Blueprint for a Prison Planet (Part 2) Part Two - The World Inside
Hiding the Plot
If we imagine for a moment that the world is being run by an elite cabal at the apex of banking and industry, we can ask the question - how might such a group seek to prevent us from discovering their true level of power? For we are intelligent and inquisitive creatures by nature. We crave input and stimulation, and it would appear impossible that a truth of this magnitude could be hidden from us for any length of time.
As we shall see, it is actually quite simple. The 'conditioning' process that we typically undergo as children not only causes us to divert from our natural behaviour. But also from our natural thinking patterns. So, in the second half of this piece, we shall be looking at how a 'typical Western childhood' can subconsciously render us - addicted to material pleasures and the quest for personal power; resistant to information which contradicts what we believe we already know, and impervious to natural self-healing. And all without us being aware of it!
Conditioning
Conditioning takes place via the process of us repeatedly being compelled to block natural behaviour patterns. Conditioning is what happens to us whenever our parents, teachers or society, compel us to behave in a way that is not natural to us, be it for our own good of otherwise. In order to understand how conditioning occurs and what the long-term effects can be, it is necessary to look briefly at something called the repression response.
At the age of about 10 weeks the foetus begins to become aware of its environment. And it simultaneously develops a basic mechanism to protect itself from potentially damaging events in its new world. This mechanism is the repression response. Everything that is occurring around us is constantly being monitored by our subconscious mind, at a level below our conscious awareness. When something happens that the subconscious mind does not know how to deal with, it activates the repression response. This response blocks our full awareness of the event and further suppresses the expression of any pain which may be associated with it. We therefore do not fully experience what it was that happened and do not express the emotions that may be associated. The key to understanding the repression response is to understand that it is only activated when we encounter a situation our instincts cannot handle.
The intention of the subconscious mind is to block our awareness of the event until such time as it is safe for us to experience what it was that happened, and express the pain associated. To ensure that our conscious mind does not accidentally come across the block of memory and unexpressed pain before this time, it covers it over with layers of anxiety. By doing this, our subconscious mind ensures that should we experience anything that symbolically reminds us of the painful memory, we suddenly experience anxiety, and quickly move away.
Now let's look at conditioning. Conditioning begins to take place whenever our natural desire for freedom of expression is restricted by our parents or other adults charged with our care. This usually happens via our parents only giving us affection when our behaviour is deemed 'good'; and withdrawing this affection when our behaviour is deemed 'bad'. Parents typically condition their children because the overwhelming majority of cultural influences they're exposed to tell them it must be done or their offspring will not grow up to be 'civilised human beings'. Conditioning our children is seen as being completely natural and absolutely necessary.
The process of 'conditioning' children; compelling them to divert from their natural behaviour pattern, for whatever reason; when it first occurs will cause the initiation of the repression response. We will develop a little block of memory and pain surrounded by anxiety. The conditioning action could be anything. Perhaps our reaching out for food because we are hungry and having our hand gently slapped. The little block will be reinforced the first few times the action of conditioning occurs. And then we will learn. We will learn that if we wish to avoid the feeling of anxiety that now happens when we think of eating when our parents do not wish us to eat, we must adopt the changes in behaviour the conditioning is intended to induce. But, in doing so, the memory and pain that is associated with the original experience of the conditioning remains repressed. It remains hidden away surrounded by anxiety in our subconscious mind.
We have seen that parents condition us by giving us affection when we are 'good' and withhelding it when we are 'bad'. This withholding of affection is used for a reason. For conditioning to take place, the repression response must be activated. And the repression response is only activated when we encounter a situation that our instincts cannot handle. Instinct is passed on to us via our genes. And our genes tell us we will be brought up in a totally nurturing environment. We are thus biologically preconditioned to expect our parents to shelter us, feed us, allow us personal freedom and protect us throughout our childhood - in short to unconditionally love us. When parental love is withheld therefore, the repression response is activated, because our instincts have no other means of dealing with the situation. This is why the withholding of affection is so effective at achieving conditioning.
Our need for unconditional love is as deep as our need for shelter and nourishment. Indeed, many psychologists now believe that our need for unconditional love is even stronger than our need to stay alive. This is indicated by the way that adults who did not experience much affection in childhood will frequently allow themselves to die to save another, or for a political or religious cause. The need to believe we could be loved, if necessary after our death, outweighing the need to remain alive.
