"TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK"

      My paternal grandfather was a self-ordained preacher, who was known for the fiery "Hell fire and Damnation" sermons that he evangelistically preached in one-room rural schoolhouses and various churches that invited him to be guest speaker.  According to Grandpa, God was this fearsome tyrant who would "Spew you out of his mouth and send you straight to Hell when you died," if you failed to live up to His rules for human behavior.

       The first pair of rules were: "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might," and  "You shall have no other God but me," which, as a little kid, I tried to obey, in spite of the fact that Grandpa depicted God as being so vengeful and mean. I will confess though,that my effort to love God, stemmed more from the self-serving fear that He would send me to Hell if I didn't love him, than out of a true desire to obey his rule.

        The second pair of rules were: "Love your neighbor as yourself" and  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  My understanding of those rules, as a four year old, was: If you "Play nice" with the other kids, they will "Play nice" with you.  However, that understanding proved to be wrong, because even though I wanted to "Play nice," most of the kids I knew seemed to be more interesting in finding out who would be the "TOP DOG" and "LEADER OF THE PACK," instead of each kid doing unto others as he would have them do unto him."

       The third rule was to: "Honor your mother and father."  I didn't know precisely what that meant because my father had died before I really knew him. That, plus the fact that my mother seemed to spank me for every childish wrong I said or did, caused me to conclude that honoring my parents meant that I had to love and obey them, no matter if they were dead or how unjustly they treated me.

      The fourth rule of "Judge not lest you be judged" I didn't understand at all until I became a lot more enlightened as to the correct meaning of the scriptures, which turned out to be a very significant rule, because if you judge another person who mistreats you, it allows the negative spirit in him (that caused him to mistreat you) to also come into you. You then become like that person, or you spend your lifetime trying to be different from him.  In either situation he controls your life.

      The fifth rule was to "Turn the other cheek." when someone mistreats you,  as my brother (who was four years older than I) was always doing.  He would make an ugly face at me, pinch me, or kick me beneath the table, when our mother's back was turned, just to irritate me into responding to him. Without considering whether I should obey the "Turn the other cheek" rule or not, I would instinctively defend myself by jabbing my elbow into his ribs or hitting him hard with my fist.  He would then run to our mother, complaining that I had hit him for no reason.

       My mother was the one who disciplined me since my father was not there, and she did so with a heavy hand (as that was the way her father had disciplined her).  Not only did she spank me with my deceased father's belt for hitting my brother, she also degraded me by telling me I was a hateful little girl, and told me again and again that I was going to Hell if I didn't change my ways.  Her injustice to me was further compounded by the fact that her ears seemed to be closed to my plaintive defense of: "But, Bubba started it."  What was even more unjust: in my presence, she would give my brother a big hug, wipe his tears away and tell him how much she and God loved him for being such a good boy; her actions telling me loud and clear that I was too bad to be loved.  I was four; my brother was eight. 

       Since I was the one on the receiving end of my brother's bullying, I knew he was good only when he was facing our mother and not good when her back was turned.  I then burned with resentment and judgment towards her, not only for spanking me unjustly but also for her seeming "blindness" to my brother's faults.  My judgment of her then created a hypnotic receptivity in me that allowed the negative spirit (that was in her) to be projected into my consciousness.

      It then superimposed itself over my true selfhood and expressed itself as my "Bad little girl" identity.  Since that false identity was created in me by my judgment of my mother's injustice to me, it needed her to keep on mistreating me and for me keep on judging her in order for it to continue to exist in me. Because of that, if she didn't have a reason to scold and belittle me, the negative spirit in me would cause me to say or do something to upset her into doing it. It did the same thing at school.  By expressing through me as a chip-on-my-shoulder attitude, it challenged the bullies there to tease and hassle me.  I then physically fought them, just as I had done with my brother at home, and for doing so, I was spanked by our teacher in front of the whole class.

       Again, I faced the injustice of being degraded and punished for merely defending myself, which then became a pattern for my life. To keep from becoming even more judgmental and feeling guilty for being that way, I would then conform to and appease the very people that bullied and mistreated me.  But, then that enabled them to take advantage of me and to make even more unreasonable demands on my time and effort to please them. I would again resent and judge the injustice, feel guilty for it, and the guilt would "feed" and sustain  the "Bad little girl" identity in me. (There just  didn't seem to be any way I could upgrade that negative identity.)

