A Lesson in Loving the World: A Guidebook to Discovering Happiness and Love

By James Seow Chavez

The power to find true love and happiness is at our fingertips, and yet so many are blind to this, thinking that we will only matter if we are young, attractive, and accomplished. We are all sitting on a treasure trove of happiness and joy. Tapping this source has a process to it. Love starts with you, spreads to others, and finally to the whole universe. We are made perfect just as we are. Love constantly surrounds us, and youll find this out for yourself in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543439915

James Seow Chavez

My hopes are for my readers to find the ultimate love and peace in their lives. I was inspired by the many people in my life that suffer. So many of my loved ones are depressed, mentally ill, or angry every day. I am dedicating the rest of my life to help others help themselves and show them that they already have everything that they could ever want. I am a child of divorced parents, bullying, emotional neglect, lack of love life, and low self-esteem. I constantly looked for love in other people. My whole life I never thought I could ever be loved, and so I spent the first 22 years of my life desperately searching for what love really was. My heart was broken in so many ways after I turned 23, but a gift was given to me in return. A gift was suddenly bestowed on me of what love actually was. I spent an entire year researching what love was and how to develop it. This book is my passion and gateway that I am offering to others to find true love and happiness. Find isn’t the right word though because find implies to get something that we lost or didn’t have. Love surrounds us, but there is a process to discovering this love. A Lesson in Loving the World is a guidebook on the steps needed to find out what love means for you. I am 23 and getting a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. My whole life I’ve pondered what profession is really right for me. I now know that what profession I choose does not matter. It dawned upon me that what we do as a profession in life does not matter, but rather as long as we can provide for our basic needs, it is the way that we spread love and kindness that does matter. My future is undetermined, but happiness can be found wherever you go, even during painful times and hard careers. It does not matter where we are in life because we are all equal. I don’t know if I will be a chemical engineer, material scientist, or author in the future, but I know that happiness is independent of external conditions. This mindset too is what I wish to share with my readers.

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Copyright © 2017 by James Seow Chavez Jr.

Library of Congress Control Number:                   2017911674

ISBN:                   Hardcover                     978-1-5434-3990-8

                            Softcover                       978-1-5434-3992-2

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 09/08/2017

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction: Become the Better You

Chapter 2 What is Love and Belonging?

1.   Belief That You Can Love Yourself

The Rest of Love

2.   Love Yourself

3.   Respect Yourself

4.   Love Others

5.   Respect Others

6.   Understanding What Love Means to You on a Deep Level

7.   Feeling a Sense of Belonging Within Yourself and Feeling Connected to Others

Chapter 3 My Story

Chapter 4 Self-love and Being Vulnerable

Never Being Enough

Insecurity

The Cures

Vulnerability

Chapter 5 Why are People Fake?

The Symbiote

Stop Caring About What Others Think

Remembering to Forgive

Bullies

Chapter 6 Hiding Yourself from the Outside World

Emotional Shielding

Emotional Numbing

Effects of Shame

Males and Sensitivity

Females and Being Enough

Chapter 7 The Expression of Openness

Recognizing Emotions

Emotional Expression

Feeling Vulnerable

Benefits for You and Others

Chapter 8 Practical Self-Compassion

Daily Self-Compassion Phrases

Self-Compassion Exercises

Compassion for others

Too Much Self-Compassion? Motivation?

Chapter 9 Extending Your Love

The Sun in You

Love Better

Tackling Those Hard Conversations

Handling Arguments

Building Deep Connection for Couples

Chapter 10 Meet People, Be You, Be Confident

Benefits of Meeting People

How To Carry Yourself

Meeting Strangers

What to Say Initially

Developing a Bond

Chapter 11 Healing our Suffering

Secrets to Healing

How to Deal with Tough Pain

How to Handle a Breakup

Helping Others Through the Pain

Chapter 12 Why we Suffer

Types of Suffering

Characteristics of the Truth of Suffering

Addictions

How to End Your Addiction

Awareness

Chapter 13 Living Virtuously

Why Living Virtuously Ends Our Suffering

Basic Virtuosity

The Noble Eightfold Path

Chapter 14 Happiness, Mindfulness, and the Now

The moment of Now

Controlling your emotions

Mindfulness

Chapter 15 A Short Guide to Meditation

What is Meditation

Types of Meditation

Chapter 16 Loving the Universe

Why do Spirituality?