When affection is withheld in order to condition us, therefore, the repression response is activated. The memory of the withholding of affection is repressed, along with the pain that accompanies it. And to ensure that they stay repressed, they are covered over with anxiety. This anxiety will be the result of what mental processing took place before repression. And the anxiety we experience when we first do not receive parental love is the fear that our parents do not love us, that we are innately unlovable. This is the deepest and darkest fear accessible to humans, and it is thus always repressed. Our early experiences of not receiving affection are therefore held in the deepest and darkest recesses of our subconscious.
As children growing up in the West, we are all therefore becoming adults carrying around the deepest and darkest fear available to human beings - the fear that we cannot be loved. And yet, because this fear is so deeply repressed we are completely unaware that we are doing so. Now let's look at what happens when we start to hold onto too much repressed material.
If all the accumulating memories and pain repressed in our minds are not cleared out, then as we grow up we will increasingly begin to experience stress. This occurs because each time something happens around us that in any way reminds our subconscious mind of a repressed memory, we receive a little burst of anxiety warning us to keep away. When this starts to happen, we will find that whole areas of natural thinking and behaviour become painful to us, and so we start to avoid them. This subconscious learning of how to make changes in our natural patterns of thinking and behaviour is known as the adopting of coping strategies.
We will look at coping strategies in a minute, but first lets look at the natural mechanism we have developed to deal with the effects of repression and how our culture is not allowing us access to it.
Grieving
The repression response remains available to us throughout our lives. But, as we progress through childhood, so we naturally develop a much improved system known as the grieving process. The term 'grieving process' does not apply solely to dealing with the death of a loved one, but to any event that has a negative effect upon us. The process of grieving a painful event runs through several distinct stages and allows the body to re-balance itself at an emotional level and thus soon return to life much as before. It does not involve the storing away of lots of little blocks of pain and memory. And the grieving process proceeds naturally as soon as we become aware of what it is that has happened and express the pain associated.
So growing up, we can avoid a life spent adopting coping strategies and experiencing stress if we take steps to progressively uncover any memories repressed within us and express any associated pain. Doing this will initiate the grieving process and we will soon return to feeling calm and in control of our lives.
All ancient cultures utilised means of releasing the individual from the effects of trauma or conditioning, usually through regular ritual activity. Some cultures would do this by the having individuals enter into altered states of consciousness, non-ordinary states of mind achieved by drumming, meditation, sacramental plant use or similar, and carried out regularly to ensure the mental and physical health of the group remained stable. Other cultures would have regular festivals where participants would act out character roles, sometimes with the aid of masks or costume, that allowed people to escape sufficiently from their repressed self to release the emotions trapped within. In Greek literature, the god Dionysus tells Man that he must regularly engage in similar activities or else chaos and destruction will descend. It was to the releasing of the effects of trauma and conditioning that he was referring.
But with the arrival of our modern era, all these practices have died out. And there is thus a great and unsatisfied need for a regular means to expel the effects of trauma and conditioning from the body and mind. As we shall see, instead of facilitating this, our cultural and social environment nowadays actually patronises the needs of the conditioned mind. It permits expression of the pent-up emotions we feel inside, but because there is no connection to the original context in which they were felt, the relief we experience is only temporary. And the grieving process cannot commence. And as we thus all begin to hold onto too many repressed memories and too much suppressed pain - some caused by our conditioning, some by traumatic events that may have occurred -
so anxiety steadily begins to mount up. It causes us to begin to subconsciously adopt coping strategies - changes in thinking and behaviour that help us get through the day without excess anxiety.Coping Strategies
Because our culture denies us access to natural ways of permanently releasing ourselves from the grip of repressed memories and pain, we naturally begin to subconsciously develop coping strategies - changes in behaviour and thinking designed to avoid anxiety-inducing confrontations with repressed material.
There are a multitude of such strategies available to the subconscious mind. Coping strategies for all repressed pain exist, but here we shall concentrate on a few examples of those commonly adopted when we fail to experience fully our parents' love. As we shall see, these strategies, being adopted subconsciously, frequently affect the most important decisions we shall ever take.
