(C) Copyright by C.B. Willis, 1997. All rights reserved.

In doing Work-on-self, my approach has been to Work "both ends of the stick" more or less concurrently, moving toward 1) "freedom from" social and personal conditioning, and 2) "freedom to" create and co-create as conscious spirit.

The difficulty is that most people beginning the Work don't know themselves as spirit. They have their fundamental spiritual identity tangled up and confused with worldly roles, other individuals, and with social and personal conditioning. Furthermore, they're creating and co-creating all the time, but not doing so consciously as spirit. Rather, they are either unconsciously creating, don't know what they want to create, and/or are frustrated about the process of creating what they do want, assuming that what they do what is actually their own goal and not someone else's goal they've adopted unexamined.

What do I mean by "social and personal conditioning"? We could also use the terms "programming," "implants," or "suggestions."

Social conditioning is what others have told us or implied to us, imposed on us, forced on us, suggested to us, "sold" to us openly or otherwise, and that we "bought" and now operate on unthinkingly, unexamined.

Personal conditioning is what we have told ourselves, concluded, judged, assumed, imposed on ourselves, forced on ourselves, suggested to ourselves, or "sold" ourselves on openly or otherwise, and now operate on unthinkingly, unexamined.

The CONTENT of conditioning and conditioned ideas may be true or false. It's not the truth or falsity but rather the unthinking, unexamined nature of conditioning that we are addressing here. We adopt a conditioned idea without considering whether it's valid or workable, without considering the consequences of holding that idea, without considering other options, and/or without considering how the idea fits with the rest our knowledge.

Furthermore, what allows us to adopt an idea unthinkingly may involve any or all of the following: not knowing ourselves as spirit (spirit provides our fundamental intelligence beyond worldly or ordinary-mind IQ), giving away our power to understand and evaluate data by assuming others know more than we do, and by being relatively unconscious or hypnotizable at the time the conditioning occurred.

If a conditioned idea is true, we have only to see it as true and also formerly conditioned, spot where and when we picked up the idea, examine the idea in present time, and then if we're rational, consciously adopt the idea as true for ourselves, having thought it through and perhaps compared the idea to other alternatives. Or, at the very least, we can adopt the idea as a hypothesis until it shows itself to us to be true and workable, or not, or until some better idea - also examined - comes along to replace that hypothesis or idea in our thinking.

Much of becoming an adult is learning how to think and evaluate for oneself all the things we were taught in school or church, learned from family or peers, or picked up by osmosis from the culture, television, advertising, workplace, etc.

We need to do a major inventory and overhaul of our ideas to sort out what we in fact believe and hold to be true. We need to ask ourselves, for what reason do we hold these ideas? What ideas did we grow up believing, but now assess to be inadequate, misguided or otherwise false? If we can do this inventory as conscious spirit, soul, and/or intelligence (including intuition) rather than just a personality, ordinary mind and/or intellect, so much the better, but we go with what we've got at any given time.

We may repeat the inventory process several times, or on an ongoing basis over the course of a lifetime, in case we happen to pick up further programming and conditioning from the prevailing thinking in university, in our professions, in corporate or business life, in healthcare, in religions, in therapy, in social relationships, in community, in politics, in the arts, etc. The inventory is really an ongoing process of separating the wheat from chaff, in discerning social and cultural programming vs. our own thinking but, more importantly, in further sifting out and discerning the true from the false, and then consciously adopting the true. And if that weren't enough, we then need to be willing to RE-examine and revise those resulting ideas as needed, to continually refine our beliefs to more closely align with our spiritual recollections and expanding awareness of truth.

(Epistemological note on the relation between knowledge and belief: knowledge entails belief, but belief does not necessarily entail knowledge.)

How can we learn to take such an inventory of our ideas? How can we learn to step back and examine our belief system? We may be trained to assess many ideas on a rational basis in high school and university. This process is commonly called "critical thinking," but the result is an incompletely-developed mind that may have its attention stuck on seeking scientific or statistical evidence or logical proof. Critical thinking bypasses and ignores the larger, fundamental, and more inclusive life of the spirit/soul, ignores intuitive sources of information and direct knowing.