       Had I not, early on, been exposed to all those biblical rules for human behavior by Grandpa, and knew in my heart that there was a way to be saved from such a negative lifestyle, I could easily have become a rebellious outcast in society--seeking to escape my guilt by taking drugs, drowning it with alcohol, eating myself into oblivion and possibly prostituting my body sexually.  But, because I had those rules drilled into my head, I could not escape feeling guilty for my failure to abide by them, but in that instance, the guilt proved to be a blessing.  It caused me to seek a more humane way to live.
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      The understanding that came to me from that quest was to find out that by resenting and judging my mother's unjust treatment of me I had allowed the negative spirit that was in her, to come into me,  It then masqueraded as my true identity and replaced my Creator's purpose for my life with its own self-serving agenda.  Because I had given my allegiance to it and allowed it to control my feelings, thoughts and actions  (even though it was done on the subconscious level), it had become my God. So, in that way I broke the first two rules of "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might" and "You shall have no other God but me." 

      All of the other rules for good behavior that Grandpa taught, then began to make sense to me, and I could see that if I sincerely sought to love God and to be obedient to his rules, his Holy Spirit would come into me and oust the negative spirit that had made a home there.  And that is exactly what happened; The Holy Spirit did come into me; it did oust the negative spirit from me; and as my true God, it is now directing and energizing me to write articles such as this and to fulfill his purpose for my life.

      So, now I find it easy to be obedient to God's rules: I can love my neighbor as myself; I can do unto others as I would have them do unto me; I can honor my deceased parents in memory; and I can TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, which means: that by relating to others who mistreat me with true love, patience and understanding, rather than resentment and judgment, I deflect their wrong back to them so they can then become aware of it. In that regard, it takes their attention away from seeing me as being the  "Bad little girl" and focuses it on themselves. In being aware of their own shortcomings,  they are then given a real opportunity to seek to be corrected of it.
    


    

   








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THE KING MAKERS or "First Table"

     When I was small my mother, brother and I would gather at family reunions.  My father was one of eleven children, eight of which were still living at that time.  These people were very close and cared a lot for each other, so that even though my father had passed on several years before, we, his immediate family, were always welcome at these family affairs.  Often, there were as many as twenty relatives who attended (my mother, my grand parents, uncles, aunts and cousins.)

      Mealtime for so many people presented quite a challenge, which a lot of people solve by serving buffet style, letting each person serve himself and sit where he can.  However, my relatives seemed to think that meals had to be a formal sit-down-at-the-table affair, which was usually accomplished by serving the meal in shifts. The table, often being large enough to seat eight or even ten diners, was then filled with one group after the other until all had been fed.

      However, there was one definite and fixed seating protocol in force at all of these family dinners; the men and boys were always served at the first table setting and the women, girls and smaller children were served at the second table setting.  I used to wonder about this arrangement, and I will admit that I resented having to wait until the "second table" to eat my lunch or dinner.  It seemed to me, that serving the men and boys first was glorifying them, and that being born a boy somehow gave him the "edge" over being born a girl.

       When I asked my mother why the women always had to eat last, she simply replied, "Because Daddies work very hard and need to eat right away."  That didn't make any sense to me, because I could clearly see that the womenfolk in the family worked just as hard as the men did, and quite often they were still washing dishes and putting youngsters to bed long after the men were sitting on the porch smoking their  "hand-rolled" cigarettes and discussing the challenges of their day.

       Along with serving the men at "first table" those ladies did something else that puzzled me. During the summer with its longer daytime hours, the women (after everyone had been fed and the kids were off playing somewhere--except me, who  seemed to always be sitting in a corner with my head buried in a book) would share secrets with each other. In hushed tones, they would giggle and talk about what little boys their husbands were when they were sick or got physically hurt in some way.  Occasionally, their voices would drop even lower (my ears would perk up then) and they would whisper bedroom secrets to each other, which were also less than complimentary to the husbands. 

      I sat listening to the women talk and wondered why, when being face to face with their husbands, they would set the men up to think and feel as though they were kings but would show contempt for them behind their backs.  My grandfather and uncles were hardworking, muscular, masculine looking males on the outside (who seemed to be perfectly capable of "wearing the pants" in the family), so why did their wives feel they needed to keep catering to and building up their husband's ego so that he appeared to be dominant and manly when he was already that way?

     After hearing the women talk in such derogatory tones about their husbands, I concluded that those men were not nearly as manly on the inside as they appeared to be on the outside, nor did they actually have the dominant role in the family. That meant the man's prestige over the woman was, for the most part, an illusion created by the woman, who, by willfully being submissive and catering to him, set him up to feel like a king. But what the man failed to realize was: the KINGMAKER is always greater than the king he or she creates.

