SkepticalAboutEverything: What Your Makeup Says About You!

There are 4 relevant points your makeup reveals about you and about humanity as a whole.

1. First, it reveals that you have imagination; that you can imagine yourself as pretty, ugly, or mediocre. This conglomerate of thought-based images we call the ego.

2. Secondly, in line with the first point, your makeup reveals that you are trapped in conflicting thoughts: The conflict between who you are and between what you would like others to perceive you as. In other words, you cannot accept yourself as you are! This unacceptance of yourself is based on a deep unresolved conflict. This unresolved conflict is common to all humanity and expresses itself individually from person to person. For some, its problems with alcohol, for others, its problems with food, sex, anger or some other addictive substance or thought.

Collectively our personal conflicts express themselves globally as the conflict between nations, between religions, between races, ethnicities, political parties, and so on.

3. Thirdly, in line with the first two points, your inability to accept and love yourself as you are carries over into all aspects of your relationship with others. Because you cannot accept yourself as you are, you also cannot accept others as they are, and are therefore quick to judge or criticize. Your criticisms may not always be overt for fear of repercussion, but they will be there nevertheless at the subconscious level.

4. Your tendency to judge and criticize expresses itself more bluntly on those who cannot defend themselves, with children being the prime target. This conditioning of children through criticism, fear, intimidation, worry, coercion, discipline, and other forms of accepted behavior are broadly categorized as socialization and education. Socialization and education in turn form part of what we proudly call tradition.

It is important to mention at this point that this inability to accept ourselves as we are, and to judge others, is not a natural human trait, but a conditioned one. The Russians are conditioning their children, we American are conditioning our children...Christians, Muslims, educated or not educated--we are all participating and contributing to an environment of estrangement and hostility where children quickly learn to view each other as strangers who are very easily disturbed, and easy to criticize!

What i am describing is a universal human problem of existence whose roots are described metaphorically in ancient texts such as the Christian Bible where Adam and Eve eat from the "Forbidden Fruit Of The Tree Of Knowledge" and instantly become trapped in conflicting thoughts.

Our tendency to use violence--cleverly disguised by such acceptable terms as discipline, education, and socialization, lies at the very root of all of our human problems. Quite frankly, we are psychologically damaging our children by the way that we are raising and educating them. So, if its not problems with food, then it will be problems with alcohol, or with worry, fear, depression, loneliness, violence, etc.

Looking at it another way, we are bludgeoning our children's minds. Instead of encouraging our children to think independently for themselves, we force them to conform to what we know. So what we call education is actually a conditioning, dumbing down process.

Globally we can see the disastrous effects of this dumbing down of our children in the endless corruption, conflict and world-wide strife. And this has been going on for thousands of years!

Needless to say, we are not currently an intelligent human species--intelligence being defined as the absence of stupidity. It thus goes without saying that the accumulation of knowledge does not by itself make for intelligence!

Is there a way out? Yes, but not in the traditional way of thinking about it. As the evangelical preacher Billy Graham has correctly pointed out, "you cannot think yourself out."

The good news is that we are not entirely made of thought. There is a larger part of us that is independent of thought.

This larger, higher part of us is commonly referred to as The Higher Self, The Intelligent Self, or The God Part of Us. This higher intelligence is constantly changing and evolving--and i believe--will eventually break through our conditioning by understanding it.

The following quote from J. Krishnamurti seems relevant: "Your conditioning will yield to the understanding of yourself."