Sociological studies, good therapy, and/or theological studies may pick up where university, professional, and workplace education leave off. These disciplines have been known to point out the fact of social and personal conditioning, allowing students to spot and name conditioning as such (!). "Now there's a piece of conditioning." These disciplines encourage the student to develop a viewpoint exterior to the society, exterior to the workings of ordinary mind, even exterior to the planet, and begin to develop the student's sense of himself as an observer, fair witness, a spiritual identity, as having intuition and true personal confidence divorced from superficial image or fleeting worldly achievements.

Social Programming and Conditioning

Now in the case of social programming and conditioning, the important thing to know is that social programming and conditioning are possible and do happen, they happen with regularity, they're in every family, group, city, nation, and we have probably picked up a vast number ideas without thinking about them. I daresay that there are persons whose belief systems are composed almost entirely of social programming and conditioning, with virtually no ideas of their own.

Of all the ideas in your belief system, what percentage would you estimate are adopted without thinking from social and personal conditioning, and what percentage are well thought out and truly your own? I would hazard a guess that the average American has 75% of his ideas as social and personal conditioning, and 25% are his own. To the extent that a person has social and personal conditioning, even if these ideas may be true, we can say that that person is "asleep," "unconscious," not-conscious. To the extent that a person has his own ideas, AND these ideas are true and workable, we can say that he is awake and he is living truly and realistically. To the extent that he is aware of himself as a spiritual being, he is even more awake, more conscious.

The next question is, if we consider the totality of our beliefs, without even bothering to enumerate or list them, we can consider that we each individually (i) have a set of beliefs (B) at any given time (t), call this set Bti = {b1, b2, b3,...bn}. We can then consider that some of our beliefs are likely to be socially conditioned and as yet unexamined by us. Now we have set up a contrast and tension between those beliefs that are our own, examined (and hopefully true and workable, but let's leave this issue aside for the moment) vs. those that are socially programmed and unexamined. Next, someone such as a teacher, therapist or minister points out to a person or group that certain stated beliefs are commonly picked up as social conditioning.

Now if you were a girl growing up in the 60's you might have "gotten the message" that you weren't OK unless you were married, that you might not be attractive to boys if you were too intelligent, and that it was very important to be attractive sexually, which the media told us included being very thin, yet having a certain figure, and that boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses, and that Catholic, Protestant and Jewish were the religious options in America.

If you were a girl growing up in the 20's, you might have "gotten the message" that you had to wait for a boy/man to ask you out, that you would probably find a man to marry in college, if you were lucky enough to go to college, then have a family and defer your career plans in order to raise a family, that you should be a virgin at the time you were married, and you should not show anger or be otherwise "unladylike."

Other pieces of social conditioning in a middle or lower-class family might be that you have to go to work and get a job, that only wealthy people start their own businesses or inherit businesses, that if you work hard and do well you will be promoted, or that a college education is the ticket to a good job.

Television and advertising are powerful social conditioners, influencing the social and image expectations of millions. Consider "Leave it to Beaver," "Peyton Place," "General Hospital," "As the World Turns," "All My Children," "Perry Mason," "The Waltons," "Oprah," "Star Trek Next Generation," "X-Files," "Touched by an Angel," "Voyager," "Babylon 5," each one a feast of worldviews, morals and ideal images.

Consider the magazines "Seventeen," "Vogue," "New Woman," "Playboy," "GQ," "Esquire," "House and Garden," "Architectural Digest," "PC World." And catalogs: the old "Simplicity" pattern book, Sears and Penny's catalogs, Spiegel catalog, L.L. Bean catalog, Smith & Hawken catalog, Victoria's Secret catalog, to scratch the surface of some of the ideal images being sold today.

Consider ads for Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, Channel, Revlon, Saab, Infinity, Honda, Club Med. And the comic strips "Pogo," "Peanuts" and now "Doonesbury" and "Dilbert."

Consider the spoken and unspoken tenets of the religion you grew up in: "You're a sinner." "Jesus is the only way." "You have to go to confession with the priest." "Joseph Smith was a prophet of God." "You're expected to become confirmed whether you want to or not." "You should go to church every week." "The communion wine and wafer are the body and blood of Christ." These are just to list a few from some Christian denominations.