     After watching that fiasco of the women manipulating their husbands to feel kingly, authoritative and in charge of their families, I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not cater to men that way and create an illusion of manliness for them.. For that reason I could never master the skill of flirting with the boys my own age so as to make them feel comfortable in being around me.  Older, more mature men had no problem "coming on" to me, but then, I was afraid of them; so, for the most part, I spent my teen aged years sitting on the sidelines, being a "wallflower."

    Then, my husband (who was six years older than I, but still young enough not to frighten me) came along, full of compliments and gifts.  I was not only flattered that he wanted me, I was also led to believe that his manly confidence and actions were genuine and that our marriage would be different than that of my grandmother and aunts ( Because of my father's early death I knew little about what went on in my own parents' marriage.)   However, I soon found out that my new husband's seeming manliness was also an illusion that had been created by his mother and sister catering to him.  What was even more disconcerting to me, was that he fully expected me (as the new woman in his life) to also cater to him and maintain that manly façade his mother and sister had created for him.

     When I loudly objected to being his personal temptress and Kingmaker, his illusion began to disintegrate and the bullying, fault-finding, spoiled child that he really was began to express itself when he was around me (the moment his sister or mother came on the scene, his old Macho, "Sure of himself" demeanor would be restored). My first inclination was to run away from him as fast as I could, but having been brought up in a culture where all the womenfolk were required to be submissive to the  male dominance, I knew I would not get any emotional support from my mother.  She would just tell me to go back to my husband and serve him--as she and all the other women in our family had done, and were still doing.

       So, for the first five years of  my marriage, I stood my ground against  my husband and fought him over who would become the dominant factor in our home.  Evidently, I was winning, because the more we fought the more manipulative and effeminate he became;  throwing temper tantrums; slamming doors as he irately walked out of the room; getting in his car and driving like a maniac through the streets (with a lot of tire-squealing noise to let me know how angry I had made him), along with subtly hinting that he would commit suicide, and embellishing it with a lot of verbal faultfinding towards me for causing it.  Finally, I became so resentful, upset and fearful that he would lose total control and possibly kill himself or me, that I gave in to keep the peace.

      In total surrender and submission to him, I then became my husband's KINGMAKER, setting him up to think feel and act as a King over me. By doing that, I kept the peace in my marriage relationship but lost much of my individuality.  In order to keep on serving him in that way, I had to accept that the correct way of relating to one's husband was simply to appease him and let him think he was King relative to you.  I then taught my daughter to also appease and cater to her future husband, as though he were a King over her; and when my son was born, I coddled and spoiled him to feel special and Kingly.

     My teenage vow that I would not be like my mother and all the other King-making womenfolk was forgotten, and instead, I hypnotically and compulsively replicated them by spoiling both my husband and my son. At that time, if someone had told me that I was being unfair to my daughter and spoiling my son, I would have (parrot-like) repeated the same old "Old wives tale" that had been passed down through the ages from mother to daughter to me, which was: "Mothers need to be much more careful in how they raise their sons, because boy babies are so much weaker than girl babies."

     So it was, that mothers of my ilk raised our sons to feel they are more special than the girls in the family (like the princes in the countries that still cling to having a male Monarchy), and in doing so, we, unknowingly, created an emotional need in the male child for his mother (or the mother in his wife or girlfriend) to continue catering to and maintaining that false sense of manliness and superiority that she has created in him.

     Then, by the time the hormones of puberty begin to create changes in the young man's voice and hair to grow on his chest, his dependency on the female for a sense of manliness and superiority begins to express itself as an urge to have sex with her--often beginning with what the Psychologists call a sexual "Oedipus attraction" to his mother, which then transfers to other females as he grows older. (By injecting his semen into the female's uterus, so that fertilization and the creation of new life can begin, the male--possibly on the subconscious level--symbolically feels God-like at the moment of ejaculation; a thrill that is repeated every time he has sex with a real female, or when masturbating and having sex with an imaginary female, or with those he watches in a pornographic video.

     Although many men use their brawn to feel manly and exploit it by being the best athlete or biggest bully, some use their intellect and seek to win fame and fortune to impress not only other men but especially the female; however, I would say that nothing makes the average male feel more manly than having a sexual relationship with the female.  After a time, he is so conditioned to need that sexual experience as a way of bolstering his sense of being manly, that the female can easily topple him off his kingly perch. All she has to do is to play up to his sexual need and infer that she is willing to have that relationship with him,  and thenn coyly withhold her charms from him until he is willing to do her bidding. He will then physically and emotionally burn with desire for her, court her and work two jobs to buy her whatever she wants, just so he can have the privilege of giving to her sexually. 

