The three pathways to living someone else’s life.

There is a good chance you are (living another person’s life). That’s a major source of conflict in anyone’s life, even the bravest amongst us. And it kills people every year. I think you need to let that land, that death is a real outcome in situations like this, where an individual is not living out his own vision. Sometimes the slavery to the usurper is so potent, the whipping so strong, that a person is rendered immobile like a piece of property. And in a sense, it is a fault of strong character that it comes down to this whole master-slave business; because in a sense, a weaker character, a more sensitive, emotional individual, is more often saved and swayed by their heart than the truly rational among us. Neither character (sensitive or strong) is better or worse than the other; that’s not my point at all. I’m just pointing to the fact that you might be stuck specifically because you are strong. And that strength has been rewarded in your life in all sorts of ways, but never has it felt like you have been rewarded for being that person. In fact, you may have been dogpiled by the weak who have sought your stable demeanor. I digress. Let’s now go back to the point; you might be living another person’s dream. But that doesn’t make it right to go on. Let’s dive in.

The unlived life of the parent. Read James Hollis if you want to go deeper than I will on this topic. In essence, it is possible that you are leading the life your parent did not get to lead. That’s number one. Number two, and this is my addition to Hollis’ work, you may be living in reaction to their incapacity to have lived at all; and this is actually Hollis’ very own life. He grew up in rural America, his parents were afraid of the world, so he went out and became famous in reaction to their poor existence. He speaks about this himself in his books, but does not analyze himself. And I’m only doing that, for you, to make the point that you’ll be screwed no matter what by your parental affiliations. Not because they are bad people—they love you more than themselves, in most cases—but because humans are intrinsically religious. Humans actively seek out forms of authority to guide them, be it God, a parent, a government, or an ideology. This is what Nietzsche taught us when he put forth nihilism. It was him saying that people prefer to believe in “anything” rather than “nothing at all.” God dies, so to speak, so let’s replace Him with ideology because we need a religion to guide us. Science is this answer nowadays—it offers miracles (man on the moon), it gives us cures (pharma), it gives us predictability (I’ll be okay if I bring a rain jacket). Same old stuff as religious teachings. It doesn’t ask us to think about phenomena, it gives us answers instead so that we may go on living without too many doubts. And it’s probably a better religion in many ways because it leaves so few things up to interpretation—the symbolic world of faith allowed for our own reading of scripture, but science is prescriptive, it gives us a script and we don’t question it. It’s a better religion because it is even stricter in its orders on how and what to think to be true in phenomena. And yet, it teaches us nothing of value on the topics of how to live our own life, what our dreams mean, and what happens after we die.

I’m bringing up this long-winded argument to show you that we have a deep connection to spirituality, whether it be traditional religion or science, or ideologies of all types; more specifically, we have a deep-rooted need to be guided, to be told what we can expect. And we use this information, this guidance, to put action into our life to reach certain ends in things like careers, families, money, and status. You will wake up one day to see that your life has been dictated by the likes of a parent who was unable to live out their life. You will live a life in direct reaction to their incapacities, or the worse one yet, you will suffocate your own fantasies because you will try to replicate your family’s view of the world.

There is a ranking from best to worst in terms of self-becoming;

Reacting against the authority’s viewpoint.

Living the authority’s unlived life.

Replicating the authority’s exact way of life.

Number 3. You will notice that most people go directly for number 3. The very lowest form of becoming. In other words, I will never transform, it’s too foreign a concept to me and that’s also fine because I’ll have safety and remain unconscious instead so that way I experience no suffering but also no growth. This is ignorance is bliss at its best. Mind you, this way of life is totally fine, but it’s outside of the scope of what we’re interested in when it comes to courage and transformation. But it’s a super interesting group because in a way they answer the hard question of “How do you know that what you need and desire in your heart comes from you? Nothing comes from nothing. You must be getting these callings from somewhere. How do you trust the source of this somewhere?” Excellent pushback. And these people answer this pushback by saying, my family is my source and I trust that model. But the thing is people are seldom aware of this. So they are right, but they remain unconscious. I wish them all the best, but if you’re still reading this, you’ve long ago missed this chance for whatever reason and now are on your own conscious path.

Number 2. That’s Hollis’ main point and central thesis about suffering; you’re suffering because you’re living out someone else’s dream. It’s not native to you, this pursuit you’re on. And you’ve maybe even succeeded on that pathway so well, in fact, that exiting it becomes irrational from a financial standpoint or from an emotional standpoint. I pray for those people, they need such high levels of awakening and courage you could not believe. And I’ve met them along the way, who had everything to lose, who had to tap into the most irrational parts of themselves in order to save their own life, those are heroes, those are the people who suffer the most because they have to do everything that goes against their biology and wallet and social life in order to become. What the hell do those people do? The answer I try to put out there, the simplest one I’ve found is; change your values. What do you value, and why? Who does it benefit? Not financially, spiritually, etc. What most people realize when doing this exercise is that 1. They never got to define the values and 2. It only takes flipping one or two of those values to start living a much better life, i.e., stop the suffering. How much would you pay to stop suffering?

Number 1. The best of the worst; react to the environment in rebellion. But this is different from the rebellious mindset I talk about in my other essays, the rebellious moment you need in order to transform, in order to kill your usurpers. But in this case with number 1, it’s a misplaced rebellion. It’s maybe a good start on the road to becoming, but it’s misplaced because it’s an external reaction in most cases; changing countries, deserting a family of origin, breaking from a cult, actively working against the proliferation of a certain movement, you name it. You think you’re leading your own life, but you haven’t killed your usurpers in this case. You have the right attitude, but it’s a halfway mark towards transformation, or becoming. You think you’re in control when you’re just reacting. It’s another god, another king on the throne of your kingdom. You are on a quest this king sends you on, to keep you away from your own kingdom so that he can rule without you in his way. It’s the story of Pelias sending Jason to find the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology; the usurper sends the rightful heir on impossible and dangerous missions hoping to remain the ruler while this energetic fellow wastes his life pursuing things like a Golden Fleece.

Number 0. Living true transformation. Numbers 1-3 really are just starting points, they are inherited and we have no stake in them, we did not choose to be born in them. We all begin on one of those numbers. Most of us will experience a moment where a calling comes our way. It’s so radically different from what we know that we either avoid it altogether, like most people do, and then we suffer or live in ignorance, or we are forced to entertain it, we suffer more, but we are reborn into a truer expression of ourselves. There are plenty of people who have done this. It is possible, but it takes a certain laissez-faire attitude. Not passivity. Flexibility. A version of a “surrendering mindset,” a humility before the greatness of our being, or what some people might call “the light of God that wants to shine through you.” Number 0 is a label, not a sequence, not a ranking against the other three pathways. It is the very act of choice, to empower the voice in your heart to see the light of day in what becomes a true act of courage. Transformation is saying no to the other three pathways, it’s accepting that there will be a tremendous amount of loss and waste along the way, and going forth anyway because it’s the only way to live honestly and as close as possible to a pure state of being, what a child experiences—that’s the stake of the fight, all of life in one decision.