{"id":303,"date":"2008-05-15T05:42:14","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T05:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/the-story-we-tell-ourselves-ab.html"},"modified":"2008-05-15T05:42:14","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T05:42:14","slug":"the-story-we-tell-ourselves-ab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/the-story-we-tell-ourselves-ab.html","title":{"rendered":"The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is false"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many human beings have come to think about life is a way that has nothing to do with what us actually true. Unless the work together to change our cultural story, we will find ourselves heading down the path to our own demise.
\nI do not mean that humanity itself is going to be destroyed (although there always is that possibility), but I do mean that humanity’s way of life could be irrevocably altered — and not for the better.
\nWhat is wrong with our present cultural story? (A cultural story is a story that human beings tell themselves about themselves. It is passed on from generation to generation.) What is “wrong”is that it is wildly inaccurate. Here is the story that we are currently passing along to our young ones. We’ve been telling each other this story on the earth for a great many years…
\n\u201cWe are born into a hostile world, run by a God who has things He wants us to do and things He wants us not to do, and will punish us with everlasting torture if we don\u2019t get the two right.
\n\u201cOur first experience in life is separation from our mother, the source of our life. This sets the tone and creates the context for our entire reality, which we experience to be one of separation from the source of all life.
\n\u201cWe are not only separate from all life, but from everything else in life. Everything that exists exists separate from us, and we are separate from everything else that exists. We do not want it this way, but this is the way it is. We wish it were otherwise, and, indeed, we strive for it to be otherwise.
\n\u201cWe seek to experience Oneness again with all things, and especially with each other. We may not know why, exactly, yet it seems almost instinctual. It feels like the natural thing to do. The only problem is, there does not seem to be enough of The Other to satisfy us. No matter what the Other Thing is that we want, we cannot seem to get enough of it.
\n\u201cWe cannot get enough love, we cannot get enough time, we cannot get money, we cannot get enough of whatever it is we think we need in order to be happy and fulfilled. The moment we think that we have enough, we decide that we want more.
\n\u201cSince there is \u2018not enough\u2019 of whatever it is we think we need to be happy, we must \u2018do stuff\u2019 to get as much as we can get. Things are required of us to get everything, from God\u2019s love to the natural bounty of Life. Simply \u2018being alive\u2019 is not enough. Therefore WE, like all of life, are not enough.
\n\u201cBecause just \u2018being\u2019 isn\u2019t sufficient, there\u2019s stuff that we have to do. The ones who do the \u2018right stuff\u2019 get to have the things that they need to be happy. If you don\u2019t do the right stuff in the right way, you don\u2019t get to \u2018win\u2019. Thus, the competition begins. There\u2019s \u2018not enough\u2019 out there, and so, we have to compete for it.
\n\u201cWe have to compete for everything, including God.
\n\u201cThis competition is tough. This is about our very survival. In this contest, only the fittest survive. Only to the victor go the spoils. If you are a loser, you live a hell on Earth, and after you die, if you are a loser in the competition for God, you experience hell again\u2014 this time forever.
\n\u201cDeath was actually created by God because our forebears made the wrong choices. Adam and Eve had everlasting life in the Garden of Eden, but then, Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she and Adam were driven from the garden by an angry God, who sentenced them, and all their progeny forevermore, to death as The First Punishment. Henceforth, life in the body would be limited, and no longer everlasting, and so would the stuff of life.
\n\u201cYet God will give us back our everlasting life if we never again break His rules. God\u2019s love is unconditional; it is only God\u2019s rewards which are not. God loves us even as He condemns us to everlasting damnation. It hurts Him more than it hurts us, because He really wants us to return home, but He can\u2019t do anything about it if we misbehave. The choice is ours.
\n\u201cThe trick is, therefore, to not misbehave. We need to live a good life. We must strive to do so. In order to do so, we have to know the truth about what God wants and does not want from us. We cannot please God, we cannot avoid offending Him, if we do not know Right from Wrong. So we have to know the Truth about that.
\n\u201cThe Truth is simple to understand and easy to know. All we have to do is listen to the prophets, the teachers, the sages, and the source and founder of our religion. If there is more than one religion, and therefore, more than one source and founder, then we have to make sure to pick the Right One. Picking the Wrong One could result is us being a Loser.
\n\u201cWhen we pick the Right One, we are superior, we are better than our peers, because we have The Truth on our side. This state of being \u201cbetter\u201d allows us to claim most of the other prizes in the contest without actually contesting them. We get to declare ourselves the Winner in the competition before the competition begins. It is out of this awareness that we give ourselves all the advantages, and write the Rules of Life in such a way that certain others find it nearly impossible to win the really big prizes.
\n\u201cWe do not do this out of meanness, but simply in order to ensure that our victory is guaranteed\u2014as rightly it should be, since it is those of our religion, of our nationality, of our race, of our gender, of our political persuasion, who know The Truth, and therefore deserve to be Winners.
\n\u201cBecause we deserve to win, we have a right to threaten others, to fight with them, and to kill them if necessary, in order to produce this result.
\n\u201cThere may be another way to live, another thing that God has in mind, another, larger Truth, but if there is, we don\u2019t know it. In fact, it is not clear whether we are even supposed to know it. It is possible that we are not supposed to even try to know it, much less to truly know and understand God. To try is to be presumptuous, and to declare that you have actually done so is to blaspheme.
\n\u201cGod is the Unknown Knower, the Ummoved Mover, the Great Unseen. Therefore, we cannot know the truth that we are required to know in order to meet the conditions that we are required to meet in order to receive the love that we are required to receive in order to avoid the condemnation that we are seeking to avoid in order to have the everlasting life that we had before any of this started.
\n\u201cOur ignorance is unfortunate, but should not be problematical. All we need do is take what we think we DO know\u2014our cultural story\u2014on faith, and proceed accordingly. This we have tried to do, each according to his or her own beliefs, out of which we have produced the life that we are now living, and the reality on Earth that we are creating.
\n\u201cThis is how most of the human race has it constructed. You each have your minor variations, but this is, in essence, how you live your lives, justify your choices, and rationalize your outcomes.
\n\u201cSome of you do not accept all of this, yet all of you accept some of it. And you accept these statements as the Operating Reality not because they reflect your innermost wisdom, but because someone else has told you that they are true.
\n\u201cAt some level, you have had to make yourself believe them.
\n\u201cThis is called Make Believe.\u201d
\nNone of this is real.<\/em>
\n(More on this in upcoming blogs.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many human beings have come to think about life is a way that has nothing to do with what us actually true. Unless the work together to change our cultural story, we will find ourselves heading down the path to our own demise. I do not mean that humanity itself is going to be destroyed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-and-the-new-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nThe story we tell ourselves about ourselves is false - Conversations with God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/the-story-we-tell-ourselves-ab.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is false - Conversations with God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many human beings have come to think about life is a way that has nothing to do with what us actually true. 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