      However, many males do not take the seductive, King-making efforts of the female lying down and maintain their dominant position over her by using their Hierarchical place in society to keep her submissive and beneath them--both emotionally and economically. My husband, for instance, knowing I had no marketable skills to financially support myself, kept threatening to divorce me and put me out on the streets, if I didn't do as he wanted me to do.  He was so forceful that I, in my country girl naivety failed to realize that there are civil laws that would require him to continue supporting me even if we were divorced, particularly after we had a child.  Out of fear, I then backed down into submissiveness to him, and endured his bullying and degradation of me for the sixty-three-year duration of our marriage.

     That reflects the efforts of just one individual husband asserting his dominant authority over his wife to keep her submissive to him, but there are also religious groups and cultures that go to much greater extents to keep females submissive to the dominant superiority of the male. Some groups, for instance, hide their women behind heavy, dark veils and deprive them of education to keep them emotionally and financially dependent on the male.  Some cultures make their young women wear "chastity belts" to keep them from having sex with anyone other than the husband that her father may have chosen for her.  Some cultures mutilate (castrate) a young girls' genitalia so as to prevent her from enjoying sex and therefore to be less inclined to cheat on her husband.

      In all of those situations, the female is more or less viewed as  a household slave and sexual receptacle for the male's sperm, and even if he uses a condom to contain that sperm, he still gets the elevation to his ego by imagining that he, like God, is creating new life by impregnating her.  (I have no clue as to how Homosexuals get their egocentric elevation over having sex with someone of the same gender, other than the one with the more masculine personality possibly feeling King-like by having his partner be submissive to him, or the submissive one feeling superior to the King by knowing he or she is the Kingmaker.)

     Therefore, the proverbial battle of the sexes goes on and on, in varying degrees, from high to low, with both males and females seeking control over the one of the opposite sex, and neither one actually being aware that the battle between them comes from a prideful foundation in each of their consciousness. With either gender, it is all done because the prideful ego in each needs to feel superior relative to the other one.  Pride, in this particular context means an inordinate, exaggerated concept of self-worth, whether it be an inflated self-image (superiority complex) or a deflated self-image (inferiority complex).

      When the prideful ego in each person is involved, each one wants to be superior and to be served at "First Table."  Life then becomes an egocentric  "dog-eat-dog" existence as children in the family grow up trying to outdo each other, as well as anyone else that threatens to undermine their pride-created need to be in the superior, dominant role relative to someone else.  Masters and slaves are thereby created; empires are built and countries go to war with each other as the larger, stronger countries prey on and gobble up the assets of the smaller countries.  Sickness and disease and ultimate death are the end result of the traumatic stresses that each person, sooner or later, is forced to face; with little spiritual grace in evidence to help them  cope with their stresses, and only medical science and chemical medication to stave off their ultimate descent into darkness and death.

     What more can I say?  We are all aware of the current deteriorating state of our existence.  Drug pushers keep pushing their drugs; Distilleries keep on producing the alcoholic drinks that depressed, guilty, inferior-feeling souls use so as to try to drown their guilts; Smoke from tobacco cripples and kills thousands daily, and people are eating themselves into becoming fat monstrosities.

    Women are beginning to "thumb their noses" at the beastly hulks or effeminate "excuses" that pose as being real men, and are growing more masculine every day with their emotional need to be dominant and superior to the men. (One day they will possibly learn how to clone their offspring, and won't even need the male for fertilizing their egg cells.)

    Men are losing more and more of their dominance over the women and are becoming more angry by the minute, with rape happening more often, as they take out their vengeance and hatred of the female on any helpless female who can not defend herself, carrying it to the extent of molesting and raping little girls.

    Gangs of thugs and misfits group together and vent their anger on each other, or they kill anyone else that gets in their way just to feel strong and manly; and Homosexuality is becoming  more and more prominent as both male and females abdicate his or her physical gender in favor of anyone who will cater to his ego and provide the superiority each person needs to survive in a predatory pride-dominated environment.

