Deconstructing Myself

Like everyone, I emerged. I arrived on this planet. It happened 63 years ago. I don’t recall much of the day I was born, after all, I was pretty young at the time. I know that my brain had barely evolved beyond basic functions that equipped me with the ability to survive with the assistance of my mom, and some from dad. I was a blank slate. I knew nothing. My parents were, unwittingly, indoctrinating me to follow in their footsteps. And I, not capable of knowing better, followed.

I listened and learned. I attended the church my mom attended. I went to school because, as my mom taught me, it was illegal not to attend. Some well-meaning but small-minded people made it a law that children must attend school. As a child, all I wanted was to please my parents and win their approval and affection. So I conformed. In school, I didn’t dare be different. I conformed to what the teachers and the other children wanted me to be. I learned to dress to impress. I wore the same clothes as everyone else so I could fit in and be accepted—all we want as children is to be accepted, seen, and loved. As we grow, approval becomes more important than compensation. However, in the working world, approval is rarely granted because managers fear that granting a request for increased compensation will lead to a decrease in their budgets.

I got programmed to believe that sex was a dirty thing and that it’s sinful to indulge in sexual activity unless you’re making a child and are in a sanctified and committed relationship. As a young man, I didn’t abide by those rules. They seemed to be unnatural, but I feared eternal damnation with each experience. I don’t think that sex was meant to be as stressful a thing as I experienced it to be.

I was programmed to believe in Jesus and that his path was the only one to take to salvation. I went to church, and when I was old enough to go to confession, I often found myself sitting on a pew outside of the confessional, trying to figure out how I sinned the week before and trying to concoct a convincing lie to tell the priest so I could be absolved of my sins. I didn’t know if I had sinned or how I could have sinned during the week. I found the situation very stressful. I was lying to get absolved of my sins, which is a sin. Would that sin be forgiven with the priests’ absolution, too? At that age, I had doubts, which led to tremendous guilt, and I became agnostic. There are great lessons to be found in scripture of all kinds.

I found out, a long time ago, that I didn’t need Jesus’s guidance. I learned that being kind, respectful, considerate, compassionate, empathetic, and forgiving are keys to getting along with others and advancing in life. I hold no grudges. I respect those who believe without question what their leaders and parents told them to believe. But I will resist those who try to bully me into believing what they do. That won’t happen. I can’t make someone think something they don’t want to think, so how is it that others think they can force their beliefs on others? That’s insanity. In deconstructing myself, I’ve found greater appreciation for the fact that I can only be aware of one spirit, and that is me, the consciousness inside my body. The other spirits of our various cultures and the spirits of every individual in the world, I can only examine on the physical plane and therefore, cannot verify that they actually exist. I know I am part of a bigger energy, I call Nature.

I’m freer than most people. It’s not that Jesus’s words aren’t important to me; I simply got turned off by the insanitution of religion due to the feeling that I was nothing more than a tither to them. An institution is an organized, ancient entity that insists its doctrine is the solution to all of humanity’s problems and must be obeyed and defended to death or brutally punished if it is not followed. Some insanitutions are schools, political parties, religious insanitutions, and financial companies. They’re all after power and control over the masses. That’s the issue that makes them an insane entity. They believe they can create peace and harmony if everyone were forced to behave the way they dictate.

My parents emigrated from post-war Germany and Austria. Thanks to a maniacal, insane man, they were indoctrinated from birth to be bigots. They had a vast array of racist ideas in their minds, and of course, I learned to think the same way. But as I found out by going to school, the racist ideas were unfounded. I learned through trial that if I treated people with respect, I’d experience respect in reciprocity. My parents’ white supremacist ideology I found disgusting, and I unintentionally changed myself to be tolerant, accepting, forgiving, and in love with all things and everyone. I’m an amateur when it comes to understanding scripture, but to my knowledge, this is what Jesus taught. The Dalai Lama exhorts compassion and empathy. I think those encompass what I believe. I've found that being kind, asking for help, and inspiring others to use their talents and abilities for the benefit of everyone is more effective than telling people what to do.