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment Benefits

Enlightenment Exercises

Daily Inspirational Quotes

Notes and References

To Josefine McBrayer and Lauren Wells

You are the inspiration to this book

Dedicated to Dad

You never gave up on me

DISCLAIMER

None of the information contained in this book should be taken as a claim to cure, treat, diagnose, prevent or improve any medical condition. In dealing with psychological and physiological health, consult a health professional.

PREFACE

I wrote this book to reach out to people if they find themselves having an inability to be real and genuine in the world in addition to just anyone who has gone through pain or hurt. For the rest of us, it’s a good reminder and guide to keep us true and consistent with our love to the world.

This book was inspired because of the failing relationships in my life and a desire to fix them and make my future relationships great ones. I’m no miracle worker, and I don’t have a Ph.D. in social work or psychology, but with help from a number of sources, including self-experience, this is my guide on how to live a more full and loving life for people who have not yet learned how to do so. Not sure if you are there yet? Well then this book is still probably for you. The beautiful thing about love is that you don’t need a Ph.D. to teach or learn it. Everyone can become an expert on love with a little bit of practice.

Many successful writers write as if writing to the sky. While this is a good technique, I purposefully opted for this text to have a lot of first person plural and second person pronouns like we and you. I want this text to be as if I am actually talking to you. I want these words to resonate with you and feel like I’m not just talking to some inanimate object. I want this book to be personal, and to really hit those deep subjects that people are too afraid to bring up.

There are many views as to what love is and why it is, but my hopes are that I can reach out and make a difference to someone out there, someone who needs to hear these words in just the right way that make them have a spiritual awakening themselves. I made writing this book the ultimate test for myself to stay committed and really understand what it takes to become vulnerable and wholehearted, so hopefully there are some sets of eyes reading this other than mine eventually!

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Become the Better You

I just want $1 billion more dollars and I’ll be happy, said Joey.

Why, I asked, You already have $100 billion, a mansion, a hot girlfriend, a loving family, friends, and a ton of sport courts, what more could $1 billion do for you.

I just can’t be satisfied until I reach my goal man.

Okay, fine, earn the extra $1 billion then.

A month passed and Joey finally got that $1 billion he wanted.

Actually, I take it back, I’ve always wanted a hotter girlfriend, that’ll make me happy.

That doesn’t make any sense, I said, You already have all you could possibly want.

There is nothing in this book that I can actually give you. If there was anything in this book that I could give to you, it would be like me stealing the wallet from your pocket and selling it back to you. I’m here to teach you that rather than looking for happiness outside yourself, it can be found if you look inward. We are always wanting a better boyfriend, a better family, more money, a better body, better health, and more. There’s always something. I want to help you get out of the cycle of chasing your tail day after day and break free. Whether you have $1 billion or $10, we are all already sitting on a wealth of happiness; we only need to tap it. I’ve learned that there is a process to finding this wealth, and I’m going to help you find it.