      It boils down to the reality that present day humanity has inherited the same prideful ego weakness that was seen in the biblical history of Adam and Eve, which caused them to defy God's admonition to refrain from "eating" a specific "fruit" or they would die.  Eve, feeling inferior relative to both God and Adam, was the first one to disobey and to eat the forbidden fruit.  Then, when she did not die, she tempted Adam to also disobey God.   By giving into Eve's temptation, Adam showed that he also felt inferior to God, and so, like Eve, he pride-fully disobeyed God. Because of that, they were then separated from God and fell to the lower level of existence that humanity lives in today.

    Human beings can be reunited with God though, but only when both modern day Adam and Eve are willing to give up their prideful need to feel equal to or superior relative to God, with Adam being the first. Why must Adam be first? Why not Eve?  The answer is: Even if  Eve were to stop seducing Adam to feel Kingly relative to her, he would still have the same ego need in him to feel superior to her, because he is using that superior feeling to counteract his guilt and inferior feeling relative to God.

     Without that need to feel superior to God,  Adam, can then humble himself before God and, like the prodigal son in the biblical scriptures, he can be forgiven and reunited with God.  When that happens, he will express true manliness as a "Son of God," and because of that, he no longer will have any prideful need in him to be glorified, that will tempt Eve to be a KINGMAKER to him.
                       





   

                         

MY HYPNOTICALLY CREATED BAD KID IDENTITY

     Even though photos taken of me as a child show me to be physically pretty, and my grades in school reflect a higher than average intelligence, I was so conditioned by the degradation I received early on from my immediate and extended family members that for the greater part of my life I saw myself as being a physically ugly "bad kid."

     That identity was primarily created in me  by my mother, who not only scolded and shamed me for every childish fault that I had, she would also demote any ego-building praise I might receive from someone else in her presence.  If I was told that I was a pretty little girl, for instance, she would quickly add some derogatory remark, such as,  "She would be if she didn't sass her mother, bite her nails, or wet her bed. etc."

     Later as an adult, I asked her why she would not allow anyone to compliment me when I was growing up, and she simply replied, "Because you were pretty and smart and I didn't want you to get the big head over it."  She had no cause to worry about that possibility, because once she "planted" the suggestion into my head that I was a bad kid, that is who I became--as though she had molded me from a piece of clay.  My self-image was that of a bad kid who sassed her mother, bit her nails and wet her bed.

      That bad kid identity is what I then expressed back to her, by verbally sassing and physically rebelling against her, for which she would punish me in a hostile, degrading way. When I was younger it was by liberally applying my deceased father's belt to my backside, and when I grew too big to spank, a hearty slap across my mouth would temporarily stop my sassy response to her.

      By the time I started to school, I was conditioned to expect that my teachers would also punish and degrade me, and my expectations were fulfilled.  Since earlier on I had successfully defended myself against the bullying of my brother (who was older than I) by physically fighting him, I also fought the kids at school who tried to bully me. But, even though I was their intended victim, I was the one the teacher spanked for fighting (bullying was not against the school rules; fighting was).

     The same bullying from my peers, and its consequential punishment for my defensive actions, continued throughout the elementary grades at school, so that by the time I entered high school my self-esteem had  been greatly undermined; not only by the degradation I received from the authorities in my life but primarily by my own self-condemnation for being such a bad person.  I hated everything about myself; my body, my voice and especially my rebellious ways.

     Having noted that the kids who were more respectful and obedient to the authorities fared much better than I as far as getting the "good girl/good boy" pats on the head, I began at that time to try and conform, but my fear of failing and beng punished for it seemed to negatively affect every effort I made to try and please people, so that instead of being praised for my intent, I was scolded for not doing it better.

     When I married my husband a few years later, I did so primarily because he was so complimentary and ego-building to me. Because of that I desperately hoped the honeymoon would continue throughout the life of our marriage, but it wasn't long before he also began to find fault with virtually everything I said or did.  I endured that lifestyle for the first twenty years of my marriage before I finally began to seriously question what was wrong with me that I always ended up looking bad and being the loser in all of my relationships.
     
     In seeking the answer to that, my search led me to learn more about the art of Hypnosis. I then remembered seeing a movie of a hypnotist dangling a medallion on a chain in front of a man to induce a kind of trance-like sleep in him.  Then when the man became submissive and responded to simple commands such as "You are getting sleepy" the hypnotist sugested to him that he would feel like dancing when he woke up.  The hypnotist then snapped his fingers; the man woke up and immediately began to dance.  When the hypnotist asked him why he was dancing, the man replied that he just felt like it.

