In comments I made to the previously shared, an old childhood friend told me: With the people we love we do show our true selves, right?
That would be wonderful, but it is not reality. We are so identified with our mask, with our personality, that we think that "it" is us and even in intimacy we continue to respond to our unconscious programming. When you kiss your girlfriend, when you make love to her, you don't touch, it's just the masks that kiss and caress each other.
But we feel it when we do all that, don't you think?
They feel a small part, believe me. Between so many learned attitudes, so many automatic actions and so many distractions of your mind, there is no space left to see the other, to feel yourself.
Well, I find it hard to believe that we are always hiding our true selves. My friend Fulgencio raised me.
You hide it so much that you don't even know it! When people aren't trying to convince others that it's something it's not, they're trying not to let anyone know what it really is.
On the one hand, exaggerating and lying to create a nice mask for others and on the other hand, pretending and hiding because what he thinks he really is, embarrasses him.
Look closely, if you write a diary, the tendency is to hide it, we repress our emotions, we don't express our ideas...
So, do we live in lies?
Not in the lie, on the surface, our personality is the circumference, our being is the center. The circumference is the "as if".
As if we wanted each other, as if we cared, as if we loved each other, as if...
The husband pretends to be faithful and has a lover, the wife pretends she doesn't know so she doesn't have to worry about money, the children pretend to study, the bureaucrat pretends to work, the politician like he cares the problems of the people, the policeman as if he were honest, the priest as if he were obedient, pure and chaste.
And how do we then get to know each other?
Observe the way in which we have been conditioned. Pay attention to the programs we blindly respond to.
– Wait, let's see… that sounds like we're robots…
– We are robots, slaves, puppets. We all are. There is nothing original in any of us. Since our childhood we have been lied to, enslaved, conditioned, domesticated, programmed.
What we believe we are, our goals, our values, our fears, our tastes; they were imposed on us by others. We were never given the opportunity to choose our beliefs. We never had the chance to question them. We have chosen nothing.
What you think you are, that person you defend tooth and nail, that personality of which you feel so proud or… so ashamed, is not you.
Those goals that move you, the fears that control you, the ideas that give meaning to your life, the values that you respect; you inherited them all. They were forced on you when you had no chance to reject them, to even analyze them.
So, it turns out that we are a bunch of puppets without will, without the possibility of choosing anything? So we are manipulated at will and we don't even realize it?
My friend Ful, as we affectionately call him, kept silent and looked me straight in the eyes saying: now I realize why I'm used to easy answers, to pre-digested information, I liked not only being fed in the mouth but, that I wanted someone to chew the food for me.
Next, I asked him some questions that I would like you to answer as well, as a better example of what I previously shared with you.
Did you choose to be born?
Nope
Did you choose your parents or your family?
(Some say if we choose them. To me, that's newage nonsense)
Did you choose them?
Nope.
Did you choose to be a man?
Nope.
Being Mexican?
Nope.
Being Catholic?
Nope.
Your name?
Nope.
The school where did you go?
Nope.
Is there something important in your life that has determined your way of being and that you have chosen?
You don't have the faintest idea of who you are, you live behind the mask that is the personality that you have been given, without being able to show it to others. You ingest alcohol in order to loosen your bonds. Without foreign substances in your body you cannot speak, you cannot laugh openly, you cannot dance, you cannot even express your emotions. Since you live through others, their opinion is more important than your feelings. The "what will they say" is what governs your life.
Knowing yourself is knowing what remains when you get rid of all those labels with which you have identified: ideologies, beliefs, nationalities, stereotypes, fashions, etc.
With a lost look and as if thinking out loud, my friend Fulgencio just muttered... it's not easy at all!
It is the most difficult thing you can imagine, because getting out of the heap is jumping, venturing into the unknown, it is as Jesus said: "losing oneself in order to find oneself". It's like taking a quantum leap.
“Know thyself” wow! Who said it first?
The Greeks
-Oh yeah! Already knew.
Mhhh... Of course...
We said goodbye, staying to see each other again to continue our talk.