Once common sources of programming and conditioning are pointed out, people can identify with where and how they previously picked up many ideas and images unthinkingly. "Light bulbs" start going on. People begin to differentiate between the programming (before) and their own being and thinking (after), separate off the programming, put it under the "microscope," examine its content, start thinking for themselves.

They also begin to get a "taste" and a "feel" and a "nose" for programming and conditioning, and now notice that programming and conditioning - any kind - has a certain recognizable "vibe." Once they reach that point, people start spotting and knocking out programming and conditioning easily, in huge chunks, at every opportunity that presents itself, and have much fun in the process. In addition to scanning the present lifetime, students may even spontaneously scan and clean up past lives of conditioning and programming easily and naturally, and mock up futures with little or no conditioning or programming. They may also consciously re-adopt some of the content of this programming if it's true, workable, or otherwise suits them personally if it's a matter of preference, but this is now a conscious, examined choice.

Social conditioning and programming are easy to learn to spot. The questions to ask yourself are, "What outside influences from __________ did I buy into without thinking?" (Ask this question about different common sources of programming and conditioning such as parents and family, school, peers, magazines, TV, advertising, church, etc.) Then re-evaluate your beliefs by posing questions to yourself such as, "What was my understanding of myself when I bought into these beliefs?" "How did I see myself at that time?" "How conscious or unconscious was I when I bought into these beliefs?" "What prompted me to buy into this belief?" "What made me susceptible to buying into this belief?" "What made me susceptible to being unconscious or unaware, to the extent I was at the time?" Notice that regardless of the source of the belief, the above questions assume that the person himself is responsible for what happened, and that he is now in the process of looking at and correcting any unconsciousness or lack of awareness from the past.

Some socially conditioned beliefs are more insidious and problematic, since they are more personal than impersonal advertising influences, for example. Here's where another person who may be in a position of power, expertise or other significant influence, and with whom you expect or desire to share a future, whom you've given some power to co-create in your world, tells you something derogatory about yourself or your future that makes a strong impression on you. The remark may be shocking and goes against some positive idea you have about yourself, a positive image, constructive goal, direction you're going, probably well thought out, desired, and/or intuitively clear to you. The remark may be hurtful, cutting, invalidating, derogatory, false, twisted. The ones that really stick are ones that may have a grain of truth and the rest is false, or where you suspect an attitude of ill-will, desire to dominate or punish, or secret satisfaction in the other person, regardless of their protestations to the contrary.

The syntax of such statements - I call them "derogatory 'you' statements" take the form, "You .... [some derogatory]." As soon as the word "you" is said, the speaker has the listener's attention, and the rest of the sentence proceeds to jam a derogatory down the listener's psychic throat. First get the person's full attention, then WHAM! (Gotcha!)

The healthy, normal person can safely use my oft-repeated rule of thumb: "If something feels lousy, it probably is." If another's statement makes you feel brighter, more confident, stronger, more capable, you probably got some good information; if the reverse, then you may have inadvertently received a negative program. The overconscientious, sensitive, considerate, respectful, self-effacing individual can use the above rule of thumb "if something feels lousy, it probably is" almost always - they're already so hard on themselves and willing to be admit error that it's likely something abusive about the speaker or her way of presenting information. Trust your gut level (core) intuition on this. Your core is in touch with a much bigger truth than would appear on the surface. (Note: The anti-social person and some others who may tend to reverse the truth cannot always use the above rule of thumb. Anti-social persons are a special category in themselves, and they will seldom realize they are anti-social. But my rule of thumb works about 95-98% of the time.)

There are times when correction from a parent, teacher, mentor or supervisor is necessary, but a compassionate manner of handling truth and care for another's spiritual and emotional well-being come through in good communications. A person responsible for corrections would do well to avoid "derogatory 'you' statements" and find different syntax and more neutral ways to language a message, thus turning what could otherwise be awkward and traumatic into something much more acceptable and palatable, even edifying.

If you have received derogatory or negative programming from another, you can treat this programming as if it were a flow of energy and information coming toward you, with the speaker's intention riding on top of the flow. See my article "Spotting the Force Off an Intention" for detailed instructions on how to heal this type of social programming. Additional trauma resolution may be necessary in some cases.

