Where is my place in this world

Is psychology the new spirituality? I have heard it many times from many people that they are looking into modern science, including multimodal psychology and quantum physics, searching for answers to spirituality. It is as if our mind’s evolution is not satisfied with what we don’t understand. We have moved above the imitation and ritualistic stage into an era of thirst for understanding. A more mature mind looks for answers to “why,” and “how,” rather than emulating rituals and following others. Development does not fit into being a sheep. There is, however, this red flag. While people seem to have more and more of a thirst for psychology, at the same time some tend to run from it because they may think it is too knotty or analytical. For that reason, I have made it my goal to combine stories with simple and lucid language to make psychology as unfussy as possible. I will try to introduce psychology as a people’s science and a new way of spirituality, finding a bridge between the two that can be crossed without too much fear. The more bridges we can build between things we separate, the shorter and easier our way will become. Our free will has an integrated choice of doing what we want and putting together what works. How do we want to use it? While we are trying to use our free will to choose the path of life that will be most productive for our unique process of growth, we cannot help noticing that there are many distractions. It takes a well-informed, skillful, experienced, well-built, strong and evolved mind to be able to resist superfluous temptations and keep focusing and moving forward. It would be less painful and demanding for us to walk the path if we walk with a light baggage, carrying only what we need and letting go of what we don’t. Hauling burdensome and heavy baggage, full of irrational, out of balance, and unproductive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, in addition to too many grudges of the past and worries of the future, will do nothing but to slow us down and hurt us. We may be doing ourselves a service if we become more awake and conscious of the fact that our religion, culture, ethnicity, education, family background, country, etc., are not really making us better or worse than others. They are just elements of our existence and means by which we can achieve our goal of self-growth. Sure, there are some countries that have more civilized environments than others, but what we, as an individual, make of our self using the means that we have is what values us as a human being, not the means itself. Valuing the means alone as a way of thinking is no different than thinking we are prettier than others because our shoes are more expensive. Now, how silly does that sound? So, as I said, all of these are means by which we can get the resources we need to make the travel through this path of life more fruitfully. If we start the distracting process of categorizing humans as superior or inferior based on external factors, just to feel better about ourselves without deserving it, and to fill our own inner voids, we may be wasting a lot of valuable time and energy on negative forces rather than positive ones. It is not about what means and surroundings we have, but what we do with what we have that makes us who we are. If we are not working hard to make the best of what we have, we cannot take much credit for possessing it. On the other hand, we are even more to blame if we have a good means and do not have the ability to make good use of it. Means and tools are not for unhealthy competitions but are to be used for growth. We cannot just give ourselves a status based on a tool we have without working hard toward gaining that status with integrity and honesty. For example, if one’s tool is that she is intelligent, that, by itself, does not make that person any more advanced than others if she doesn’t use that intelligence to create something positive and to help herself grow. Or, even worse, if such a person uses that intelligence to feed the ego (tip of the iceberg), or to make something harmful, she has wasted or misused her power and has walked away from her full integrity and potential. Integrity and potential are built-in traits that need to be acknowledged. If one walks away from them, she is walking away from her truth. The further we get from our truth, the less value we posses. We humans spend so much power trying to demonstrate to each other that we are better or superior in some external way that we really don’t even know why we are doing it. It has become a habit that does not serve us. We can’t help but think that if that energy was focused more on real self-growth, we would all be better off. Even animals and plants seem to know their roles. It seems like they just come and go about doing what they are supposed to do. We, on the other hand, focus so much on the image that we may forget the real thing. Imagine we are climbing a mountain. We put a lot of energy and determination into getting to the top, not with the intention of winning but with the intention of enjoying and having a sense of discovery. Now, as we get to the top, we stand at the summit and look down, Our vision has expanded and we can see more. We cannot help noticing this astonishing beauty and coordination of nature that every single plant contributes to. At the summit, there is no separation; all we see is harmony. The trees look more and more like they are complementing each other, while when you were looking at them from ground level they seemed different from each other. From the ground, one was greener and taller, and they all had different shapes and types. Looking from the top, the plants are not spending time trying to prove to each other that one is better than the other. I know that sounds silly but bear with me and you will get my point. We don’t see an aspen birch wanting to be a Douglas fir or vice versa. They seem to innately have their position and role set, and are content with that. And it makes us wonder, are our free will and evolved thought process curses or blessings? The answer lies at the heart of the question: our free will gives us the choice of whatever we want to make of it. We need to stop comparing ourselves with others and continuously trying to manipulate our mind. There is a lot of work that still needs to be done, and only we can accomplish that. We have all heard that the grass is greener at the neighbors. The reason is that we see it from a distance and don’t really see the weeds, while with our grass we see every detail. It won’t be a fair comparison, since we don’t know the deep truth. If only we could keep our focus away from others, judging them, talking about them, trying to be like them, trying to get what they have, trying to be better than them, interfering with their life, projecting our inner voids on them, finding some flaws in them to make ourselves feel better about our own flaws, or on the other side of the spectrum, idealizing them and having unreasonable expectations from them. Most of us do one or more of these behaviors consciously or unconsciously, leaving some negative impact. If only we could turn the camera on ourselves, acknowledge and accept it, and start the discovery process; a process that goes all the way to infinity. Walking a couple of miles down the road would not cut it. So, which one will we choose, this endless process or that wasteful one? We should stop for a minute and ask ourselves, why is it that we spend a lifetime running away from ourselves and toward a state of nothingness? Why is it that we have such a deep fear of ourselves? Why is it that we neglect the essence and spend so much time on the worthless? Why is it that we focus on the tip of the iceberg and fail to see the deep? And why is it that we feel like we are chasing our own tail, running in a circle instead of climbing up? And why is it that we keep repeating words as if they don’t mean anything?