2.4 How You Became Conditioned Throughout Your Life
“It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have?”
Eckhart Tolle
Self-Help Author
How You Became Conditioned
The various stages of your conditioning:
At Birth:
You were born with a blueprint that contains:
1. Genetic/DNA inherent physical characteristics
2. Mental inherent mental characteristics
3. Emotions inherent emotional characteristics
4. Universal Awareness inherent spiritual characteristics
When Socialization Occurs:
During your first 18 years of life you become conditioned based upon:
Your parents and family
Your country
The time era you were born into
The community within which you live and grow up
The educational system you are educated within
The religious organization(s) you are exposed to
Your Early Adulthood:
Then you embark upon your own job or career and refine and fine tune what you received and developed during your conditioning period until you adopt who it is that you are. Usually, this image is made up of what other people have promoted you to do and be.
In addition, there are fragments of your self that have a greater hold upon you and these surface at this time since you now can exert daily control over your own decisions and destiny.
Now society and your peers and close relationships influence how openly you express yourself. They give you the feedback that ultimately allows you to adopt a final image of your self. This self rises to the surface through experimentation with the beliefs and values that you have grown accustomed to through your conditioning.
Whatever modifications you make and whatever additional life experiences you need to complete your personal view of yourself continues for a few more years until you reach maturation of your self.
Maturation Of Your Self:
You have now become who you have been conditioned to become. You have had some time to question and refine this image, but your original conditioning has had such a major impact upon who you have become that the most you can do is fine tune it through the initial experiences of adult life.
From here on out, you approach life through a few major habitual patterns and you utilize your belief system to evaluate everything that you come across during daily living.
Your belief system and your approach to evaluating life experiences become locked in. You are determinable. Your approach to life is now extremely predictable and you will rarely if ever change it until you die.
Very large moments of pain and suffering are about the only events that will change your course but when they abate, you generally come back to who you have been conditioned to become.
The reason for your lack of forward movement is that you consciously are not trying to improve your consciousness but rather are waiting for the pain to abate. When it does, you easily go back to your old ways and become the old conditioned self that you’ve become. I’m recommending that you become the new you instead – the one that you truly are deep within. Allow it to emerge and use the various techniques that I’m sharing to help you do this consciously.