Leaving Home

In a major way, this transition feels like leaving home.

In most cases, it's when children leave home that they're first exposed to the full pull of society. Leaving the comfort, stability, and routine of parents' care to begin imitating the patterns you saw as a child--or trying to improve upon them--becomes one of the first major testing grounds the individual faces. In a way, everything up until then has been practice. Your own economic, scholastic, religious, social, and other choices were subject to the ultimate veto or approval of your parents. It's when you leave home that your responsibilities and choices begin to become truly your own. You're exposed to greater temptations to misuse your newfound power and the gamut of experiences you're exposed to increases significantly.

I left home soon after high school, and in a way this transition feels similar. It's like I've lived under a sheltering and guiding hand that, although it didn't stop me from acting as I saw fit, was always a powerful force that helped curb and shape behavior. That "hand" was composed partly of an organic interplay between myself and a higher power--which I still identify as the Heavenly Father of Christianity--and the combined influence of religious, social, and family pressures, all of which were heavily influenced by the dysfunctional nature of my emotional state.

It's fascinating how inescapable and powerful the effect our prejudices and precepts have on our perception of the world. We see everything through the lens of our experiences--which are, according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, the "real coin of the realm"; the most basic ingredients of the universe. It is our experiences, and not our perception of the outside world, that form the core of our reality. How clear that lens of perception is depends on how we choose to categorize and interpret our experiences. It's entirely possible to mislabel or misunderstand a negative experience as a positive one, or vice verse, and skew our lens of perception so that we seek out and remain in unhealthy situations. The abused child will grow into an abused and abusive adult, unless they make a conscious decision to strike into the unknown and find a path that, to them, is alien but returns better, healthier results.

When we go out into the world while still under the protective hand of our parents, we are gaining new experiences that begin to shape our reality. We're being prepared for the eventual shifting of all responsibility for our own welfare from our parents to us. It is during that shift itself, however, that new experiences take on a new type of import. The freedom to truly do what one desires can be a powerful drug which leads to stupid decisions and unhappy consequences or, on the flip side, wise decisions and joyful consequences. Whatever happens, the choices made and the results obtained are deeper and of greater import than before.

In a similar way, this transition away from a life defined by rigid rules and regulations to one ruled by the larger world of organic human nature and the cause-and-effect relationship of action and character is like moving away from home into a wider and scarier world. There's more grey, less certainty, and more opportunities for both success and failure.

I am torn, in some ways, about how to understand this transition in my own life. It is far easier to misunderstand one's self and one's development than it is to understand it; the human ego tends to either over- or underestimate itself and its importance. I think I could have made this type of transition earlier in my life, but I doubt it would have gone as well as it is so far (although there's no telling how I'll end up). It's hard even to understand what, exactly, I'm transitioning away from and to: it's not just leaving my old religion; it's leaving the negative things associated with it--but those negative things, for the most part, were projected and attached by me onto my religion in the first place. I was encouraged to make those attachments by my culture, family, and the religious hierarchy itself, true, but ultimately I was the agent who accepted the lens of perception being offered by outside forces. Therefore, it's accurate to say that this journey is one from an old self to a new, future one--one forged by the journey itself, which exists in the present.

This journey, then, is not about leaving or changing so much as it is about cleansing and improving. Identifying and removing that which doesn't work--that which hinders the healthy operation of the cognitive-emotional system--and replacing it with that which does work.

Corrupted medicine is compromised and ineffective, but that doesn't mean non-corrupted medicine also doesn't work. One could change just a few molecules in the chemical makeup of medicine to render it inert. In the same vein, a healthy worldview and an unhealthy one will share many key similarities; it is the differences, not the similarities, that must be altered. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to throw out the compromised pill bottle and get a new one.