Kerry does not remember her father being neglectful toward her as a child. She's only had the one father and so naturally has no way of consciously knowing other fathers may behave differently. Subconsciuosly, Kerry fears that the reason her father didn't love her the way her genes told her he should is because she is innately unlovable. When Kerry grows up she finds herself drawn to men who are neglectful of her. She marries one such man and spends the next ten years desperately trying to get him to love her more than he appears willing or able to do. Kerry is trying to symbolically recreate the situation of her childhood and reverse the outcome, thus proving to herself that she is not unlovable.
Because Mark's mother neglected to show him the affection he needed, later in life he finds himself drawn to pursue women who symbolically represent the maternal figure and attempt to get them to love him. LIke Kerry, Mark is trying to symbolically recreate the situation of his childhood and reverse the outcome, thus proving to himself that he is not unlovable.
Paul also was the unlucky non-recipient of his parents unconditional love. He finds himself strongly drawn to pursue material wealth, personal power and sensual pleasures. He desires wealth because he learned as a child that being given things was the way his parents showed love. He needs power because he was not allowed to fully express his feelings as a child. And he desires sensual pleasures because they symbolise love. Paul is trying to protect himself from the thought that he is unlovable.
Harry does not recall the high level of control his father exerted over his waking thoughts and activities as a child. He is not consciously aware that having affection withheld each time he deviated from his father's tight schedule was in any way unnatural. And simply assumes that what he experienced was quite normal. As Harry becomes older he becomes attracted to 'conspiracy theories'. He finds something quite compelling in the notion that everything is being controlled by some unseen force and that none of his actions have any personal meaning. Slowly he finds himself drawn away from the world of his school friends and spends his time interacting with other 'conspiracy theorists' on the internet. He never marries and comes to believe this is just part of the conspiracy. In seeking to establish that everything is controlled by some unseen force beyond his influence, Harry is trying to prove that the whole world is run the same way his childhood was run, thus protecting himself from the thought that his father didn't love him because he is unlovable.
Susan was another unfortunate who had love withheld whenever her behaviour displeased her parents. She grew up to be deeply cynical about life. She experiences a deep need to constantly prove to herself and others that life is no fairy story, and disappointment is to be expected. Susan constantly needs to prove to herself symbolically that the tragedy of her childhood was unavoidable and thus come to terms with it. Susan also is trying to protect herself from the thought that she is unlovable.
Carol, who sadly suffered the same neglect, became a devout Christian. She finds herself deeply attracted to the idea of a loving entity, the Christian 'God', who never offers any proof of His existence, and who simply demands complete faith. Carol finds such a belief attractive because she never experienced unconditional love from her parents and it is therefore comforting to believe that love is never truly experienced in this life. Carol is also attempting to protect herself from the thought that she is unlovable.
Michelle was another sad recipient of childhood conditioning. She works as a hairdresser but finds her mind constantly drifting from her work. When she's at home she finds it difficult to sit still for any length of time. As soon as she sits down, she suddenly thinks of something else she needs to do. Because when Michelle allows her mind to relax for any short while, she finds herself drifting toward the block of fear in her system, her subconscious mind constantly makes her think of something new to do or think about. Michelle is trying to avoid contact with the thought that she is unlovable.
Martin was an adopted child. His mother was young and unmarried and her family felt it best that she give Martin up to a family better able to cope with a young child. Sarah, like many girls in the West, was born into a family where the father found himself incapable of expressing much affection toward his children. In fact, Sarah's father was especially neglectful. The absence of proper maternal bonding in Martin's past later caused him to deviate in his natural attitude towards women. He would find women attracted to him, but once he had gone out with them for a short while, his interest would wane and he would quickly move on. Martin's male friends believed he was simply a natural charmer. However, the truth was that whenever Martin found himself progressing beyond the opening stages of a relationship, he would experience increasing agitation at the prospect of becoming closer. For, subconsciously, he knows that at some stage he must open his heart to his girlfriend and his only prior experience of doing this was as a new-born, when he had found that no-one was there to give him love. The pain had been unbearable, and his subconscious mind had therefore hidden it from him, covering it over with the deep fear that no-one was there because he was unlovable.