At its heart, becoming the better you is described by Maslow’s pyramid of needs.¹ I personally took the pyramid and its meaning to be trivial and obvious when I first learned about it, so I ultimately dismissed it and thought it was nothing more than a figure in psychology textbooks. The pyramid does hold truth, but to the normal viewer in today’s society, it holds little to no meaning because there’s so much information packed into each stage of the pyramid. Physiological needs include food, water, breathing, sex, and sleep. Safety is self-explanatory in that people need a sustainable way to maintain their bodies, resources, health, and belongings. Love and belonging is a difficult stage for many; it entails family, friendship, and romantic relationships. Esteem needs are especially difficult to satisfy in a world filled with never being enough. Esteem involves a person’s self-confidence, self-esteem, respect of others, and most importantly, respect and love of yourself. Lastly, self-actualization, being the pinnacle of self-fulfillment and joy, can be achieved if all other needs have first been met. It is the ultimate goal, right? It is a very rare thing to get to this place. On the surface, self-actualization seems like the standard now, when in reality, most of the population is still trying to come to terms with love and belonging and the esteem stage, not to mention that in some parts of the world people still struggle to meet the first two stages of the pyramid of needs.

1_self-actualization%20pyramid.JPG

This book is geared toward addressing Love and Belonging, Esteem needs, and Self-actualization. In today’s society, it is nearly considered a sign of weakness if someone seems like they don’t have it all together. In other words, unless you have attained self-actualization, other people will find it to be a sign of inferiority. This has led to the persona of the mask that many of us wear. In fact, many of us wear this mask all the time, even around those close to us. This mask is an emotional cover that many people wear to make it seem like everything is okay and everything is in control. Possession of this mask however, makes it completely impossible to surpass the love and belonging and esteem stages. Society has become so caught up in the destination of becoming the best and being the best there ever was that many of us have forgotten that life is about an experience and journey. Life is about enjoying the time we have on this Earth. If we get too caught up in the goal and wearing the mask of fake emotion and becoming the alpha male, then life is over before you know it.

It is really quite a privilege that we get to exist on this planet. In all of the billions of years to come after you die, there will never be you again. We are absolute miracles and we should embrace that and enjoy the journey while it lasts. One topic that will be touched on heavily is loving one’s self. This is another phrase that has little to no meaning to people in its current form. If you asked yourself now, what does loving myself mean in my own words, could you answer it with sincerity? Words are easy to understand, but applying them is a different story. My hopes are that this text can help you realize that there is actual meaning to words like loving yourself and how important these ideas are in order to live a full, joyful, loving life and become the better you that you are.

I believe that the love and belonging stage and esteem stage are unique in that they cannot be completely separated or completed without the other. In other words, to meet esteem needs, we need love and belonging, but at the same time, to really complete the love and belonging stage, we need esteem in ourselves. No stage can be fully completed without the stage below it, but it is possible to pick up chunks from all stages along the way. Many of us have not reached the last stage because we do not have the understanding to do so. In a sense, we are all asleep, waiting to wake up to this level of existence. It is not something that can be forced. Excess force will make the process harder. The most we can do is to educate ourselves to the best of our ability and embrace the lessons as they come. Don’t get me wrong though, one cannot just go through the rest of his/her life and expect these lessons to just come with no effort. These lessons, to a degree, take active learning on our part, but without force. Just as it takes our mind and bodies time to become proficient in racquetball, running, writing, and any skill really, it also takes time to learn how to love, and become the best you. In the same respect, some people learn things quicker than others, but that is okay, because we will all find the end of this path eventually, whether we know it or not.

Just as you cannot treat an illness without knowing its cause and its source, you cannot treat your life until you understand it. We cannot become actualized individuals until we thoroughly understand our shortcomings and ignorance. Once we come to terms with our weak points, it becomes much easier to put effort into developing ourselves if there is a clear goal and incentive.

Learning to love and becoming actualized share an inseparable relationship. That’s a big claim, so why should you believe it? Well you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t believe anything I tell you just because it’s in print. I challenge you as a reader to reason through and test out the techniques and advice I give and prove to yourself that these ideas are true and really work.

CHAPTER 2

What is Love and Belonging?

