different points in our lives (based on

past experiences). The bigger the gap, the greater the addiction to the emotions we memorize.

Layer by layer, we wear various emotions, which form our identity. In order to remember who we think we are, we have to re-create the same experiences to reaffirm our personality and the corresponding emotions. As an identity, we become attached to our external world by identifying with everyone and everything, in order to remind us of how we want to project ourselves to the world.

How we appear becomes the façade of the personality, which relies on the external world to remember who it is as a “somebody.” Its identity is completely attached to the environment. The personality does everything it can to hide how it really feels or to make that feeling of emptiness go away: I own these cars, I know these people, I’ve been to these places, I can do these things, I’ve

had these experiences, I work for this company, I am successful. … It is who we think we are in relation to everything around us.

But that is different from who we are—how we feel—without the stimulation of our outer reality:

Feelings of shame and anger about a failed marriage. Fear of death and uncertainty about the afterlife, related to the loss of a loved one or even a pet. A sense of inadequacy due to a parent’s insistence on perfectionism and achievement at all costs. A sense of stifled entitlement from having grown up in circumstances barely above poverty. A preoccupation with thoughts of not having the right body type in order to look a certain way to the world. These kinds of feelings are what we want to conceal.

This is who we truly are, the real self hiding behind the image we are projecting. We can’t face exposing that self to the world, so we pretend to be someone else. We create a set of memorized automatic programs that work to cover the vulnerable parts of us. Essentially, we lie about who we are because we know that societal mores do not have room for that person. That is the “nobody.” That is the person whom we doubt others will like and accept.

Particularly when we are younger and are forming our identity, we are more likely to engage in this kind of masquerade. We see young people trying on identities like they try on clothes. And in truth, what teens wear is often a reflection of who they want to be, more than it reflects who they really are.

Ask any mental-health professional who specializes in working with young people, and she will tell you that one word defines what it is like to be an adolescent: insecurity. As a result, teens and preteens seek comfort in conformity and in numbers.

Rather than let the world know what you are really like, adopt and adapt (because everyone knows what happens to those who are perceived to be different). The world is complex and scary, but make it less frightening and much simpler by lumping everyone into groups. Pick your group. Pick your poison.

Eventually, that identity fits. You grow into it. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. Along with the insecurity comes a great deal of self-consciousness. Questions abound: Is this who I really am?

Is this who I really want to be? But it’s so much easier to ignore those questions than to answer them.

Life Experiences Define Our Identity …

Staying Busy Keeps Unwanted Emotions at Bay

All of us have been emotionally scarred from traumatic or difficult experiences as young people.

Early in life, we experienced defining events, the emotions of which contributed, layer by layer, to who we became. Let’s face it: we all have been branded by emotionally charged events. As we mentally reviewed the experience repeatedly, the body began to relive the event over and over, just by thought alone. We kept the refractory period of emotion running for so long that we journeyed from a mere emotional reaction to a mood, to a temperament, and ultimately, to a personality trait.

While we are young, we keep busy doing things that, for a while, stave off those old, deep emotions, sweeping them under the rug. It is intoxicating to make new friends, travel to unknown places, work hard and achieve a promotion, learn a new skill, or take up a new sport. We seldom suspect that many of these actions are motivated by feelings left over from certain earlier events in life.

Then we really get busy. We go to school, then possibly college; we buy a car; we move to a new town, state, or country; we begin a career; we meet new people; we get married; we buy a house; we have kids; we adopt pets; we may get divorced; we work out; we start a new relationship; we practice a skill or a hobby…. We use everything that we know in the external world to define our

identity, and to distract us from how we really feel inside. And since all of these unique experiences produce myriad emotions, we notice that those emotions seem to take away any feelings that we are hiding. And it works for a while.

Don’t get me wrong. We all reach greater heights from applying ourselves throughout different periods in our growing years. In order to accomplish many things in our lifetimes, we have to push ourselves outside our comfort zones and go beyond familiar feelings that once defined us. I am certainly aware of this dynamic in life. But when we never overcome our limitations and continue carrying the baggage from our past, it will always catch up with us. And this usually happens starting around our mid-30s (this can vary greatly from one person to another).