Sarah, like many girls, is very attracted to Martin. Not just because he is good-looking, but because she, like others, picks up subconsciously on the fact that he desperately needs someone who can love him. She also finds his neglectful attitude to women fascinating, for subconsciously she is seeking someone who represents her father. She wants to symbolically reverse the paternal relationship and believes that if she can just find someone and give him enough love then he will begin to reciprocate, thus proving that her deepest, darkest fear is invalid - the fear that the reason her father didn't adequately love her was because she was innately unlovable. Martin and Sarah thus embark on a completely doomed relationship. As Sarah seeks to get closer to Martin, believing that if she can just give him enough love he will love her in return, so Martin subconsciously recognises that if he lets go completely of his fears and opens his heart up, he could once again experience the terrifying pain of early infancy. He cannot risk experiencing this again and so must retreat. The more she pushes, the more he pulls away. And the more he pulls away, the more her own childhood pain returns causing her to try anything to get close to him. Martin becomes increasingly abusive to Sarah, but she finds she cannot bring herself to leave him. They eventually split up when she finds out he has been sleeping with her friends and they go their separate ways. He to become increasingly isolated from women to escape his subconscious fears. She to become increasingly isolated from men for fear of repeating her experience with Martin. Martin is trying to avoid confrontation with the fear he is unlovable. Sarah is initially trying to symbolically reverse the experiences of her childhood and thus 'prove to herself' she is not unlovable. Though, after Martin, she too begins simply to avoid. Neither have any idea of what is truly motivating them.Mina, a particularly bright young lady, had a similarly sad time in childhood. Nowadays she works as a teacher at a local school. Her knowledge of a wide range of subjects - science, history, the arts - is phenomenal. She loves to fill her free hours reading of the world and it's history and enjoys discussing issues with her friends. Every now and then, she begins to feel a deep sadness inside but it soon goes away when she finds something to occupy her mind. Mina revels in the infinite complexity of life. When she encounters something that begins to make her feel uneasy emotionally, she finds herself naturally drawn to analysing and dissecting it until she can content herself that things just aren't that simple. Mina is using her left-brain to block encounters with the sadness she feels deep inside. Her subconscious mind instinctively creates complexity to avoid her having to confront the simplicity of the tragedy that is her life. Mina is trying to avoid contact with the thought that she is unlovable.
Alaistair was always a dreamy child. His parents showed him affection, up to a point, but he still often seemed to prefer spending his time lost in a daydream. When he grew up, Alaistair became a novelist. He had always found it easy to create intricate fantasies that would keep him entertained for hours on his own. Sometimes he noticed that elements of the fantasy tended to mirror aspects of his past, and that things that had hurt him would often be played out and reversed in the fantasies created in his mind. But this thought never troubled him for long, he would simply imagine it away. He could fantasise that he was popular so effectively, that he rarely noticed how little his so-called friends cared when he wasn't around for a while. Although he sometimes feels a great sadness inside at his lack of personal relationships, this doesn't trouble him for long as he drifts away into another dream where everybody loves him. Alaistair is both trying to avoid contact with the thought that he is unlovable, and trying to recreate and symbolically reverse repressed conflicts from his past.
Peter, whose childhood was similarly tragic, finds himself drawn into a life of crime. For, by 'proving' to himself and others that he is 'bad' he does not have to consider the incredibly painful possibility that the reason he didn't experience unconditional love as a child was because he is 'unlovable'. The thought of being unlovable is the most painful thing his mind can deal with and being 'bad' is infinitely preferable. Paul would rather have nearly everyone in the world think he was 'bad', as long as there was one person that might love him, than be nice to everyone and have to face again the fear that he is unlovable. Paul is attempting to prove to himself that he is not unlovable.
Chris' parents had little time to show him true affection. They were both working and when they came home they found themselves simply too tired to listen to him. After leaving school, Chris drifted quickly into a life of drug addiction. He found that taking heroin daily allowed him to maintain at least some level of emotional stability. Heroin reinforces repression and is frequently used when other coping strategies are failing to keep repressed pain and fear below the level of conscious awareness. Chris is trying to avoid the fear that he is unlovable.
In all the situations described above, and many more that could be detailed, it can clearly be seen that major life decisions are being taken, not by the conscious mind, but by the subconscious, through its need to try and deal with the fear that we cannot be loved. None of the above have any idea what it is that is truly motivating their behaviour.
And none of these people are doing anything wrong. They are simply completely natural beings whose subconscious mind is trying to cope with unnatural conditioning practices that have been imposed upon them in childhood. Being brought up in a culture that refuses to acknowledge the harm conditioning does; and thus denies the majority access to the numerous ways of removing its effects; they have little choice but to follow the path they have taken. Now let's look at the most basic form of coping strategy that nearly all of us utilise in our efforts to deal with the disappointments of our childhood.
