When I was 12 or 13 my pals and I started discovering girls. And discovered a conflict within ourselves. The pounding desire to connect and the sheer terror at the emotional cost of taking the risk that our feelings were not shared. I took the path of being „aloof“ and pretending not to be interested, which was a path I would take for a very long time and come to regret later. My friend, on the other hand, at least gave voice to this conflict by saying: I never know how to be.. to which the girls and others, whom he felt comfortable talking to would say: just be yourself. More than 30 years later, I am beginning to understand why this sentence is so difficult and yet the only one that really matters. Unfortunately, we live in societies that, from the very beginning, do everything to prevent us from being that just.

In the old days, western child rearing consisted mostly of corporal punishment. Do this, do that, or you'll get a whipping, or some other thing. While brutal, often the child was left with the option to, at the very least, think ill of it's parents and create an enemy outside of itself. We decided at some point that it wasn't good enough that our children pay lip service to our “ideals”, they had to really feel them. So we added another twist to the method. We created schools, where children learned right from wrong. They learned that they were incapable of finding the “right” for themselves, incapable of discovering truth by themselves, that they needed others, an authority, to tell them what those things were. They were somehow incomplete without the training that schools give them.

After a time, we discovered that if we get the children early enough, we no longer needed to hit them, they would be so filled with doubt towards themselves, because of the ideals that we preached, that no whip was required, they would, at least figuratively, whip themselves. We've gone so far with social media, that we create worlds, where we can be the “best version of ourselves” for others, so much so, that some become depressed, because someone's social media presence gets more likes than they do, or that someone's life looks better than theirs, even if only on facebook or instagram. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others or some ideal that is only an illusion. These ideas cause many problems in us. Addiction, allergies, physical pain, depression, and a whole host of other things.

So what's the answer? These things have trapped our thinking into a two dimensional projection of the world, as we are under constant stress and fight, flight or freeze reactions. A type of merry-go-round that has us stuck in the same simulations and films over and over again. The only way out, is to face the fear of the world as it is, and get off the merry-go-round, or exit the theater. Multi-dimensional perception, feeling, and thinking is the beginning. Language is a tool that was designed for communication between humans, but we use it as a way to distort perception. If we take a tree, for example, we see it's properties. Once we define it as a tree, a plant, a cypress, we have created a hologram of that tree in our mind, without actually having seen the particular tree being described to us. But what if someone thinks of a maple tree, when someone else says “tree”? The only true way to describe is to actually perceive. And to perceive with as many senses as possible.

If we can find a world not cluttered with too many words, where our language is fixed in the realms of our sensory thinking we can allow what remains of our self to exist. With time, if one continues to keep communicative constructs, like language, laws, morals, etc where they belong instead of dominating our thought processes, that self can develop more normally. This requires us to stay away from things like visions, goals, plans, etc. at least for a while. Too many of us follow visions and goals that we wouldn't have chosen, if we had not been forced to deny ourselves for so long. Within this process comes that acceptance that we are responsible for ourselves and only ourselves. Responsible to others, but not for others. Authenticity is another aspect that comes with this “journey”.

Authenticity's first steps include recognition of all of our feelings, and allowing ourselves to feel them, as well as, at some point, finding constructive outlets to express them. Only in a world, where we are in danger, is it required to suppress our feelings. Once the danger is passed, we are free to allow those feelings out. To shake off the state of emergence like a dog shakes off water.