Midlife: A Series of Strategies

to Make Buried Feelings Stay Buried

By our mid-30s or 40s, when the personality is complete, we have experienced much of what life has to offer. And as a result, we can pretty much anticipate the outcome of most experiences; we already know how they’re going to feel before we engage in them. Because we’ve had several good and bad relationships, we’ve competed in business or settled into our career, we’ve suffered loss and encountered success, or we know what we like and dislike, we know the nuances of life. Since we can predict the likely emotions ahead of an actual experience, we determine whether we want to experience that “known” event before it actually occurs. Of course, all of this is happening behind the scenes of our awareness.

Here is where it gets sticky. Because we can predict the feelings that most events will bring, we already know what will make our feelings about who we really are go away. However, when we reach midlife, nothing can completely take away that feeling of emptiness.

You wake up every morning and you feel like the same person. Your environment, which you relied on so heavily to remove your pain or guilt or suffering, is no longer taking away those feelings.

How could it? You already know that when the emotions derived from the external world wear off, you will return to being the same leopard who hasn’t changed its spots.

This is the midlife crisis that most people know about. Some try really hard to make buried feelings stay buried by diving further into their external world. They buy the new sports car (thing); others lease the boat (another thing). Some go on a long vacation (place). Yet others join the new social club to meet new contacts or make new friends (people). Some get plastic surgery (body). Many completely redecorate or remodel their homes (acquire things and experience a new environment).

All of these are futile efforts to do or try something new so that they can feel better or different. But emotionally, when the novelty wears off, they are still stuck with the same identity. They return to who they really are (that is, the bottom hand). They are drawn back to the same reality they have been living for years, just to keep the feeling of who they think they are as an identity. The truth is, the more they do—the more they buy and then consume—the more noticeable the feeling of who they “really are” becomes.

When we’re trying to escape this emptiness, or when we’re running from any emotion whatsoever that is painful, it is because to look at it is too uncomfortable. So when the feeling starts to get a bit out of control, most people turn on the TV, surf the Internet, or call or text someone. In a matter of moments we can alter our emotions so many times … we can view a sitcom or a YouTube video and laugh hysterically, then watch a football game and feel competitive, then watch the news and be angered or fearful. All of these outer stimuli can easily distract us from those unwanted feelings

inside.

Technology is a great distraction and a powerful addiction. Think about it: You can immediately change your internal chemistry and make a feeling go away by changing something outside of you.

And whatever it was outside of you that made you feel better inside of you, you will rely on that thing in order to sidetrack yourself over and over again. But this strategy doesn’t have to involve technology; anything momentarily thrilling will do the trick.

When we keep that diversion up, guess what eventually happens? We grow more dependent on something outside of us to change us internally. Some people unconsciously delve deeper and deeper into this bottomless pit, using different aspects of their world to keep themselves preoccupied—in an effort to re-create the original feeling from the very first experience that helped them escape. They become overstimulated so that they can feel different from how they really are. But sooner or later, everyone realizes that they need more and more of the same to make them feel better. This becomes an all-consuming search for pleasure and ways to avoid pain at all costs—a hedonistic life unconsciously driven by some feeling that won’t seem to go away.

A Different Midlife: A Time for Facing Feelings and Letting Go of Illusions

At this time of life, other people who don’t strive to keep their feelings buried ask some big questions: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Where am I going? Who am I doing all of this for? What is God? Where do I go when I die? Is there more to life than “success”? What is happiness? What does all this mean? What is love? Do I love myself? Do I love anyone else? And the soul begins to wake up….

These types of questions begin to occupy the mind because we see through the illusion and suspect that nothing outside of us can ever make us happy. Some of us ultimately realize that nothing in our environment is going to “fix” the way we feel. We also recognize the enormous amount of energy it takes to keep up this projection of self as an image to the world, and how exhausting it is to keep the mind and body constantly preoccupied. Eventually we come to see that our futile attempt to maintain an ideal for others is really a strategy to make sure that those impending feelings we’ve been running from never capture us. How long can we juggle, keeping so many balls in the air, just so our lives don’t come crashing down?

Instead of buying a bigger TV or the latest smart phone, these people stop running from the feeling that they’ve been trying to make go away for so long, face it head-on, and intently look at it. When this happens, the individual begins to wake up. After some self-reflection, she discovers who she really is, what she has been hiding, and what no longer is working for her. So she lets go of the façade, the games, and the illusions. She is honest about who she really is, at all costs, and she is not afraid to lose it all. This person stops expending the energy she had been putting into keeping an illusory image intact.