Get a good look at how buying into the beliefs associated with that piece of programming have influenced your thinking about yourself, your abilities, your energy level, your enjoyment of people, your visions for the future, etc. Make a mental note to avoid perpetrating on others the sort of abuse that you have received. Seek out positive people who build you up, help you feel good about yourself, sincerely agree with your goals, and help you to act like the very capable spirit that you are.

There are also positive suggestions such as "good job!" or "You do that so well" or "I admire the way you [demonstrate a specific ability]" that when offered genuinely are in fact conditioning and programming, but because they agree with positive images of self and constructive goals are quite acceptable to us as reinforcement and enhancement. We take them out of the realm of conditioning and programming by realizing consciously that another is acknowledging and reinforcing our own goals and creation, and by appreciating but not depending on other's validation for our self-esteem.

Socially strengthening the good that may be present, but is not as robust and resilient as it could be, makes that good more real to everyone. Validating what is good is a pleasant and welcome surprise that people can give to each other, takes almost no time or effort, no money, and is all often neglected. Further, the sad or even destructive social and personal consequences of not acknowledging each other are all too often overlooked.

A person whose spirits are buoyed by a genuine acknowledgement or reinforcement is a happier, healthier person, a better friend and teammate. We should not be dependent on social praise, but when it's there and genuine, it's a plus, frosting on the cake.

We come to realize that there are degrees of existence; some things exist but weakly and thinly, some exist strongly and robustly, and we need to find ways to notice what is good but weak and to reinforce the good, like shoring up a foundation so a bigger house can be built on top of it, or a stronger family or organization or civilization.

By showing acknowledgement and appreciation, we edify each other, and the effects are not just individual, but are also social and may have effects across many generations. Indeed, the American Indians do acts with an eye that those acts may carry across seven generations. That kind consciousness is what it would take to preserve the best of a civilization, keep it from getting lost or falling between the cracks.

Personal Programming and Conditioning

Personal programming and conditioning come from our own errors in perception, lack of a highly workable orientation to a subject, misunderstandings, traumatic experience, ignorance, omissions or oversights, incomplete or erroneous data, false conclusions drawn, poor solutions, logical fallacies, and the consequences of building a belief system on those. One false idea leads to another - how could it be otherwise? We may think that something is true, because it makes sense to us at the time, so we assume it, and proceed to add on from there - but perhaps it was never true, no matter how reasonable and practical it seemed to us. Every error has a ripple effect out into our belief system, into our actions or inactions, and influences how we create the future.

Whereas social programming and conditioning can be true or false, personal programming and conditioning are false or only partially true by definition, above.

(A special case of personal conditioning is affirmations, popular in some metaphysical religions. There are 2 ways to do affirmations, from the worldly part of us (personality, ordinary mind, wishing, fantasy), which is not very powerful or effective, and from the spiritual part, which is very powerful and connected to the greater whole.

The first kind of affirmation is used to suggest an idea to the subconscious, which is presumed more powerful in manifestation than ordinary mind (this is probably true). It's an attempt to program or condition oneself, seed the subconscious. These affirmations, which often have some "form" stipulation on them, are false, do not match reality, and are not likely to match reality anytime soon owing to not being "in the energy" or in the flow of spirit. Spirit and [life-] "energy" determine what manifests, not ordinary mind.

The second way to do affirmations is a) by what I call the "heart's desire," a soul desire that seems to rise up spontaneously within the heart, a heartfelt desire, then identifying the essence of this heart's desire without time or form stipulations. The essence becomes the true affirmation. b) Another affirmation seems to originate from pure consciousness as spirit, as a postulate or creative idea, light and no-effort, spontaneous also. In these second ways, things of the spirit make themselves known to spirit. The essence of a heart's desire or postulate is already true and real. I have a saying that "Spirit will have its creation." It's just a matter of time until an essence desire or postulate manifests. So there is no programming or conditioning here.)

Some personal programming and conditioning is corrected by education, such as reading books with a highly workable orientation and correct data, consulting experts, taking classes in logical fallacies.

Other personal conditioning and programming such as traumatic experiences both great and small, and one's worldview about "people" and "life," may require a therapeutic and/or theological approach to resolution.