Money, my parents taught me, didn’t grow on trees or was found in a pile next to the road. You had to work hard and fight for what you wanted. Money and power meant freedom to them. They wanted me to attend university to receive a good ‘education’, so I could have a successful career and be financially better off than my parents. Parents always want the best for their children. But money has never meant much to me. It’s an object used to exchange goods and services. Being rich means I need to figure out how to earn more money to maintain my current wealth and status. It seems to be a never-ending circle. Taxes confuse me to this day. How is it okay for someone to take something I work hard for from me and give it away to other people to fight wars or increase their greedy wealth? Lately, I’ve been seeing how my taxes keep rising, and the uber-rich people keep getting tax breaks. It seems a bit unbalanced here. All I want is to be free. Have shelter, warmth, food and peace. The political insanitutions seem to want the opposite for everyone. They want them fearful and therefore controllable.

I was taught that working hard was the only way to earn money. I followed my dad’s lead. He told me to find a job that I could stay in for forty years, and I’d be set. I’d have a pension and an easy retirement. I do not recall a single day when my dad came home and said he enjoyed his job. He always complained about his bosses, coworkers, the government, and the banks, and said that the world revolves around the almighty dollar. A few years after he retired, my dad received notice that the company, due to a downturn in business, had to claw back his pension. I was outraged by the idea that my dad’s life was changed due to the company’s need to placate investors and shareholders, directors and owners’ avarice. I grew up with this ideology as well. How could I not be infected by it? I became my dad. He worked for one company for forty years, earning enough to pay a mortgage, put food on the table for all of us, save money for a rainy day, and have some left over to experience an adventure once a year. I can see why he was miserable. He never found fulfilment. Just work. He was obsessed with his bank account. If the money in it dropped below ten thousand dollars, he would be distraught. I picked up this thought habit while living with him for the first nineteen years of my life, and it aided in causing my chronic stress-filled life. My longest-held job to this day has been ten years. It seems that layoffs or frustrations with employers made it necessary to keep moving. I often feel trapped like a rat in a cage used in an experiment to see how much stress I can take and how rich others can get by my efforts to survive.

I was unaware that my thoughts had a significant effect on my health. I just thought what I thought. I acted the way my thoughts made me act. And because my thoughts induced self-inflicted stress, I got sick. I suffer from Cortisol poisoning. I was unaware of it until my body began to rebel. High cholesterol and glucose levels indicated that I was suffering from chronic stress, amongst other health issues I won’t go into. I believe that the stress started once I entered kindergarten and was forced to start adulting. I couldn’t play anymore.

When my awakening occurred, I realized that reflecting on my life and examining what I had been taught and how I had been indoctrinated had led me to my current place in life. I decided to make changes. I reviewed the rules, boundaries, and limitations I had, keeping the ones that aligned with my values and disposing of the ones that were outdated or malicious. I embraced my authentic self and found freedom in doing so. Studying myself led to my freedom.

Freedom is all I want. Freedom for everyone is a dream I have. Yes, I often discuss the flaws of our human-mind-constructed world. If my views are heard, will the world become a better place?

I am Nature. Clothing the perfect physical being to abide by archaic, puritanistic ideology is a sin against Nature. Why should I be someone I’m not just to avoid the criticism of small-minded and narrow-focused people who would cause me verbal and physical abuse simply because I don’t fit into their ridiculously stupid idea of ‘NORMAL’? I don’t get it. I’m free. Public, non-sexual nudity is the icing on the cake. I practice it to deepen my connection to Nature, embracing the idea that I belong to this planet I call Mother Earth, and to acknowledge my awareness of my conscious being. It’s a good practice that all human beings should experience.

Deconstructing my life is how I found freedom. Do you think everyone in the world would benefit from the same exercise?

Let me know if you’re going to do it. I’ll support you every step of your journey.