L ove and belonging isn’t just a single choice or action. It is a lifestyle and a series of steps within itself. I’m not an encyclopedia of absolute facts, but through my research, I’ve found one way to look at the stages of love and belonging proceed as follows:

1. Belief that you can love yourself

2. Love yourself

3. Respecting yourself

4. Love others

5. Respect others

6. Understanding what love means to you on a deep level

7. Feeling a sense of belonging within yourself and feeling connected to others

1. Belief That You Can Love Yourself

The first step to love and belonging is to believe. It is necessary that you believe that you are worthy of love, and in the same respect, it is just as important to believe that others can love you too. The key word is believing. If there is no belief that love does not exist in your life, then it will not be possible for you to feel love, nor reciprocate it. A guru in this respect is Brené Brown. One of the most influential books I’ve read in regards to love and belonging is The Gifts of Imperfection. She explains this subject much better than I can and I would recommend to give the book a read.¹

I can’t stress the importance of the word belief enough. Believing is a word that has been overused in our society that it holds little meaning anymore. Today, we can say, Do you believe Trump will be elected president, and not think too much of it. Belief can almost be equated with the word opinion nowadays. We take the word belief too lightly, so when we hear it, we don’t think too much of it. Real belief means really committing our minds to an idea. I can believe I will become a vagrant in the future, but I can also believe that I will become an astronaut. Both take just as much effort to believe in, so why not believe in the idea that will take me further? Most people don’t believe in things such as being able to love yourself, because we think it’s too tall of a task, or impossible to love yourself. I fell prey to this as well, so I can understand the struggle. The trick is to commit to believe, and believe to commit. It’s really that simple. Once you can believe that you are able to love yourself, you will.

The Rest of Love

The steps 2 through 7 actually happen at the single moment. An influential idealist is Alan Watts. Many have heard Alan Watts before. As a matter of fact, I’ve known Alan Watts’ name for quite some time before writing this book as well. However, my mental state was not yet ready to receive his words the first time I heard his name. Put in a sentence, the most important idea that he imparted onto me is that the world is really one. What does the world is really one mean? I mean that I may have a loving dog, friends, family, own a nice house, look at the sun, but all these objects and people are one in the same. Though I can talk to my external friends, we are but one thing, for there is no separate things. We are all wiggly, always wiggling and flowing within ourselves and with our environment. Just as a wave propagates through the sea and is part of the sea, so too is all the stuff in the universe. On this Earth, I can identify the wave apart from the sea with my eyes, but the sea does not exist without waves, nor do the waves exist without the sea.²

We are all one in the same with the cosmos, but what does this have to do with loving? This is exactly why the rest of the steps of loving come all at once, because loving myself is no different than loving someone else. Once you love yourself, you will understand that you really love all others, because we do not exist without each other. Our existential status in the world is very difficult to understand, but it is also extremely beautiful. For this reason, existentialism and its ties to love are explained toward the end of the text. The rest of this section will be directed in less of an existential manner and more with a western culture approach that can be understood on a more basic level.

2. Love Yourself

Loving yourself is as simple as believing you are worthy of being loved. Once you believe that you are worthy of being loved, you will feel that loving yourself comes naturally. For instance, you cannot try to love something. Of course not, it just happens. I cannot tell my significant other Hey, I’m going to love you, and expect it to happen then and there. Love is something that is felt without effort. Everyone is capable of loving themselves, it’s just a matter of letting yourself.

3. Respect Yourself

We all feel like we have done bad in this world at one point or another, but we shouldn’t feel bad about our misdeeds. Life is about living and learning. I used to feel if I did things that I was ashamed of, other people would be ashamed of me as well if they knew the things I’ve done in my past. However, this action itself lowers our view of ourselves in our own eyes. I can feel like I love myself, but I may still feel shameful of things. Regardless of what happens, and what actions we take, it is important that we forgive ourselves and accept that pain, mistakes, love, and learning are all a part of life. No matter what you do, you will always be worthy of love and belonging. Never hold yourself short of how amazing you really are. Our society makes this difficult with media that creates standards that we must look like a bodybuilder, or a swimsuit model in order to mean anything in this world.