    That indicated to me that one person could easily be hypnotized by another to see himself as being different than he really is, and that he could  be made to act out the hypnotist's suggestions without realizing that he was no longer functioning from his own volition.  I began to see then, that my mother's impatient way of caring for me when I was still an infant and toddler, as well as her overly harsh discipline later on, had carried  the strong suggestion in it that I was a bad kid. With her strong willed personality overriding mine she had (possibly without realizing it) hypnotically projected that suggestion into my mind that I was a bad kid. Not realizing that I was hypnotically programmed to act out her suggestion, I then began to think, feel and act like a bad kid, just as the man in the movie had danced because the hypnotist had told him he would.

     Once I understood that, I further questioned why and how I had allowed my mother to control me to the extent that she could hypnotically make me see myself as being a bad person, when I actually was not a bad person.  The answer to that was:  As an infant and toddler I needed her nurturing patience and reassuring love, but instead I received impatience and degradation from her.  I had resented and judged her for that, and then I felt guilty for it, intuitively knowing that I should honor and respect my parent.  The guilt from that resentment and judgment then caused me to feel like a bad kid, and that created a receptivity in me to accept her suggestion that I was, indeed, a bad kid.

     That hypnotically created false Identity was then superimposed over my true identity and selfhood. Then, with more degradation from my teachers, peers, and even my husband, that false identity continued to be "fed." Soon, it controlled everything I said or did.  If I rebelled against an authority, I looked bad; if I tried to conform and please someone but failed to live up to what was expected of me, I reaped the negative feedback of criticism and degradation and I looked bad. No matter how hard I tried to become good to rid myself of that identity, everything I did seemed to have a negative feedback, so that I continued to think, feel and act like a bad kid.

      By delving into my own childhood more deeply, my search revealed more of my mother's childhood background and I found that her father had aslo been overly harsh and degrading in the way he disciplined her. However, she had meekly conformed to him and allowed him to dominate and control her, whereas I had angrily and resentfully rebelled against her.  Because of that, she had received the "good girl" praise from him, and that hypnotically caused her to see herself as being good. I had rebelled though and reaped the feedback of being harshly punished, defamed and rejected, which caused me to see myself as being bad; and try as I might to be good so as to upgrade my bad self-image, I still saw myself as being bad.
 
     By understanding what happened to my mother when she was growing up, I could no longer resent her when she continued to put me down, as I knew she was not functioning from her own true self but from her father's negative spirit that was still hypnotically expressing through her.  Without the guilt for resenting her making me feel like a bad person, there was nothing in me to substantiate the bad kid identity, so it simply left me.

     My self-image and personality then reverted back to that of just being a regular person; one that makes mistakes but is willing to learn and to grow--both in character and in moral virtue--from making those mistakes.  As such, I no longer have that Hypnotically Created Bad Kid Identity.

  

THE WORLD OF EGOTISM

                                                        

                                                               

     In my life long quest to better understand my complex self, as well as other human beings, I have noted that, to a great extent there is a little interplay of ego one-upmanship going on in every type of relationship. In the home the parents often compete with each other for the dominant role; the older siblings lord it over the younger ones; the big kids bully the little kids at school and social and religious groups look down their nose at those with differing cultures, skin color and religious beliefs.

     By seeing this type of scenario being played and replayed in a variety of ways, it is quite obvious to me that there is a need in each person to be the dominant one in a relationship.  With further questioning, the understanding that came to me about such a need was this:  On this egocentrically dominated plane of life (which, according to the Judeo/Christian scriptures is a fallen level of life for human beings) "Survival of the Fittest" is the governing law for both animal and human being.  For the animal it pertains to physical survival, but for the human being it involves  the survival of both his physical body and his ego.

     Because of the need to ensure one's own survival, every form of creation is endowed with a way of protecting itself from being destroyed by predators.  Human beings have increased intelligence to that of the animal in order to outwit and protect themselves from being killed and eaten by carnivorous animals; they also have an ego that enables them to be aware of their own individuality or selfhood, as well as a sense of self-worth relative to other human beings (pride), whch enables them to protect their consciousness from being controlled by someone with a more confident ego.  (If another person can undermine your confidence and cause you to doubt yourself, that person can control how you think--and and how uou think, controls how you act.)

     From what I have observed in other human beings and learned from my own personal experience, the threat to one's individuality and sense of self-worth often begins when the human baby is still in its cradle.  At that tender age the child's only protective defense is to cry in protest if he is uncomfortable physically, or is emotionally afraid; therefore, it is very important for the mother or caregiver to be particularly patient in the way she fulfills the child's needs.  But in the World of Egotism many mothers fail in that regard and are impatient with their child's need, showing it, in the annoyed expression on their faces or the irritated tone in their voices.

