The challenge of the human race is the conditioning introduced during the formative years when the child is helpless to influence decisions made on his behalf. At this point he is without personal power and lacks life experience. He is forced to follow the examples before him.

And so he literally takes the palette from his role models and begins to paint like them.
If what he sees stimulates him to learn about his world and himself, he paints with the flair of a budding artist. His creativity grows, if Spirit is allowed to lead the way. But if what he sees is bleak and fearful, his paintings will mirror this paradigm of limitation. The canvas will depict his dangerous world where luck or fate determines his share of happiness, or success.

The real tragedy is that many die in old age caught in the same consciousness they were born with. Not because they never had the chance to grow and expand, but because they preferred the safety of the city walls where the tribe pays homage to the group ego that rules them.
It is very hard to escape from this conceited ego; its special skill is to discourage individuality and its slogan is ‘safety in numbers.’

From inside the walls it is difficult to see how cleverly ego contrives to seek self-importance, how it demands recognition and slyly coaxes the unaware. Few who live here can see how experienced ego is at exploiting humility to sway others to think like them, believe like
them, and do their bidding. Those who do see it, start planning their escape the same day.

In the endless physical and spiritual wars of our world, winning is coveted so you can boast of dominance and strength; paradoxically, both are driven by a terrible fear.
The soldiers in military war march under the brutal orders of an invisible, but ruthless general, called Ego.
It controls their leaders who send them off to the battlefields to die for their selfish causes.
The price of ignorance in war is very high. If you kill another you have only two commodities to trade with, peace of mind and blood. Many lose both.

Spiritually, the ruse is subtler but the battle is just as merciless. They quarrel over this religion or that one, my god or your god; they don’t see the master puppeteer pulling the strings to make them dance. He too goes by the name of Ego.

Ego blinds you; its brilliance is to hide You from you. It keeps you in a holding pattern of trivial, tribal disputes for supremacy, judgment, and conditional everything. It shackles and binds you to the very sins you pray so hard to be forgiven for.
And Ego laughs hard, for it sits comfortably on this side of the abyss, jealously guarding the path to You, who waits undisturbed, patiently on the other side of your obsessions, your suffocating need to be right.

Ego trains you through habit to toe the line, not to question and investigate anything that could cause its abdication. So it reminds you constantly of social acceptance, it points to the quagmire of your blind, dogmatic beliefs, your cherished conditioned responses and
thoughts, and it whispers cruelly in you ear: You plan to pass this way, dearest?

Breaking free of tribal thinking is the single most important thing any individual can accomplish. It is the first chink in the armor of the ego to go. You have to withstand subtle but enormously powerful social pressures. Innuendo that your interests are outside the boundaries of the accepted, or not quite respectable, has driven many to a life of mediocrity. They are timidly brought back inside the city walls, into the fold of the dull, sameness of the crowd where individuality is a marble tomb to which they pay homage in the town square.

Where do you want to be – safe within the walls? – Or out there where you can learn?

Copyright Elfreda 2004

http://themeadow.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-first-step-breaking-free