Friday, March 16, 2012

Maladaptation to society as a precursor to exploration and creativity - Mastery over the game

People who are Mal-adapted and maladjusted to conventional society find alternate ways to please themselves. There are holes that they attempt to fill up by adventure. This is especially true when they lack love, social attention, admiration and belonging and if their childhood had disturbing emotions.

Even in my case, only a few pieces of my identity really fit in with society. A vast portion is private to me. My identity is fragmented in a way. I have built it on ideals and concepts rather than actual empirical social acceptance. These troubled parts keep fueling me to seek the truth. Real solutions for them may lie in the discovery of reality at a more profound level. Maybe this reality is not even in the mind. There might be infinite concepts and a psychotic episode might reveal that everything is a representation and therefore equally unreal.

In my search for reconciliation, I discovered so many alarming things common man assumes but are actually conditioned. This further creates larger swathes of identity separate from the accepted ones. In other words there has always been a gap between how I see the world and how others do; examination of why it is go has further WIDENED the gap.

Even ordinary life can be extraordinarily interesting if we can get back a child's beginner eyes and cultivate trust and gratitude. I am like a nomad with multitude experiences and insights travelling myriad places in the conceptual and experiential plane. But there is something I am seeking which would satisfy me.

Maybe conventional society members are somehow fulfilled in the game and therefore not interested in seeking the unknown and exploring. If they decide to explore, they may challenge their status quo and this may removing their current sense of security. But what I have realized is that each life is a mystery and has the same potential to create meaning. All patterns exist everywhere. Maybe myriad forms appear from one source but it is this source that truly satisfies us.

The example that comes to mind is of: Is this wall light brown or light yellow? What difference does it make to you! What matters to you is the feeling of knowing it and if others agree with you and validate what you know, and the significance you give your knowledge sources. But why do you need validation for something you know! That’s because the very definition of knowledge is precisely that, a consensus reality. Now this consensus depends on who is around you, virtual and real. If everyone agrees with you on something, assuming you do not have internet, it’s unlikely you would bother questioning it, unless it esp. bothers you a lot in some way. There is the bliss of ignorance when everyone around you agrees on something that you even discount minor deviations.

All lives may be equivalent in their capacity for enjoyment, satisfaction and bliss. It’s relativity at its cream. Just like I am seeking new adventures and understanding, conventional people are seeking in the usual games they play. The relativity here is beliefs. Now the common man believes that this is the only legitimate way to live. He isn’t going to explore because he BELIEVES it’s not worth and not true. If he is forced into something unknown and is pleasantly surprised, then this may loosen up this belief a bit with a few special clauses added. But when the belief is functioning in full swing, then he would seek only the conventional ideals.

If he has had bad experiences with the unknown then he has developed fear of it. Even this fear adds meaning in the tapestry of emotions and motivations. If there was no fear, then that is a totally different snapshot. Each is an experience that’s equally true. Questioning and broadening beliefs is the greatest service you can do to your mind. It’s funny, we start off with a child’s outlook, get conditioned in adulthood, see the boredom and sterility of that, long to go back to childhood openness and then broaden our beliefs slowly to go back to our childhood openness. This too is an adventure and inherently rewarding.

The whole reward/punishment, courage-confidence/fear is the grand play of the yin yang. If this yin yang equation determines life where one implies the other, like sides of a coin, a man and his shadow etc., and if all of life’s experiences play by this equation, how are lives comparable? This level of complexity far exceeds my ability to think linearly about things.

A failure either reinforces stronger behavior or results in withdrawal. These work like spirals. A person in childhood who has been praised and well received will put extra efforts to obtain the same and will receive more and more attention. This goes like a spiral until there is drastic environmental or circumstantial change which the person would totally resist. A person, who is struggling to fit in, will struggle much harder to find what he is looking for and is likely to create strange things and have a lot of far out explorations and adventures. And this whole thing is a fractal again. The patterns keep repeating since everything disappears after a while, we need to renew by either doing the same thing again or coming up with something new.

Any life can be made ideal if it cuts through and masters this game of yin-yang. How can we go through this with maximum fulfillment and meaning? Our definition of ourselves as a personality is like a tortoise shell which only allows us to process a fraction of reality. You may have a grandiose, super broadened personality and outlook but this still does not compare with the pure experience of being nobody. The broad outlook person may have a much thinner shell but the real reality is ‘No shell’. This would make you the master in the yin yang game because you’re no longer in it.

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