How to overcome the oldest game of mankind
Games are often a fun entertainment. But this specific game I’m talking about has some nasty implications. It prevents people from achieving their full potential and cause a lot of emotional turmoil.
That means knowing the game is the first step of exiting it and changing the story. Your story.
When talking about a game, I mean a structure of interaction that we as humans perform with each other. The actual topics or themes might change, but the underlying structure remains the same. Like a theater stage where the backdrops are being exchanged, but the stage itself as always remains.
If someone like you is on a path of self-discovery, growth and healing, all we utltimately try to reach is our true self. The very core that is located beneath all the rubble we were born into and the rubble we accumulated during our lifetime.
On that path, once you follow it long enough you will come across the oldest game of mankind.
Once you got a glimpse of a full realization of who you are and not who you think you are it will become clear.
It will become clear that you are ok and everything and everyone else is ok. You are ok. You are right. There is absolutely nothing wrong about you; it never has been. It all has been an illusion. An illusion of false identities and ideas of self. It’s almost like a joke.
But that’s not the place where people start. It’s the goal.
Setting the stage for a false idea of self
So what happened? How did you end up with a false self in the first place?
The only thing that happened is you were born into a pre-set stage that was there before you entered it.
On that stage, things were already pre-arranged
by people, your parents.
By the conglomerate of people called country.
By the shared beliefs, rules and habits named culture and religion.
By the language and type of environment.
All these things did hold already a ton of presets ready for you the very second you entered this world. You did not ask them to be there. Most of them rather restricting than liberating.
All the do’s and don’ts.
All the ideas about who one has to be or should become.
Who one belongs to.
After all, it’s clear that the ONLY right way is to be white skinned, wealthy, at least middle class, belief in the one true God, marry and have kids, right?
Or, maybe it’s better to uphold the family honor, not to disappoint the parents, be a high achiever with the obligatory Harvard degree, seek a partner from the homecountry of your parents, selected by your parents, to make sure there is no disturbance and you live according what they planned for you? No?
As you see the story can be spun in any direction depending where you come from. Someone from India has their take, someone from Sweden theirs and someone from China their very own perspective.
The perspective makes sense locally within the pre-exisiting framework but not globally. Seen from above they all exists equally next to each other.
That also means all these ideas of identity, and all the other ones CANNOT be you.
The real you is not your family, culture, beliefs and language.
The real you took them on as a kind of dress to comply with what was already there when you entered this world.
And since newborn babies are not known to put up a fight with the current system, they take on all these things and ideas present on the stage of their system. They grow up to think that what they experience is, in fact, the way how the world is. All these experiences and imprints make them believe who they are.
How the false self grows
An example: Let’s assume someone grew up in a poor neighborhood in suburbia. The dad left the family shortly after the baby was born; the mother was left struggling with meager wages and basic survival. The mother feels forsaken. She struggels with her own self-worth. She is utterly alone and helpless. Also, she projects her feelings for the father of the child onto the child. She constantly transmits through language and body language that something with the child is not ok.
The essential laws of child logic
Now the child doesn’t have many options. Growing up, depending on someone who gives food and shelter and preferably love, there is a survival logic all children have. This logic consists of only three rules:
1. my parents are always right. (No matter what)
2. my parents love me. (Even if they, in fact, don’t)
3. my parents mean well with me. (Even if they, in fact, don’t)
Following that child survival logic, the child thinks something must be wrong with him/her. Because mom is always right. Therefore it must be me.
So what is engineered as a survival instinct fires backwards latest when the child gets older. Because with an identity that feels and thinks it is worthless at the core, success in life is very difficult.
Even if success comes, that nagging feeling and thoughts of not being right, not being enough, being worthless remain.
This can be seen with successful business people or celebrities. They are in fact quite successful, but at their core, they are utterly unhappy because they could never get rid of their false sense of identity. Then they turn to drugs or other compensatory behaviors, and a raving press can devour their last sense of decency and stability.
Breaking free of imprints
So, from a mental standpoint, it needs to be understood, that all these environmental factors were involved in shaping the identity, the who we think we are. There is no value judgment. That’s just how it was. With all the ups and downs. The pros and cons.
And by the way, many people think the rich have it easier in that regard. My experience is that this is not true. No matter where you are located on the social ladder, ultimately no-one has it more easy or less than anyone else.
From a feeling standpoint, we need to understand that nothing is, or ever has been wrong with us. If you can get into that feeling space, where you can genuinely feel yourself, your heart, your center, you are ok. Everything is ok. And always will be.
To tap into that space it is necessary to let yourself fall into yourself or your feeling.
You need to allow yourself to feel. Feel deeply into yourself and allow any pain that might come up to come up. I promise you if you do that the pain will come up and go away and a new clear space is waiting for you. The space of your true self. There are many techniques like Holotropic Breathwork that can support you tapping into that space.
Unfortunately it is exactly the opposite of what our conditioned and hurt idea of self would do. The mind wants to get away from feeling. It fears pain because feelings did cause a lot of pain in the past.
Problems with accessing the feeling space
We often think we are in that feeling space when in reality our mind just tells us we are in it. We say to ourselves: “Oh yes I can feel it, everything is ok.”
But the very second you think that, you cannot be in it. Technical impossible because mindspace and feeling space work completely different.
The trick is when you are in the feeling space the mind does not comment or say anything. The whole body is filled with feeling and knowing. And knowing is different from language.
It can be converted to language but not transported or grasped by language. It’s like converting the force of a raging river to electricity. It state changes. The force of the water is connected to the electricity, but they are not the same. The same goes with feeling and mind.
Back to the game
From the perspective of “I am ok, everything is ok. It was all just circumstances, and I can let it go now” — it becomes clear that anyone who tells you otherwise is just playing a mean game.
The game is to tell you:
you are not ok.
You don’t have the right grades,
the right education,
the right religion,
the right skin color,
the right amount of money, beauty, you name it.
And now it is your choice to buy into that game. Because it is you who agrees or declines the role of someone who is not ok. Yes, you have control over that. You just decline the role of the victim. You walk away. You know.
The reason for people telling other people they are not ok isn’t because they are “evil” in its pure sense.
No, it’s because they grew up in a conditioning that made them believe they have their own shortcomings of this or that sort. That made them believe their version of who they think they are.
Naturally, they don’t want to see or feel these shortcomings and thus project them onto other people.
Once the other one accepts that projected role offer, they can have a little relief, because, “hey it’s not them that have the problem now. Now we are two who think we are worthless.”
When you are anchored in a strong feeling of everything is ok. I am ok. Such a projection can be easily seen and dismissed. You know in your heart what is true for you. And in many cases, that’s not what’s true for other people — or more often, what they think is true for them.
Why? Because someone acting from mind space cannot possibly grasp the angle of someone coming from a feeling space. It’s two different languages. That is like trying to speak Ubuntu to someone in Japan.
What can you do now?
So there are two things you can do now. Work with your feeling space. Dare to tap into it. Do breathing exercises and anchor yourself in how you feel, how your body feels. There are many ways to come closer to your feeling space.
Second, watch out how many times in your communication you try to impose a “you are not ok” onto someone else.
Watch for the moments where you accuse your partner, your kids, your parents or friends of something they have done.
Where they have failed you and your idea of them.
Hint: When you discover yourself doing that to other people it shows that you project your own ideas of shortcoming onto them. Use these instances as stepping stones, where your idea of yourself is not quite up to date.
