The human condition

From https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-jnkbj

Have we forgotten that we are naturally beautiful too?

I'm laughing at myself for the grand title. What useful thing can I say about the human condition in one blog post? It goes something like this:

We are born, develop physically, blossom, wither and die like plants do.
Life is short. Much too short to be going round in neurotic circles.

A tree isn't neurotic. 
It doesn't set it's own rules. It just is, a tree doing what trees do - growing in any way it can, drawing in water and sunlight, dropping seeds, being chopped down or dying of old age.
There is life in it. But no mind, and I don't think trees have feelings.
Our feelings make us comfortable or uncomfortable. And our minds tell us stories as to why. But underneath all that we are like trees in that we humans are animals who eat and sleep, have sex and children, get ill and die. It's quite simple really. Much simpler than we usually think.

We think we are our mind, or our feelings, but we are not. We don't have to identify with them. Identifying with our mind or our feelings is the quick route to conflicts and neurotic unhappiness.
We are something else entirely. Now, religions have opinions about what that something might be, but for the moment let's call it Life Itself.

We are all innocent, and as children built to be very good at picking up what is expected of us.
Our emotional growth is skewed unintentionally by the reaction between our genetic predispositions and the expectations and behaviours of our parents and other important adults around us as we grow.  Just as the growth of a tree is skewed by the availability of nutrients and sunshine and the direction and severity of a prevailing wind. 

In the case of human emotional development this takes the form of rules that we develop for ourselves in order to get what we need in the prevailing wind of our family of origin. 

    - If I stop trying to grow upright it won't hurt so much. 

    - If I always do the 'right' thing I won't be punished. 

    - If I am kind to others, they will be kind to me. 

    - If I don't demand love, I won't be refused, so I need to learn to live with less to be acceptable. 

    - If I become the most successful I will be admired, (which is almost as good as being loved). 

    - If I can fully express the pain and confusion that is me I can find myself. 

    - If I can only work out the world logically, then I will be safe to go out into it. 

    - If I can anticipate all the things that could go wrong, then I will feel safe. 

    - If I can follow my enthusiasms, I need never feel bored or lonely or sad again. 

    - I get what I need only by being strong and taking it.

The degree to which those rules help us get what we need in broader culture is the degree to which we feel at home in and are successful in the generally accepted sense of the word. Freud worked from the assumption that some of these rules were adaptive, and some were maladaptive, and that by looking at them clearly you could learn to choose which to listen to. But he lived in more of a monoculture. The fact that broader culture in Europe is now so heterogenous creates additional neurotic difficulty for many people. You can be very well adapted to white British working class culture, and find it very uncomfortable to work in a predominantly African work team, for example.

Many people stop there, believing that neurosis is the difference between the rules you set yourself as a child, and the rules that are successful in your particular society.  Psychodynamic psychotherapy and CBT work by helping you to examine the maladaptive ones too. And they can help you to 'reprogram' some of your automatic thoughts and feelings. And these techniques can be very helpful in the sense of adapting to social norms.

But. It is not having less adaptive rules that is neurotic, it is living at the mercy of these rules AT ALL. 

A tree's growth is restricted by what's available as it grows, but it still blossoms every Spring at the tips of the remaining healthy twigs. It isn't courage that does that, or struggle or willpower. It isn't 'success' or 'strength' or 'worthiness'. It isn't 'uniqueness' or 'superiority' or 'competence'. It isn't 'positive thinking' or 'gratitude' or 'good luck'. It is life itself simply doing what it does. 

As adults, we don't have to fight to be ourselves. We are not at the mercy of other people. We are not doomed by our beginnings. We just need to let our liveliness and our intrinsic loveliness arise in us. And then we will find that those rules were causing our problems rather than solving them.

With thanks to Ram Dass for the analogy