The matter of fact though, is that we are still enough, no matter what happens, who we are, or what we look like. Respecting yourself is believing that you are enough. I wasn’t able to do this for the longest time, but I was finally able to believe I was enough once I realized I am not here on Earth to be judged by other people. Peoples’ opinions really don’t matter because no one is you, and no one is going through what you are going through. I realized I was enough once I was willing to accept myself for who I was today and accept what I’ve done in my past, good or bad. I love myself, so why would I belittle myself?

A lot of us put on this fake persona to live up to the standards of today’s society. The standards are created by media such as magazines, television, pornography, clothing, etc. In addition, we also create these standards because we think we have to live up to them. Once one person tries to live up to it, the next person says, Hey, why aren’t we that great? The trick though is to escape this trap of never being good enough, physically, academically, and socially. A lot of us don’t even think we are affected by standards from media that much. I thought the same thing, but we really are affected by it immensely. Regardless of the standards that society holds up for us, it’s up to us to tell ourselves, I’m good enough, no matter what.

4. Love Others

You can’t love others until you love yourself. This may be a cliché statement, but lots of times, cliché quotes actually have a lot of meaning. They have just been used so much that we don’t even understand them anymore. Once you love yourself, you have passed the first step in understanding how to love others. For example, could you give a tour of Disneyland to a group of strangers without having been there and experiencing it yourself first? Of course not. We may try to do this, and many of us do, but unsuccessfully. Really understand how to love yourself, and loving others will come naturally. Once you understand how to love yourself, it will be easy to reciprocate it to others.

Love is always there, it’s just a matter of whether or not we are willing to accept it or reject it. Resistance causes pain and suffering. Accept that you are able to love yourself and love others. Accepting that you love yourself doesn’t make you weak, but actually empowers you. Let the love in and the rest is history. If I could put into one sentence, how to love others, what would it be? Well, that’s not an easy question because love on a deep level means something slightly different for all of us and it isn’t a math equation that you can just plug and chug.

I mentioned how loving yourself and others all comes at once, similar to breaking the wall of a dam, letting all the waters rush through. There may be varying degrees of how big that break in the wall is, but the water is either up in the reservoir, or making its way down to the bottom, no in between. This book will give my two cents on the process required to do that. Learning how to do this takes practice to keep and make a part of yourself. For some of us, these lessons are taught to us when we are young by our parents, for others it may take 2 weeks to realize. It may even take decades for a person to learn, but we all learn it and make it a part of us, it’s only a matter of when.

5. Respect Others

Love is intangible in the physical realm, but while we are here, it is important that we treat the others in our life with honesty and respect. Love is always there, but we don’t always see it, nor do we always treat the people in our lives who love us the best. We are all trying to find our way to love, and many of us get lost. We are here to help each other to get to that goal, but we mustn’t forget that what we do on this planet does have an effect on other people.

Another cliché phrase is the golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated. A great number of us forget this as well because we are too caught up in the race to be better than everyone else. Our society is always focused on the pursuit of status, being bigger and better than the next person, feeling good, getting the validation we want, and all these trivial things. That’s all they are though, trivial. None of it actually matters. Once we can realize that all these problems and uncertainties of life ultimately don’t matter as much as we think they do, we start treating ourselves better, and we start treating others better. Show others that you love them, and show them that through respect and honesty.

6. Understanding What Love Means

to You on a Deep Level

Love means something different for everyone because it isn’t an algorithm with input being a person’s temperament. Love is hard to outline, and in my opinion, cannot be accurately described with the limited human languages that exist today. It is something you feel, but that doesn’t mean you can’t understand what it means to you. Understanding what it means to you is not something you go searching for, in fact searching for the answer will make it harder to understand. It is at the point in which we stop searching for the answer that we so desire, and just accept life and love the way that it is, that its meaning comes to us.

For some of us, love is being with that one person you know you just couldn’t live without. For others love is represented by god and letting him into your heart. It means something different for us all, and we have to wait until it finds us.