      Human babies come into the world being totally self-centered and egocentric, and if the mother relates to it impatiently her negative actions carry the subtle inference that the child is not worthy of being treated any better.  Since  the baby's pride is an integral part of his consciousness, he will sense the degradation to his self-worth and will cry in protest--perhaps incessantly if the mother fails to reassure him.  But, if he continues to feel degraded, without any warmth of approval and acceptance from other human beings to counteract the degradation, he will, as a matter of survival, be forced to stop crying and to be submissive to the greater physical and ego strength of his parent.  I call him the Conformist.

      By being forced to be submissive to his parent out of fear, rather than being free to make that choice, the Conformist child is not moving from his own selfhood, so he can then be manipulated to think and act as his parent wants him to do. ( One often sees a balky child that has conformed to his parent, being forced to play a certain instrument or to possibly embark on a career that the parent, himself, wanted to be or do, but was forced to give up in order to conform to his parent.)

       On the other hand, there is the egocentrically created rebellious child.  Although many parents (willingly or unwittingly) use the army sergeant "technique" of degradation to force their offspring into conformity to them, other parents cater to their child and encourage him to express his own individuality.  They may even go overboard and coddle the child with so much attention and freedom to "be true to himself" that he feels superior to  them.  He is then empowered to rebel, not only against them but also to other authorities in his life.  I call him the Rebel.

      When the rebel goes to school then, his sense of self-worth is so high that he fully expects his teachers and classmates to cater to him as his parents have done.  In order to assert his superiority he is usually the kid that disrupts the classroom and antagonizes his teacher, teases and belittles the girls and, with a chip on his shoulder, dares the other boys to fight  him. He is therefore often disciplined by his teachers, and the "goodie goodie" conformist kids reject him as being a bully and a spoiled brat.  When he matures, unless he has been forced into conformity by overwhelming degradation, he will still show his contempt towards the Conformists, as well as their established social traditions and customs.  As such, he attracts, and is attracted to, negative experiences and often gets involved in criminal activities, that bring further rejection, condemnation and possible imprisonment to him. 

      But, whether the child is egocentrically conditioned to be a Conformist or a Rebel he no longer functions from his own selfhood, and because his self-image and personality have been shaped by other people's opinion (high or low) of his worth as a human being, he lives in what I call the World of Egotism.
                                                                                                      

THE OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINT

                        

       One day I was watering my neighbor’s yard while he was away on vacation when my attention was suddenly drawn to the cement block fence that separated our properties.  During the eighteen years that he and I had lived side by side, I had looked at that fence countless times, but at that particular moment it seemed to be different.  Viewing it from my side, the fence was extremely tall—perhaps eight feet or more—but from my neighbor’s side it was scarcely five feet tall.

      I laughed at my momentary puzzlement as I realized that I was seeing the fence from a different perspective than usual.  My neighbor’s yard is at the beginning of a slope and mine is further down on the incline. When the fence was first constructed it was six feet high on both sides of our lots, but my neighbor had filled the low side of his yard to be level with the high side.  That cut the visible height of his fence to five feet, whereas there had been a two-foot retaining wall added on my side to accommodate the sloping terrain, thereby making it eight feet high.

     That little moment of awareness caused me to speculate as to how my neighbor and I would each describe our fence to a third party.  He would say the fence is five feet tall and I would say it is eight feet tall, and we would both be telling the truth as we see it from our different perspectives.

     How easy it is then for people to be at variances with each other in viewing life, and how much conflict and strife can ensue from “one-sided” vision.  Therefore, for harmony and fair play to exist in a relationship with another person, each one needs to be willing to see both sides of any given situation, as the conditions that exist on one side may be totally different than that on the other side. Example: in regards to the afore-mentioned fence, both my neighbor and I would have been only half correct had we described our fence from our particular perspective of it.  In reality the fence is eight feet tall on my side and five feet tall on his.

      Different cultures, religious beliefs, financial and social status, all influence our values and approaches to life, creating a different perspective for one person relative to that of another and making it difficult for people to be totally objective with each other.  Even in one’s own family, there are personality differences in the members. One child may conform and meekly accept the rules and standards of his parents as his own, and that will be his side of the family “fence.” But, another child may rebel against those standards and assert his right to think for himself.  In that case he places himself on the opposite side of the family “fence,” and establishes a conflict of viewpoints between him/her and the parents, as well as the other siblings who may have conformed

       Once a person has a concept of right in his mind (either by conforming or rebelling to the pressures exerted against him), his sense of self-worth tends to be dependent on asserting and defending his viewpoint against those who disagree with him. Therefore, he becomes biased in favor of whatever lifestyle and viewpoint he has accepted and loses his ability to be totally objective.

