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Being, Human Being

How are you choosing to experience being a Human Being in this life?

There are many ways to experience life as a human. You might decide to follow your own path and passions which may go against the grain of family or society. I’ll call these people Mavericks. Or, you may choose to observe and completely follow the queues of society, friends or family in hopes of being non-confrontational and pleasing. I’ll call these people Pleasers. I’ve met people at both ends of this spectrum, but for the most part, people are usually somewhere in between with a higher percentage trending toward being Pleasers. For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to look at the Pleasers and to a greater extent, the ones that not only look for the approval of other people, but also look for meaning or purpose outside the realm of humanity.

I would consider myself to be a “Transformational Pleaser”. This is someone who once was fully embedded in being an unconscious Pleaser (or someone who does not know they are a Pleaser); to someone who is consciously transforming the skills I’ve learned as a Pleaser to my own advantage. I am now leveraging these skills and adopting more Maverick attributes as I grow and mature as a human. I would like to dive deeper into this concept in order to more fully understand it for myself and hopefully to give you insights into your own life.

Being raised the youngest of five siblings I found myself observing my siblings, how they interacted with each other and my parents. I was much younger than my next oldest sibling which limited my interactions with them in having shared growing experiences. In my observations of them, I found it useful to figure out how I should behave based on what they did. I observed the conflicts they had and tried to make adjustments in how I behaved to avoid those same conflicts. Finding that this was a good strategy, I began using these same methods with my classmates and teachers in school. I became a master at blending in and being able to have good relationships with most anyone older or younger than myself. I honed an already natural ability to intuit the mood of a person, what actions they were taking and then morph my own actions to coincide or match theirs. I believe this ability allowed me to gain favor in many people’s eyes as I did everything I could to make their life easier and to please them. I continued to use this ability throughout my younger years and on into adulthood.

The major downside to being a Pleaser is that I didn’t fully connect to who I was as my own person. I had little self confidence in my own abilities, nor did I even realize the enormous amount of knowledge I was gaining through my experiences as a Pleaser. I did not realize that I had an innate sensitivity to almost everything that I encountered. It hasn’t been until the last five or ten years that I’m becoming shockingly aware of how sensitive I really am. Recently, I took an online test based on Dr. Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). The HSP test asks a series of questions to determine your level of sensitivity to not only emotional attributes, but also physical ones as well. I scored a 27 out of 27 being the highest level of sensitivity possible. This test was a real eye opener and confirmed even more that I need to pay attention to the information I’m getting from all my senses and to trust it as being important to who I am. This test, along with the experiences I’ve had over my years, are allowing me to gain more and more confidence in who I am as a unique human being.

Nearly fifteen years ago, around 2003, I purchased the book Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. This was the time of my life I would consider myself to be on a seeker’s journey. I’d never really felt connected to or comfortable with the dogma and teachings of the church and I was looking for something to make sense of how I felt. I consider this book the first solid connection to something that made sense to me and aligned with how I’d felt for years about religion. This got me very excited that I was not the only one who felt the way I did. The concepts and experiences that Neale was writing about seemed to be taken directly from my own thoughts and ideas. I was intrigued to think that if someone else could have these same thoughts, that maybe I wasn’t so weird after all.

I became more and more excited with feeling like the answers to my questions might be found in other sources. I began to experiment with other traditions and rituals including Wicca, Paganism, Modern Mystery School teachings, and even with the ancient traditions of the Shaman in the Peruvian Amazon jungle. Each of these experiences seem to open up an even deeper hunger for more answers. I became a regular at psychic events to get readings, learning about Numerology, Astrology and Tarot; participating in various events all aimed at folding back the reality I saw myself in. This was all in hopes of revealing a deeper meaning under it all and hopefully a better understanding of who, or better yet, what I really am. I became trained as a Reconnective Healing practitioner, Reiki Healer, and as a Breathwork practitioner. I found I had a natural ability for all of these modalities and experienced sessions with clients that I have no scientific explanation for what I witnessed.

In all of these experiences I discovered that I am much more than what I was lead to believe. I’ve discovered that I am more than human. I know and believe that I am a Being of energy and light that is so immense and powerful, that I cannot even wrap my own human mind around the concept. I believe that I am part of the All there is, and I have no fear of ever losing that. I believe that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, as the saying goes. Knowing this is amazing and thought provoking, but ultimately it has taken me to a dead end. I’m still a human being, so now what?

With all that I feel that I’ve learned and know, it became clear to me that the seeker’s journey is worthy and even necessary for those who feel lost or unsettled such as I did. I believe that each of us that feel disconnected from life need to find a way to connect to our purpose, who we are and even more importantly, what we really are. I believe that for some, until we have clarity around this, we may live a life unfulfilled and disjointed. Everyone’s seeker journey is as unique as they are, but it’s important to say that some of us get stuck in the process of being a seeker. For some, the seeker process can be like an addiction to discover more and more about the answers “out there”. Like I did for a time, some continue to rely on answers from external sources such as spirit guides, Angels, psychics, etc in order to understand their life, why things are happening and what the hidden meanings are behind things. There isn’t anything wrong with these sources but for some people, they cannot make any decision for themselves without first consulting these sources.

As my seeker journey progressed, one of the repeating themes that I discovered was to trust myself, my own wisdom and my natural gifts. Without having my journey, I recognize that I would have never known what my gifts are (or at least the ones I know of now) or what I really am in the grand scheme of existence. I never would have known how to trust myself or even known how to interpret the information I receive. I also, would have never known how to stay open to what will likely continue to be revealed to me in the future.

With all of this said and done, I now turn back to me as a human being and need to decide, what do I do now? What do I need to do to fully experience my human life on this planet, in this time in history, in this body, with this family, with these people around me, with the limitations, boundaries and abilities that I have? I get to decide how deep do I dive into each event and if it’s really worth the effort. Is it really necessary to attribute every mood or feeling to planetary movements or alignments? Do I need to look up the meaning behind the time on the clock when I woke up at 2:34 am? Do I need to confirm with a psychic if I should stay in a relationship or not? Maybe I just need to decide to get more sleep. Maybe I need to eat a better diet so I don’t wake up in the middle of the night. Maybe I should just trust myself and say yes to the relationship and find out where it takes me.

I now have the power to respond to life instead of react. I can choose to observe life from a perspective of trusting the process and doing what I can to be a responsible human. I can choose to be compassionate and loving to others. I can choose to honor the process that others have chosen for their life. I can choose to be a model and mentor when necessary. And, I can choose to encourage others to see their own power. Choosing to live my life fully in the human experience is really why I’m here, but sometimes it takes knowing more, before you can settle into that role.

Through my journey, I now know that nothing will change where I’ll end up, when all of this is done. I will go back to the All There Is once again. The question is, what experiences as a Human Being will I take back with me?

Dwight Jon Raatz July 25th, 2018 Essay, Non-Fiction

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