7. Feeling a Sense of Belonging Within

Yourself and Feeling Connected to Others

Many of us start fighting the battle of vulnerability and caring what others think early on in our life when we are children. All of a sudden as kids, we start to have stronger opinions, be ashamed of being naked, not fitting in, doing things wrong, and not being good enough. This part of a child’s development as they go through elementary school, middle school, and high school are the most important. It is when we become more inauthentic for the desire to feel belonging, or it is when our parents teach us that it’s okay not to care what others think and be open. Some of us are not lucky enough in this lifetime to realize we are not here only for the satisfaction of pleasing others or ourselves. Being free of this oppressive mindset is among the greatest gifts we can receive.

Once it has come to light that you will always be good enough no matter what, and that life really isn’t full of pain and suffering, you can start to really be yourself and feel that you have found your values in life. This is when we feel a sense of belonging in ourselves and connection with others. We aren’t here to impress others, have the most friends, or be the strongest; we are here to enjoy the ride and experience a lifetime full of love and joy. Let’s start the journey.

CHAPTER 3

My Story

M y life experience up to this point has been my inspiration to write this book. I’d like to share it because everyone should know they aren’t alone in the hard times. Hardship has also taught me how to give compassion for others and myself, and I give hardships most of the credit for why I’m able to write this story and lesson book. Not every life is full of joy, but it is what you create out of it at the end of the day that matters.

I didn’t realize I was angry at the world. I was frustrated at the world within my core because I felt like I was trying to steer a sinking ship. There was a subconscious part of me that realized I was angry at the world. Sometimes that little angel dude would come up on my shoulder saying, Why are you so frustrated at everything?, but I just ignored him.

I compare this to basketball. I initially learned how to play basketball by throwing the ball willy nilly, just flailing it with my arms. It wasn’t until I got good at this technique, that I learned the correct way required squaring up the ball with one hand while the other hand pushes. I knew that I’d get a lot better than I was if I learned this new way, but it would take a long time because I would have to start from the drawing board with no experience on this technique. In the same way, I had learned to get by in the world by being angry at it, to myself and others.

I actually managed this pretty well. I got straight A’s throughout high school, through college, got second in the state track and field meets for pole vaulting two years in a row, could juggle, produce music, do gymnastics, martial arts, and much more.

I thought I was living life so well; I thought I was essentially a master, nearly the best among my peers. The birthplace of all this was my selfish angry attitude toward the world. One day my world completely fell apart. I realized I had reached my potential. Of course, I could say do more push-ups, get paid more money, but that isn’t what I mean. I had plateaued at just the initial stages of my mental growth. The day I had the breakdown, I couldn’t believe that I had no other choice other than to go back to the drawing board and completely relearn life as I knew it. I knew it would be hard, but I had a desire to become altruistic, wholehearted, and understand the world just for the sake of doing so. I had no doubt in my mind that I could do it, because I believed. That is why this book was written; this is a compilation of my desire to learn all the different things lain out in this book and really understand what it means to be wholehearted, to be myself, and transcend that childish mindset of anger toward the world. This is my story.

I want to first illustrate a point.

2_invulnerable%20vs%20vulnerable.JPG

Going back to this basketball analogy, skill and success can be described by the figure above. I learned how to play basketball with very bad form, and I only ever played in my front yard. My bad form is the striped bar on top. With my bad form, I can get to 20 or 30 success/happiness points, and at the same time, I can also lose a friendly game and have a small amount of failure/sadness. If I took the time to learn the correct form, and be in a basketball league, I would have great potential for a lot of success, but at the same time, losing a big game is also more devastating. Being invulnerable represents my anger toward the world and the shield I held up against my heart my whole life. Doing this, I achieved that maximum 20 or 30 happiness points, and sometimes I was down at 20 or 30 sadness points after a breakup, bad test grades, etc. I was never willing to be fully invested in anything, because I was afraid that there was a possibility to reach that dreaded -100 points. We’ve seen those people who can never ever get over someone after a breakup and feel like they have lost the entire world. I asked myself Oh god, why would I ever in my right mind want to be in his/her position? It made no sense to me at the time.