The Persona
The overall coping strategy the majority of us employ to help us cope with the disappointing experiences of our childhood is to develop a 'persona'. Our persona is essentially a type of shield. It is a front, a face that we can present to the world behind which we can interact with society free from the fear of experiencing more pain. We've found out that bearing our soul to the world is very dangerous. It tends to get bruised. And so we've naturally learnt to hide behind a front we've specially created for the purpose.
One consequence of developing this shield is that we, as children, start to learn to mask our true needs as symbolic needs. We naturally crave our parents unconditional love, but learn quickly not to seek it directly, for fear of re-experiencing the pain that results when it is denied. So instead we grow up learning to crave things that merely represent or symbolise what we truly want. Things like material possessions, personal power, sensual pleasures, and fame. Material possessions symbolise love because we learn that our parents show us love by giving us things. Personal power symbolises love because it means freedom of expression, the withholding of which first occurred when we first experienced our parents not loving us. Sensual pleasures symbolise love because we associate intimacy with love. Fame symbolises love because we associate adoration with love. All these cravings are for things that symbolically represent what we truly need, but are not the actual need itself. And because the true needs are being only symbolically fulfilled, the pleasure experienced proves only temporary. And the craving for more symbols of unconditional love quickly returns.
This is the true root of the universal problem of greed. For the child chasing mere symbols of its true wants becomes the adult doing the same. We thus grow up subconsciously compelled to strive for things that merely symbolise what we actually want, and thus don't truly satisfy our needs. And when we don't comprehend the root of our behaviour, we simply assume that we don't have enough and strive for more.
School
Our school years are a time when we should be opening up emotionally; learning about the world and understanding what it means to be alive. Instead, most people's recollection of school is that of being subjected to a rigorous indoctrination process whilst immersed in an emotionally repressive environment. Children are educationally 'streamed' - placed in an achievement-based strata - to prevent them 'holding back' others. And those lower down systematically ridiculed and made to feel inadequate. An atmosphere of repression and abuse pervades. And fear of ridicule within our peer group causes us to spend most of our time hiding our true thoughts and feelings, and using all our energy to maintain face.
Our shield, the persona, is maintained by self-esteem - the feeling of being emotionally secure in our peer group. And in this hostile and threatening environment, it's not surprising we need our persona to the full. Experiencing a feeling of security within the peer group is vital if the persona is to be held in place. To experience embarrassment in front of ones peers is to experience again the pain and fear of early infancy. And is thus something the subconscious mind will avoid at all costs.
One result of all this is a corruption of our innate need to understand the nature of our world. For, from now on, whether or not we accept what we learn will rely not only on whether it makes sense, but on whether believing it would pose a threat to our place within our peer group. We thus become dependent on our beliefs, not only to help us understand the world, but to help maintain self-image, and thus our persona.
It is natural therefore that we soon develop a deep need to agree with the taught versions of subjects like history and science. For not to do so would invite ridicule, and thus implicitly lead to a re-experiencing of our early pain and fear.
The Persona and Social Conformity
Our need to agree is important, for it explains why the overwhelming majority of us appear so happy to go along with mainstream social convention and belief. And so resistant to conspiracy theories, even if they should be well presented. In fact, even when reading an article in a journal, something that offers little chance of us actually being hurt, our subconscious mind remains constantly on the lookout for anything that could potentially affect our self-image, constantly aware of the needs of our persona. Should it encounter something threatening, it will quickly try to dump the information and move onto something else, not bothering to engage the rational mind and evaluate the idea further. This is not a fault of our inner workings, but simply a quite natural means of protecting ourselves from pain.
We can see how potentially dangerous this is when we look how little we challenge the accepted version of history. Of World War II, for example, we're typically taught that Hitler was an evil dictator who rose to power in Germany and sought to take over the world. Thus provoking a reaction from the Allies, which, whilst causing a massive and regrettable loss of life, was unfortunately necessary if the world was to be saved from a global fascist regime. But how many of us ask how it was that Hitler, the leader of a country so economically crippled that a wheelbarrow full of banknotes was needed to purchase a mere loaf of bread, could afford the immense cost of all out European war? How was it that the German army could secure the vast and continuing supply of oil and armaments necessary to undertake war on so many fronts simultaneously? The answer, of course, is that it was loaned the money necessary by the elitist banking and industrial cartels of the West. Furthermore, it was these same cartels that actually carried out the manufacture of the armaments, there in Germany. Rendering the whole of the Second World War a farce. One consortium of business interests was arming both sides and allowed millions of people to needlessly die simply to create the right political and emotional conditions for an integrated European superstate under their control.