In some spiritually-oriented therapies, the truth of various aspects of spirit or [life-] "energy" is realized and experienced, which in turn heals trauma, upset, ignorance, and error. "The truth will set you free," but it's how that truth is arrived at that makes all the difference in therapeutic results.

In the kind of pastoral counseling I practice, it often turns out that the truth of a proposition is just the opposite of what the client had previously thought, and the client gets to experience this new truth by the dramatic workings of spiritual energy in his space, right before his spiritual eyes. In addition, he can feel the waterfall effect of the new truth and life-energy rippling throughout his "system."

Effective group therapy is very powerful because it helps a person to gain objective reality checks and socially integrate the results of therapy in a very natural way.

The Process of Inquiry

The goal of removing social and personal conditioning and programming is very classical: love God, love the truth, study the truth, hold fast to what is true, move what is false or inferior in quality out of the way, so that what you're working with is always and only the truth. Do this with as much fullness of understanding, and as appropriate to the situation, as you can muster. Know God, know yourself as a spiritual being, know the Workings of Spirit by direct experience. Continue unfolding greater and greater awareness in these areas, moving "from glory to glory."

Be aware of the possibility of error, and if you suspect or find that you are in error, fix it and move on. Any idea is "fair game" for examination, but there are types of examination that are most appropriate to any matter in question. Know yourself as spiritual consciousness and use all of your faculties: spiritual, intuitive, logical, social, sensing, energetic, dialogic, linguistic, ethical, aesthetic, etc. Experiment. Be creative in your inquiry. Don't limit yourself to, say, just sensing and logic.

The most workable truth is well-organized by its possessor, with a fullness of understanding of essentials, the interrelations of these essentials, importances, and consequences. All new information can be derived deductively, or added on inductively or speculatively.

Occasionally we need a scientific or other kind of revolution in our thinking such that central, but erroneous or unworkable, ideas are revised. We do not undertake changes with such large-scale ramifications lightly. However when the handwriting is on the wall and such a revolution is clearly required by what we now know, then we make the changes, collectively as in science or personally as in theology, logic or therapy. Such a revolution in thinking produces a waterfall effect of change throughout our web of belief and/or way of being in the world that will now need to be integrated. By his own integrity (sense of wholeness and character), a person intuitively and logically re-arranges and re-aligns his belief system and/or way of being in the world to accommodate the new information, new truth. The more brilliant or important the person perceives that new truth to be, the more he is likely to rapidly revise his belief system and/or way of being in the world.

Have some open questions and live in those questions. "Living in the question" means to take the question into your awareness, hold it lightly, put it on the back burner of your mind, and become aware of anything that may relate to that question, may be the answer, or lead to the answer. You will find that your awareness will perk up when you get near something that can help you with your question, and may prompt you to open a book to the answer, engage in dialogue, overhear the remarks of a stranger, browse the web, or turn on the radio. Some people feel as if they take the question into various parts of their body, or energy-body, like their heart or their core (lower torso).

Open questions show that your life-inquiry process is dynamic and alive, that you are always open to new truths. Living in your most central questions ups the odds of your getting true, workable, and reasonably complete information. Answers are great, but answers by themselves can be stultifying. An answer can generate many more questions, which in turn yield new information, and so it goes. Therefore, the process of inquiry is senior to getting particular answers, because the process of inquiry will determine in great part the quality of answers you discern, and your ability to continue to expand your base of knowledge and wisdom in many dimensions of life.

References:
Plato, collected works.
Aristotle, collected works.
Alfred Korzybski, SCIENCE AND SANITY, 1933.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS.
P.D. Ouspensky, THE FOURTH WAY.
Irving M. Copi, INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC.
Thomas Kuhn, THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS.
Israel Scheffler, SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY, 1967.
W.V.O. Quine, THE WEB OF BELIEF.
Charles Tart, WAKING UP.
Anne Wilson Schaef, THE ADDICTIVE ORGANIZATION, and collected works.
Caroline Myss, ANATOMY OF THE SPIRIT, 1996.
C.B. Willis, "The Great Work of Liberation."
C.B. Willis, "The Pernicious Doctrine of Sophism."
C.B. Willis, "Expanded Integrity."
C.B. Willis, "Spotting the Force Off an Intention."
[articles available by email request]

C.B. Willis
July 26, 1997
cbwillis@netcom.com