I was so caught up in the 0 to -100 (sadness) side of the spectrum that I hadn’t the slightest clue that +100 could ever be achieved. This selfish angry mindset is what caused me to stagnate in the invulnerability zone. This is my journey to transitioning to the gray vulnerability zone. I fully realize that I can be brought down to -100, but it is a risk that I must be willing to take if I want to reach the +100. I can’t always control what direction I go in; no one can control the future. The best I could do was just surrender myself to vulnerability and hope for the best.

I keep bringing up this word, vulnerability, but what does it mean? Does it mean I’m not wearing armor so that I can be pierced by an arrow? In a sense, yes actually, but vulnerability of one’s self and one’s heart. I mentioned Brené Brown earlier, and she also describes this word with much more clarity in many of her books.

What’s the story then? Well my story of becoming frustrated and lost in the world started near the age of 7 or so. I had a comfortable life until 7, but then I started to get picked on more and became more distant from my family. The whole family was growing apart. When I was 9, my parents divorced. Everyone has family issues, so I didn’t think I was anything special compared to the rest of the world. My sisters and I were court ordered to live with my mother, and I was told I wouldn’t see my father again. Subsequently, my mother bought a house, and my sisters, mother, and I lived in it, well relatively speaking. She also started dating again and spent a lot of her nights at her significant other’s house. I personally thought that this was what every kid wanted, an empty house to do whatever they wanted right? It was awesome at the time, but it had bad written all over it for the future. Despite what happened in the past though, I can say today, that I love both my parents and sisters with my whole heart.

My mother came by to the house she paid for but was hardly ever in, once every two weeks or so. My sisters and I had to take care of ourselves in all other aspects other than having to pay the bills of the house though. We felt that if we told our mother that we were dependent on her, that we would push her away even further, physically and emotionally. As a defense mechanism to get by during that time, I learned to keep absolutely all thoughts, all emotions, and all needs to myself and take care of them on my own. I was a boy, I was determined to be tough. That’s what boys are trained to do in the modern western culture. Quickly, I learned that it was also easy to lie to advance myself in certain ways, even if it was just little things, and the best part, I was a master at keeping secrets and feelings inside.

I further mastered this art and realized I could not only keep secrets and not tell anyone about my life, but people were easily influenced. Throughout my childhood, I was made fun of a lot physically and emotionally, so I came at the problem in a logical sense. I knew people made fun of me because they didn’t respect me, so I wanted to find a way to earn the respect of others. This was the start of growing the fake persona that could advance me in so many ways. I achieved the respect of people by learning flips and martial arts. Everyone respects a guy who can do a backflip or do a tornado kick. It became apparent to me that this logical reasoning to problem solving was quite effective. As I moved further into high school, I had become much better at academics and athletics than my previous state. I thought to myself, What else could I get good at that would make people respect and admire me? What did everyone else like in other guys at school? It was control over love life.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy, but my next goal was to become a player in everyone’s eyes, so people would respect me even more. By the end of high school I had it all. I had fantastic grades, was admired athletically, and was revered in my peers’ eyes with women even though I actually had little experience with them. I thought there was nothing I was missing. Little did I know though, this was the result of a detrimental habit over the course of 9 years ever since my parents got a divorce. I learned that being fake was what the world wanted me to be! I finally figured out that people will love me if I become the person they want me to be. People will love me if I show them I have full control over school, sports, friends and women. The fact of the matter though, is that they didn’t really love me. It was all superficial and fake. Even though I had it all, I actually had nothing. My personality was like a bedazzled shell, glittery on the outside, but empty, lonely, and cold on the inside. I don’t blame what I became on my parents, but myself. It is no one’s responsibility for who they become other than that person themselves, but this fake person was the greatest mistake I’ve ever made in life.