Yet most people reading this will simply not bother to check it out further. Instead they will rapidly discount the whole idea on the first pretext that enters their mind. This is because, working at a subconscious level, our mind has already worked out that if we believe that World War II was entirely manipulated into being by elite groups, then we are going to have to believe that other events in our history are the same. And if we do this, it knows that we are going to have to adopt a set of beliefs that is different from that of our peers. Thus potentially exposing us to their ridicule and the terrifying fear and pain that lurks within. (Note that it is not a question of whether we do or do not believe something, simply a matter of our not getting the chance to evaluate it rationally).
This entire process is entirely natural and is all be worked out at a level below that of our conscious awareness. The mind is like an iceberg. The bit we're aware of is just the tip. Beneath the surface a whole host of repressed needs struggle to be met. Now let's look at some more examples of how we come to dump information that our subconscious mind doesn't like the look of. And a little deeper at the process involved.
Emotional Hijacking
In the 1990s author Daniel Goleman memorably coined the term 'emotional hijacking' to describe how a lower part of our mind would sometimes 'hijack' our information processing facilities and cause us to act irrationally, invariably in situations that it believed could be emotionally threatening to us. We shall now look at little closer at what is happening here.
The repression response is just one of many responses we have developed over our evolutionary history. Another is the response we shall here call 'emotional hijacking'.
Emotional hijacking refers to the ability of the lower parts of our mind - instincts, drives and defence mechanisms - to control the activity of the higher parts of our mind - analysis, deduction and creativity. For whilst we have developed a brain with quite phenomenal processing power, it is still under the control of our instincts. And if what the higher brain is processing begins to cause anxiety to the lower levels, then the lower parts cut in and 'hijack' the processing activity - diverting it away from certain types of deduction and directing it to dismiss possible conclusions.
Now let's look at a few of what this process of emotional hijacking means in practice. Please read the following:
"In the late 1990's, builders excavating the site of Benjamin Franklin's former London residence discovered 10 corpses, four adult and six child. They were subsequently dated as coming from around the same period as his occupation. Conspiracy theorists claim that this proves further that Franklin, known to be involved with various elitist Masonic and occult groups, as well as the UK's notorious Hellfire Club, was a practising Satanist who had participated in child sacrifices."
On reading the above piece most of us will experience an immediate, knee-jerk desire to laugh - to ridicule the absurd notion of Ben Franklin having been a Satanist and to have participated in child sacrifices. Why should this be? To persons brought up to believe Benjamin Franklin was a loyal American and founding father, surely the natural reaction should be one of anger or outrage at such an assertion. Yet, many of us will experience instead the urge to ridicule. This reaction is merely the defensive response described above. As we processed the last lines of the short article, so a lower part of our brain suddenly became activated and leapt in to hijack our higher mind, all without our being aware. Should we believe Benjamin Franklin might have been a Satanist, it will expose us to ridicule. Thus it acts quickly to prevent this and ridicules the notion itself. Note that this exercise is not making statements about Ben Franklin, merely demonstrating how easily our higher mind is controlled by the lower.
Another means that lower parts of our mind can use to dump information that it believes may be a threat to us is to seek out one particular element and use it to disregard the whole. Indeed, whilst reading this piece you have probably already experienced this on several occasions. The mind goes on the alert and looks for any possibly faulty bit of reasoning or a likely untruth. And, should it find the slightest excuse, it then immediately uses this to disregard the whole piece. Again, remember that the problem is not that we don't believe what we read, but that we don't get the chance to rationally assess it.
A variation on this techique that lower parts of our mind sometimes likes to use is to try and discredit the source of the incoming information. One example being my own experience as writer of this piece. I often receive letters and e-mails from people seeking to find out if I am in some way emotionally disturbed. And that they thus don't have to worry that the control scenario I am writing about might be true. Although quite natural, such attempts demonstrate the degree to which many people are now worried about even using their own higher brain functions for fear of they might deduce about our world.