     This gives rise to a “survival-of-the ego” pride-oriented environment, wherein people compete to have the dominant role over someone else. As such, the prideful individual does not seek objectivity, fair play and equal opportunity for each person to express his/her individuality and slant on life, but seeks instead to uphold their one-sided viewpoint.

      How then can a harmonious, loving society come into being with all the participants defending themselves as being totally right?  It can’t, but it can come into being if people are willing to become objective and seen both sides of every situation.  Once he takes a look at the other side of his fellowman’s “fence” he can see life as the other person sees it and understand why that person thinks and acts the way he does.

      Understanding then removes prejudice and bias and brings forth patience for other people’s perspective on life, thereby affording the individual AN OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINT

BEING TRUE TO MYSELF

                                                 


      
                                 
     In my childhood environment, conformity to the governing rules of my family was the only way to win acceptance and a “good girl” pat on the head.  But, I did not agree with everything in their culture and lifestyle, so I resentfully and rebelliously took a stand against accepting it as my own.  Because of that, my parents, grandparents and other relatives spent a lot of time scolding and shaming me to bring me into conformity to their way of thinking and acting.

      My only sibling, an older brother, had conformed to those rules, so he also tried to tear me down from my superior-acting rebellious perch by showing his contempt for me. He did so by simply sticking out his tongue and making an ugly face at me, or pinching me when no one was looking.  I stood my ground with him by making a more ugly face back at him, jabbing my sharp little elbows into his ribs or kicking him in the shins. That usually sent him crying to our mother, who, not realizing that he had provoked me into defending myself, would comfort him and paddle me.
 

      Because of my rebellious attitude I also attracted a lot of hassling from my classmates at school, and with my tendency to physically fight back, I endured a lot of degrading punishment from my teachers.  (In those days the unruly kids were spanked in front of the whole class or made to sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap.)
 

      As I grew older the humiliation and degradation I received began to erode my self-esteem, so that by my mid-teens I had lost so much confidence in myself that I began to see myself as others saw me—I was a bad kid.  Once I accepted that negative self-image to be my own, my pride was hurt and I started to mentally beat up on myself with self-condemnation and degradation.
 

      It was as though my parents, grandparents, teachers and any authority that had ever humiliated me had somehow gained entrance to my consciousness and were then doing it to me from the inside. (I later learned that their degrading actions towards me carried the covert suggestion that I was bad, and because I had resented it, the negative emotion allowed the suggestion to remain in my mind and hypnotically influence me to see myself as being bad.)
 

      Because of seeing myself in that negative light, I no longer had the confidence to keep on rebelling.  So, I conformed and began to cater to my mother, teachers and other authorities in my life for the feedback of being praised and accepted by them.  But, I did so as a defeated warrior and not out of true love or respect for them.  They sensed the hypocrisy in me and then withheld the praise I was seeking from them; justifying their action by finding further fault with me.
 

      Regardless of whether I rebelled or conformed, I seemed to always end up as the loser in my relationships, and so I continued to feel rejected for the greater part of my life.  The emotional pain I felt from being so rejected finally moved me to seek a better understanding of what was basically wrong with me that was preventing me from being loved and accepted by others. By digging deeply into my consciousness and sincerely wanting to know the truth, I began to “see” myself from an objective viewpoint; and in doing so I gained the understanding of what had gone wrong in my life.
 

     Because I had been so degraded and humiliated as a child, my self-image had been altered so that I saw myself as being a bad person.  To upgrade my image I had conformed to the dictates of my parents, relatives and teachers—the very ones that undermined it in the first place. In order to conform though, I had to sacrifice my self-hood and individuality, which created a lot of guilt in me.
 

       Once I understood what I had done wrong and was truly sorry for it I stopped the mental degradation that was undermining my self-esteem, and in doing so I regained my confidence and self-respect.  So now I can relate to those who try to downgrade me without resenting them, or myself, if I fail to deal with them perfectly. In that regard,  I CAN THEN REMAIN TRUE TO MYSELF.

     As Shakespeare put it: “To thine own self be true, and it follows as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”