Soon I became greedy and wanted more and more. I hadn’t gotten caught being fake yet, so why stop. Through becoming this fake person, I at least learned that hard work pays off, just for me it was hard work towards becoming this increasingly fake person. By the time I graduated high school, I was basically the Sith Lord of human manipulation and emotional suppression. I had everything I wanted, achieved by no one other than me, but it was an evil power. To me, I was not evil; I was good. I was a mastermind at what I did. The best part was that because I was wearing this fake mask, no one else had a clue what was going on, except maybe my dad at the time.

When I was 16, my 18-year-old sister contacted my dad to live with him, because my sister and I were suffering too much emotional, psychological, and physical distress trying to take care of ourselves on our own for so long. My 21-year-old sister had already found a life of her own. I didn’t want to be left in a house completely by myself, so after my 18-year old sister asked our dad to move in with him, I followed. I didn’t think much of this at the time.

There was an ultimate price for all of this. There was a cost for being good at school, sports, having lots of friends, and being viewed as a player, at least the way I achieved all of it. That cost was building up a shield of armor against my heart that grew thicker and thicker every year. I still argued with my dad a lot, sometimes with my sister too. As a result, I found my family in my vast amount of friends instead of my real family because it is what I learned. I felt like I couldn’t be myself with my family, because I was so estranged from them. I noticed a similar experience around my much closer friends too. It appeared that I was not able to tell my close friends everything. Once they had traveled close enough to my heart, they ran into the impenetrable shield I used to protect it. Again, I didn’t think much of this at the time. I wasn’t willing to go back to the drawing board and give up my fake self if it meant I’d have to relearn all my life skills from scratch and lose everything I had worked so hard for.

This attitude also persisted throughout my romantic life. I wanted love just like everyone else, but neither me nor my partner knew that there was this imaginary shield of armor up against my heart. I’ve been absolutely blessed in the fact that all of the girls I met were complete sweethearts that loved with their whole hearts that were only trying to show me how to love with my whole heart. The only sad thing is that these girls tried so valiantly as they suited up in war gear and dove into me. They swam valiantly through the tainted black moat waters near my heart. They all fought against the immense shield of steel, often times penetrating the hull of the armor with a tiny hole, leaving a small surface of my heart visible. I felt this pain, and suddenly snapped back. I said to myself, No, no, they are not ruining everything I’ve worked for. In response, I pushed back. I couldn’t let anyone penetrate the armor and split my heart in two. I had too many secrets, too many life style habits, too many skills to give up if I let someone into my heart. Unfortunately, I was addicted to what people thought of me, what I thought of me.

I was living a self-induced brainwashed lie and couldn’t see the truth of my unkind nature. It was clear to me that if I gave up my world views, beliefs, and habits, that I would have to relinquish an entire young adulthood worth of psychological investments. I clang to my conditioning because so much of my ego and personality was reliant upon it. Not yet was I willing to shatter my ego in light of self-development and happiness. In response, I fought tooth and nail in an attempt to defend my way of life in fear that I had been living it wrong. It is impossible to talk someone out of delusion, for the only cure to delusion is to see past it yourself. I was one of those deluded minds unwilling to change my paradigm. What did I do? Well I had lacked sufficient motivational pain, and so I stayed in the mindset that all of my immoral actions toward myself and others was okay.¹

The woman I dated when I was 18 was among the strongest women I’ve met today. She had an absolutely golden heart, gleaming with light and love. This little gal made me so happy. Every day I asked myself how I was so blessed to have her in my life. Hours felts like minutes when we were together, and her smile was my drug. She was so successful at making dents in my shield that I pushed back the hardest. Shame grew and grew as I kept my life inside, namely, the lies I made and girls I cheated on her with. There was this underlying fear of her leaving me if I told her all of the things I felt guilty for, and so I never told her.

Why would I ever cheat on such