Another very popular and important route for emotional hijacking is the shift into left-brain thinking. Again, this is triggered by the lower parts of our mind. If, whilst processing information, the lower brain begins to become concerned about the deductions being made, it can direct the higher mind to seek for alternative ways to account for what is presented. This is of course a natural part of the analysis process. But it is important to realise that here it is being done, not just to further understanding, but to block the formation of anxiety-inducing deductions. The difference being that when analysis is done for blocking the person will develop an emotional need to believe their interpretation is correct. They will become emotionally, rather than intellectually, biased towards one viewpoint.
Now, let's look at the third and most damaging way our natural development of a persona comes to affect our life.
Learning to Deny our Pain
In addition to the way that the persona can render us subconsciously reliant on consumer culture, and further drawn to believe only the mainstream interpretation of history, so it also prevents from us realising the scale of what has happened to us. For, as we have seen above, when we operate from behind a persona, we must resist any attack on our self-esteem. This means we must oppose any suggestion that we have been in any way negatively affected by the experiences of our childhood. We saw earlier that in order to release us from the negative effects of repressed material, we must become consciously aware of its existence, express the pain, and so commence the grieving process. Yet, whilst we're constantly compelled to oppose any suggestion that conditioning has done us any harm, how are we ever to come to terms with what has happened to us and thus begin to heal ourselves?
As we shall see later, once we begin to take seriously the effects of childhood conditioning and seek to gently liberate repressed material, we naturally begin to heal at a deep emotional level. But if we don't do this, then the pain and fear repressed within remains present. And forever compels us to subconsciously adopt coping strategies, which in turn leads us to repeat the conditioning process on our own children. Life becomes a simple feedback loop. Because we have been conditioned, we cannot face the notion that we are conditioned. And thus cannot heal ourselves of the effects of our conditioning. Thus we go on to condition others.
Summary of Part Two
As new-born children we are utterly dependent on our instinct, information passed to us from our genes, to understand what is going on around us. And we have only the primitive 'repression response' to protect us should we encounter a situation that our instinct cannot deal with.
When the repression response is activated, we do not fully experience an event, and the memory of it along with any associated emotion is repressed. To keep this material repressed it is covered over with layers of anxiety.
When as children we first experience our parents conditioning us to make us into civilised human beings, the repression response is activated. This is because our instincts tell us our parents should love us unconditionally, not withhold affection in order to lead us away from our natural behaviour. The anxiety that covers over our first memory of not being loved is the fear that we cannot be loved, that we are innately unlovable.
Because this fear is not dealt with within our culture, it begins to cause us to alter our behaviour and thinking in order that we can avoid coming into contact with it. These alterations in thinking and behaviour are known as coping strategies. And the most basic coping strategy is the use of a persona - a shield behind which our true self can hide and carry out interactions with those around us. There are three important consequences of developing the persona.
Firstly, because we learn not to ask for what we truly want, but merely symbolic representations of our needs, we are never satisfied for long and find ourselves becoming almost addicted to obtaining material possessions, acquiring personal power, seeking sensual pleasures and craving adoration - all simply substitutes for the unconditional love of our parents that was never ours. This is the root of the now universal problem of greed, for a person subconsciously driven to try and fill a hole with something that doesn't fill it up can never get enough.
Secondly, because the persona is held in place with personal pride and self respect, we subconsciously develop a very powerful aversion to being ridiculed within our peer group. This has the overall result of greatly limiting our ability to question the taught versions of subjects like history and science. For to challenge them seriously, no matter what the evidence, is to potentially provoke ridicule, and thus cause pain.
And finally, because we must maintain self respect to keep our shield in place, we must also challenge very strongly anything which infers we could have been negatively affected by our conditioning. Because we have experienced conditioning, we find it very difficult to recognise the true effect it has had upon us. And because we cannot comprehend the tragedy that has occurred in our lives, we can neither heal nor prevent ourselves from conditioning our own children.
So, the process of being conditioned invokes natural defence responses we have and has the effect of turning us into emotionally vulnerable creatures, dependent on material desires, addicted to maintaining self-esteem, and highly resistant to natural self-healing.
As parents we attempt to 'civilise' our children in this way because the founders of our culture created the conditions to compel us to do so. Religious and social beliefs were and still are constantly manipulated to ensure that all parents do it, or face social exclusion. Most cultures condition their children, but only in the West is it done with the specific intention of creating people who will undertake the enslavement of the planet on behalf of the elite.