The world is a complex place, and so are we. We go through life interpreting the world the best we can. We discover what is important, what is good, what is bad, and what makes us uniquely us. However, there is this lingering sense of unease in our lives. We are bombarded by promises and different perspectives, claiming that their methods and actions will lead us to peace. But rarely do they work. This continuous uneasiness, even pain and suffering, perpetuates regardless of the changes we make. But why?

It is a façade we create that forms and shapes the life we choose to live, and who we become. Early in our life, our brains act as sponges, absorbing the world around us. During this sensitive period of our lives, we undergo a process of domestication into the new world. All the ideals of the planet and our community are projected onto us. Over time, the sponge absorbs as much as it can. Then, the brain becomes less absorbent, and we become set in our ways. We’ve identified what the world is and who we are.

During this process, we create, what I will describe as, layers of expectations and identity over our true self; hiding the true self from the world. These layers can contradict your true nature, as well as other layers. This phenomenon creates a continuous feeling of uneasiness. So why did we “choose” to be this way?

Domestication

Domestication is a concept introduced by Don Miguel Ruiz in his book “The Four Agreements”. It explains the methodology in which we become a product of our environment, our world.

First, we must understand that the world is a subjective reality, one that most people have agreed upon. Here, reality is selective. The world is an amalgamation of invented concepts that we simply go along with. For example, we invented money, a promise to one another that we earn currency based off the work we do. The more we contribute to the world, the more money we earn. The promise is money can help acquire essentials, such as food, water, and shelter. We can also use our money to live a luxurious life, purchasing goods and services that extend beyond necessity.

Money is a good promise we believe in, but in the end, money is only meaningful if we continue to believe in the narrative and commit to it. Yet, look at what happened to the Germans after WWI: their economy spiralled into hyperinflation. The German mark essentially became worthless and people’s life savings evaporated. An entire population was forced to restart economically when a new currency was introduced. The promise was broken.

Concepts like money and other shared subjective realities are projected onto us as we grow older, told to us as unquestionable truths. Not only that, the authorities around us also tell us how to live and behave in the world, according to their perspectives of the world. As we grow older, parents, other adults, schools, churches, and other sources of authority dictate how we live our life. We are told how to behave, how to think, what to believe in, and who to become, according to their ideologies. We get rewarded when we abide to their expectations, and punished when we deviate. We become addicted to appeasing others. This is what forms our reality, the world we believe in.

However, during this process, we may disregard who we are. We may suppress our true feelings and desires, so we can fit in with the world. This is what Ruiz calls domestication. As we grow, we layer ourselves in the stories and perspectives of others, slower covering our authentic self. Over time, these layers get thicker with reinforcement. Even more, we become autodomesticated, a process in which the outside world no longer intervene with shaping our perceptions. We continue to domesticate ourselves.

We feel guilt and shame every time we deviate from the world we believe in. This negative feedback reinforces us to stay in line. When we stay in line, we tell ourselves to feel good, and we feel a fleeting moment of happiness. We do upon ourselves exactly as others did during our domestication; thus called autodomestication. Imagine a child who is punished every time they feel anger. Each time they show frustration, they are scolded or made to feel ashamed. As an adult, whenever they feel angry, guilt arises; they violated the world they were domesticated into. They believe good people don’t get angry. Thus, when anger is felt, it is suppressed, it judged, it is shameful. Autodomestication is self punishment that continues the process of domestication on oneself.

As you can see, this procedure disregards who you really are. In fact, it is designed to suppress your true self for this other self. And if your true self, your true wants, your true feelings, disagree with the reality you believe in, you get embarrassed, shameful, and even angry. You don’t want others to know what is behind the façade. Fearing the pain of being seen, by others or yourself, we build walls around our truth. We protect it, desperate to keep it from escaping.

Projection and Suffering

When we dislike something about ourselves, as we accept the values and ideals of our society, we often project those qualities onto others. Jung popularized this idea and called it the shadow self: the personification of the parts of ourselves we’ve suppressed or refused to acknowledge.

Everyone, however, experiences different forms of domestication and agrees to different realities. When you see someone behaving in a way that mirrors the repressed or unacknowledged aspects of your own nature, anger and frustration arise. You project those negative emotions outward.

Some behaviours violate your values or boundaries, and it’s natural for those situations to evoke similar emotions. For example, imagine someone grew up with jobs where they worked with very dominate male figures. Some of the jobs required hands-on skills. At first, they were eager and curious to learn. They would ask questions, give suggestions, and would try to do things themselves. Over time, these men grew irritated and punished the new worker with remarks like, “Do what I tell you,” or “Stop asking questions, we don’t have time.” Thus, this young person suppresses the eagerness and curiosity, and did only what was asked. Now that the roles are reversed in their life, they find themselves behaving the way their superiors did. Not only that, when people behave the same way they once did, they get irritable and short tempered. This is projecting their shadow onto others, unable to accept in them what they’ve rejected in themselves.