She gets in touch with her feelings and then turns to people in her life and says: You know what? It doesn’t matter if I don’t make you happy any longer. I’m through obsessing about how I look or what other people think about me. I am finished living for everyone else. I want to be free from these chains.

This is a profound moment in a person’s life. The soul is waking up and nudging her to tell the truth about who she really is! The lie is over.

Change and Our Relationships:

Breaking the Ties That Bind

Most relationships are based on what you have in common with others. Think about this: You meet a person, and immediately the two of you compare your experiences, as if you both are checking to see whether your neural networks and emotional memories are aligned. You say something like this:

“I know these ‘people.’ I am from this ‘place,’ and I lived in these places at these different ‘times’ in my life. I went to this school and studied this subject. I own and do these ‘things.’ And most important, I’ve had these ‘experiences.’”

Then the other person responds: “I know those ‘people.’ I’ve lived in those ‘places’ during those

‘times.’ I do these ‘things,’ too. I had those same ‘experiences.’”

Thus, you can relate to each other. A relationship is then formed based on neurochemical states of being, because if you share the same experiences, you share the same emotions.

Think of emotions as “energy in motion.” If you share the same emotions, you share the same energy. And just like two atoms of oxygen that share an invisible field of energy beyond space and time in order to bond together in a relationship to form air, you are bonded in an invisible field of energy to every thing, person, and place in your external life. Bonds between people are the strongest, though, because emotions hold the strongest energy. As long as either party doesn’t change, things will be just fine.

Figure 7C. If we share the same experiences, we share the same emotions and the same energy.

Just like two atoms of oxygen bond to form the air we breathe, an invisible field of energy (beyond space and time) bonds us emotionally.

So when our friend in the example in the last section begins to tell the truth about how she really feels, things begin to get very uncomfortable. If her friendships have been based upon complaining about life, then she is bonded energetically in her relationships by the emotions of victimization. If, in a moment of enlightenment, she now decides to break from that habit of being herself, she is no longer showing up as that familiar person to whom everyone could relate. People in her life are using her to remind themselves of who they are emotionally as well. Friends and family respond: “What is wrong with you today? You’ve hurt my feelings!” Which translates to: I thought we had a good thing going here! I used you to reaffirm my emotional addiction in order to remember who I think I am as a

“somebody.” I liked you better the other way.

When it comes to change, our energy is connected to everything that we’ve had an experience with in our outer world. When we break the addiction of emotion we’ve memorized, or when we tell the truth about who we really are, doing that takes some real energy. Just as it takes energy to separate two atoms of oxygen that are bonded together, it takes energy to break the bonds with the people in our lives.

So the individuals in this person’s life who have shared the same emotional bonds with her rally together and say, “She hasn’t been herself lately. Maybe she’s lost her mind. Let’s get her to a doctor!”

Now remember that they have been people she shared the same experiences with; hence, they shared the same emotions. But now she’s breaking the energetic bonds with everyone and everything

—and even every place—familiar. This is a threatening moment for everyone who has been playing the same game with her for years. She’s getting off the train.

So they bring her to the doctor, who gives her Prozac or some other drug, and in a short time, the person’s former personality returns. And there she is, projecting her old image to the world, right back to shaking hands on others’ emotional agreements. Once more she’s numb and smiling—anything to take the feeling away. The lesson goes unlearned.

Yes, the person wasn’t being herself—not the “top-hand” self that everyone had grown accustomed to. Instead, briefly, she was the “bottom-hand” self—the one with the past and the pain. And who can blame those loved ones who insisted on the return to her former numbed self that “went along to get along”? That new self emerged as unpredictable, even radical. Who wants to be around that person?

Who wants to be around the truth?

What Really Matters in the End

If you need the environment in order to remember who you are as a somebody, what happens when you die and the environment rolls up and disappears? Do you know what goes with it? The somebody, the identity, the image, the personality (top hand) that has identified with all of the known and predictable elements in life, who was addicted to the environment. You could have been the most successful, popular, or beautiful person, and you could have had all the wealth you ever needed … but when your life ends and your external reality is taken away, everything outside of you can no longer define you. It all goes.

What you’re left with is who you really are (bottom hand), not how you appear. When your life is over and you cannot rely on your external world to define you, you will be left with that feeling you never addressed. You would not have evolved as a soul in that lifetime.

For instance, if you had certain experiences 50 years prior that marked you as insecure or weak

For instance, if you had certain experiences 50 years prior that marked you as insecure or weak