Conditioning of a Sleepwalker

Oftentimes the words of others run counter to your own experiences but it seems, and has oftentimes been told, that it is more important to subjugate his own ideals and experiences to better match the ideals and beliefs of your fellow man. You are told not to rock the boat and by so doing you won't have to deal with the man-made consequences of your independent thinking.

This is a tough system to buck. It started when your mother and father told you what was right and what was wrong. Formal education further conditioned you with rigid expectations and kept you from exploring your own feelings about what you know is true from your experience. The prevailing status quo, continually reinforced by peer pressure, and the great teacher of modern times, the television, have mapped out exactly how you should look, feel, and act in order to conform to what society calls a winner. No losing is allowed. Only winning is good. Losing is bad. Conforming is right. Non-conforming is wrong. If you live by the rules, good (man-made) consequences will follow, whereas if you don't, only bad (man-made) consequences will come your way. All this we are told.

So what if somebody else made the rules but they don't always agree with your experience? You feel powerless to change the rules. The man-made consequences are too awful to consider as an option, so you just go along. In time it becomes automatic behavior and you live your life without the distraction of thinking for yourself. It becomes easier to let someone else do the thinking and you just plug their ideas into your decision-making process, calling it your own. It just seems so much easier to accept, to conform, to stop thinking, to go on automatic pilot and to sleepwalk.

Hey-wake up, think about what you are being. You are being a sleepwalker. When you are a sleepwalker your eyes are closed. When you are a sleepwalker you bump into things and fall down a lot. When you are a sleepwalker you can't tell what direction you are going. When you are a sleepwalker you are living in a dream. When you are a sleepwalker you only see black and white. When you are a sleepwalker your senses are dulled. You don't really smell the flowers, or hear the wind in the trees, or notice the purity of water. You can't hear the voice of nature. When you are on automatic you lose the deliciousness of spontaneity. When you are on auto-pilot you cannot clearly see all of your options.

What happens often is that one of life's major dichotomies comes into play. What we look at initially and perceive to think is the easy way to do something turns out to be harder in the end. The result of our actions produces more negative consequences than positive. “Easy” being defined as not having to think about what you are undertaking and not involving very much mental and/or physical labor.

Conversely, what we often look at and perceive to be harder for us to do mentally and physically turns out to be easier. That is, our actions produce more positive consequences than negative. “Harder,” being defined as a perception of concerted effort, both mentally and/or physically.

Sleepwalkers on autopilot are more likely to choose what they perceive to be the easy way to do something, without thinking of the natural consequences. The initial prerequisite being, whether or not it involves thought and/or physical labor. When you walk in awareness, your initial prerequisite involves a conscious effort to see whether the consequences of your actions will serve you or not. You are less concerned with the mental and physical aspects of your actions and more concerned with the natural consequences and whether or not you will be served by your choice of action or inaction.

Sleepwalkers allow others to tell them what their values should be because it is easier than consciously establishing their own values and living by them. They are in constant frustration because these borrowed values do not reflect who they really are. They eventually produce a life of quiet desperation. People who walk in awareness consciously establish their value system by observing the choices they make and seeing what serves them. They are unconcerned with what other people tell them they must do to conform. They are true to themselves and live lives of grateful expectation in anticipation of their next conscious creation.

Conformity seems to be the path that sleepwalkers are on. It is easier to take the word of others rather than relying on what your own experience tells you is true. Sometimes your own truths run counter to what you have been told, but to hold to them requires a lot of effort, or so you think, and it's just easier to conform. On the other hand, we can see what conforming has done. By buying into the beliefs of others you are destined to continue on the path of suffering, ignorance and quiet desperation that seems to be the norm for much of our society. The dichotomy holds true. What seems to be the easier path turns out to be harder in the end.

If you choose to take what seems to be the harder road, the one of living in awareness, making conscious choices, and not relying on the words of others to influence those choices, you are waking up. You rely on your own experiences to tell you what is true for you even if it runs counter to prevailing beliefs. You may run the risk of unpopularity or of being judged as “not one of us,” but you can counter that judgment by being “true to yourself.” Being true to oneself is the path of spiritual masters who live lives of enlightenment, which literally means the light shines within them. The masters make conscious choices to live with inner peace, to live life effortlessly and to live in harmony with nature. These enlightened ones make the conscious choice to live without suffering and to be grateful for the life they have. The dichotomy holds true. What seems to be the harder path turns out to be the easier one.

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