This inner conflict is the seed of suffering. Suffering is the inability to cope with a reality that contradicts our beliefs. The more we find ourselves in situations that challenges our assumptions on how things should be, the more we suffer. This pain deepens when our perceived rights are denied or when the world withholds opportunities we believe are rightfully ours.

Imagine a man who believes that hard work leads to success. This is the core of the man’s identity. This is what his parents and school taught him. But, over the years, even with all his hard work, he struggles to be promoted. In fact, someone younger and less experienced receives the promotion.

The reality that effort doesn’t equal reward clashes violently within him. He feels anger, resentment, and despair. His suffering isn’t just from losing the promotion, but from the collapse of a worldview that gives him his identity. His pain grows, not because of the event itself, but because he cannot reconcile it with what he believes should be true.

A Seneca, a Stoic, once said:

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Paradigm Shifts

The world’s reality, and your own personal views, are ever changing. Even though we feel a sense of solidity in the ideas of the world, they change. When foundational assumptions of the world change, I call these paradigm shifts. Paradigm shifts aren’t easy to deal with since it changes our perspective of the world. Most people want to feel safe and grounded. When reality changes, there is a sense of insecurity and panic. In this state, most people will get angry at the facts that change, or attempt to change, these realities.

Let’s return to the example of money, a concept that has gone through many paradigm shifts. Currency was once backed by gold. Each monetary bill represented a portion of gold stored in a reserve. Over time, however, society shifted away from the gold standard, choosing instead to base money on government-issued legal tender, a fiat system. Now, money no longer has any direct representation, it is simply a promise of value. This was a significant paradigm shift in our monetary system and how the world perceives money.

Other previous paradigm shifts include the abolishment of slavery, women’s rights, and many other social, cultural, civilizational paradigm shifts. When these shifts occur, our reality and behavior collectively change dramatically. But, the shame and guilt we should feel dissipates quickly. These new behaviours are positively reinforced by the world around us because of the global acceptance.

However, all these realities are promises we currently decide to keep. A promise isn’t something concretely real, it only holds value as long as the participants in the promise keep the agreement. Banks didn’t have to trade you money for gold, it was just a promise. Government doesn’t need to keep declaring money as legal tender, it’s just a promise. If they don’t keep the promise, its valueless. This is similar to any other promise we tell ourselves. Laws, jobs, borders, rights, etc. At any point, the promise can be broken, and new realities emerge.

We, as individuals, change due to these global paradigm shifts, but also due to personal paradigm shifts. We, too, exist in a perpetual flux of change. There are pivotal moments of our lives where our person changes. Our ideologies and perspectives of the world change. One reason for this change is the world around us has changed perspectives and we align ourselves with it. Another is because there is so much internal turmoil that we want to change to alleviate some of the suffering. These changes are either sparked by our internal thoughts or by slowly absorbing different perspectives around us. Sometimes, it just takes one event, either a life changing realization or external influence, like someone’s speech, to fuel the pivot.

In these moments of change, we disregard the shame and suffering associated with the past ideology. We let go of past assumptions, and we ground ourselves in a new one. It is important to note that these changes are not inherently good or bad. Some changes will align you closer to the values of your true person. Others are simply empty and misguided promises that will steer you away further from where you want to be.

Peeling Back the Layers

We create thick layers of realities around our persona. These layers consists of our perceptions of what the world is and who we are. As these layers are contested, we either shift them accordingly, or we get defensive. We cause ourselves a tremendous amount of suffering keeping some layers intact. The thicker we allow the layers to grow, the more robust they become.

However, with layers upon layers of all sorts of ideologies, there are bound to be conflicting views. This brings us into a state of discomfort, of unease. We also remain unsettled due to the nature of our contradicting true self. This is why everything is in a state of changing flux: we know there is something wrong and we are trying to make sense of it. Nonetheless, if we don’t realize that replacing one layer with another won’t work, this will become a lifetime battle. Instead of blaming our own perspectives, we blame the world around us. We will look for external excuses, instead of ourselves.

To discover peace and happiness, we must peel away the layers we’ve built around ourselves. This helps us remove all assumptions we’ve made of the world and about our person. Have the courage to expose ourselves and find out who we really are. Peel back all the layers until we reach our core self. Once we understand this, add new layers that align with who you are. Add layers not so thick and not so numerous. The world isn’t as complex as it might seem if you change your point of view of the world. Your perceptions should be so fundamental that it can transcend time. They should also allow you to be yourself, to live in a world absent of guilt and shame. Pain and suffering is never completely unavoidable, but we can mitigate it.

The journey consists of pulling away the layers and reconstruct them from the ground up. Find realities that agree with your true self. Be kind to yourself and others. Be compassionate with yourself and others. Try your best to be yourself everyday. Over time, with compounding results, you can be a better “you” than you were yesterday. You can free yourself from needless pain and suffering. You can choose the happiness and love you deserve.