As it relates to survival and belonging,
Do you see the trap in drawing your sense of belonging from other people?
Whereas if a sense of belonging is fundamental to your survival,
Then you are now a prisoner in the group in which you belong.
Which is also like saying you can't truly be honest because you might be rejected and no longer belong.
You now have to fall in line and do what the group wants you to do in order to maintain your sense of belonging.
Which is why,
Let's say groupthink is such a fantastic tool of manipulation.
It can feed on your desire for belonging.
Where if you fall out of line,
We will take away your sense of belonging.
So don't be honest,
Don't be yourself.
But the fundamental craving for belonging,
Which is there,
Isn't about belonging in some sort of group.
It's about seeing the truth of what you are,
Which is that the truth of what you are belongs.
But isn't a belonging that is dependent on something that you are separate from.
It's kind of like saying you inherently belong.
You don't need somebody else to give you a permission that says you belong.
But if you believe that you're separate from other human beings,
Then that is the assumption that what you crave comes from something that you are separate from.
And in the awareness of one's inherent connection with all that is,
There is an environment that is created that helps other people see their inherent connection with all that is.
Meaning there is a natural environment that encourages other people to see that they belong,
But it doesn't come with a demand or a threat of exclusion.
You know what,
Put it in the context of family in the most idyllic sense.
Whereas,
Say a child is born into a family and there is a genuine,
Unconditional love from the parents,
Which essentially says there's nothing that you could say or do that jeopardizes my love for you.
And so let's say that there is an awareness within the parent of what real love is.
Do you see that it's not this exchange that says,
Be how I want you to be and then you can belong.
It's you belong inherently.
And that is created through the awareness of a parent of let's say some aspect of a deeper truth of what love is.
And the more the parent does not see that,
Then they use belonging as a weapon.
Which essentially says,
Dear child,
I will love you.
If which then breeds a form of conditioning that teaches the child to get love and belonging outside of yourself.
Oh,
I need to be a certain way.
If I'm going to get this,
Something that is vital to my survival,
Which you can see in some way,
How the parent who doesn't have that level of awareness uses love and belonging as a weapon for their own egocentric gain is the same way that other groups manipulate people within the group by using a sense of belonging as a weapon.
It's like,
It's a fractal.
The same thing happens on different scales.
And in the way that it happens externally,
Whether in a group or in an institution or a community,
It happens inside of ourselves,
With ourselves,
Where you say,
Dear self,
I'll love you.
If dear self,
I'll see you as belonging.
If you be how I think you should be.
Humans are wired to seek the truth of their nature.
But in order to seek the truth of your nature,
You have to find out where it's not.
Which is an important part of the discovery to find out where it really is,
Which is partly why all of the chaos is simply part of the design.
To truly discover it,
You have to be free to find it in all the wrong places.
To truly know it,
To truly discover it,
Requires a freedom.
Which in part speaks to the why things are designed the way that they are.
Put it this way,
In order for a heart to be genuinely pure,
There needs to be the option for a heart to be evil.
Because if that option doesn't exist,
Then the genuine heart isn't genuine.
And another way of illustrating,
To discover the value that comes with living an honest life,
You have to be free to explore the pain that comes with living a dishonest life.
Which shows you why there's no demand that says,
Oh,
Honesty is best.
So sorry,
You have to be honest.
There's no option otherwise.
It removes the learning,
It removes the discovery,
It removes the value.
In one way,
I don't know how deeply you can see this,
But it answers the question of why are things the way that they are?
Which is like asking,
Why are people free to just be what you consider to be evil?
Why are people free to lie,
Cheat,
And steal?
It has to be that way.
It's part of the design.
And it's part of the design that allows this thing to even be here.
So it just couldn't be any other way.
If life is going to be life,
It simply has to be the way that it is.
You can argue with it all you want.
You can think it should be some other way.
But it can't be any other way.
We can tell all sorts of adorable stories that say God is so rude because he allows x,
Y,
Z.
Well,
X,
Y,
Z is allowed so that a,
B,
And c can be allowed.
In one way,
It points to a cosmic balance that is self-maintaining.
Meaning it can never be out of balance.
And human beings don't do that,
So they try and do the balancing.
Which is kind of like saying human beings judge and condemn.
Because they think maintaining the balance is up to them.
They're trying to be God rather than just letting God be God.
And in their trying to be God,
They create hell in the process.
It is simple,
And we don't want it to be that simple.
It's like,
If I can just make this a bit more complicated,
Then maybe there's a way out other than this simple truth that it's pointing to,
Which ultimately invites us to be God.
It invites me to surrender.
I don't want to surrender.
There must be another way.
And that's,
You know,
For myself,
Again,
Only speaking from my direct experience,
I keep coming back to this simplicity in my own life.
And in a way of illustrating,
Right,
Painting a picture,
The simplicity is I'm either trying to be God or I'm letting God be God.
And if I try to be God,
Which is the story of the devil,
I will create hell.
And if I surrender to God,
Which is to surrender my imaginary sense of a separate self-importance,
Then life flows.
But it's no longer about me.
That's my choice.
Surrender or suffer.
Allow the truth to be the truth or deny the truth.
So that I can hold on to the lie of myself.
And that is the choice encountered multiple times throughout every day.
Acknowledge the truth that I don't really know or pretend that I know.
So as to protect this idea of who I think I am.
