When we perceive
someone or something as having more power than we do,
especially when that power gives them the control
or right to make decisions,
to give orders or to enforce obedience,
we call this authority.
The Authority Pattern
Encountering authority,
automatically makes us aware of our vulnerability.
And the way that we react to authority,
directly reflects what our experience has been,
when we've been in that vulnerable position before.
If we've been hurt in that vulnerable position,
we tend to have issues with authority and hierarchy.
If we haven't, we don't tend to have issues with authority
and with hierarchy.
To understand more about hierarchy,
I suggest you watch my video that's titled:
Hierarchy, Should We Accept It?
Before we continue with this lesson,
I want you to take out a sheet of paper.
And at the top of that page,
I want you to write down:
"What I could expect from my parents"
I want you to think about mom,
I want you to think about dad
I want you to think about any adult caregivers you had
in your life experience.
That might also be a sibling.
And underneath that title,
I want you to list everything you could expect from them.
Both positive and negative.
Some examples may be:
caretaking, having to fend for myself,
to be guilted, to be praised,
to be protected, to not be protected,
to be valued and wanted,
to be seen and treated like a burden and unwanted,
to be invisible,
honesty,
there to be dark truth underneath the surface of what's said and even done,
disappointment,
for them to take responsibility for me,
for them to mess up,
for them to make the right decisions,
lots of mixed messages,
for them to act in my best interests,
for them to screw me for their best interests,
to be supported, to be exploited, etc
I want you to rate this list before you continue this video.
Now that you have written your list,
I want you to write a short list
or a long list, whatever you want,
of the authority figures that exist in your adult life.
For example,
the president, the monarchy,
the government,
someone with higher social status,
someone with more knowledge,
your boss, coaches, Teal Swan,
any the other spiritual leader,
your professor, your doctor,
policeman,
corporate executives, etc...
Now what I want you to do,
is I want you to take that first list you wrote
of what your expectations are from those primary authority figures
and I want you to compare that list
to every single authority figure you wrote down on this new list.
Are those the same expectations you hold for those authority figures?
I want you to do this before you resume this video.
When we are born,
our very first authority figures are our parents.
Beyond that, teachers.
Beyond that, the parents of our peers.
Now this is where the imprinting, relative to authority, occurs.
Our mind imprints by virtue of association.
So whatever we experienced in those early relationships
in terms of what to expect with them
and what our actual feeling about authority is,
has to do with exactly what happened in our childhood.
What happened with those primary authority figures.
Basically, however those interactions went
with the initial primary caregivers in our life experience,
those primary authority figures,
is now what we assign on to authority figures in general.
And this is where we start to become incredibly unconscious.
To understand why people are having
such drastically different reactions
when they're met with authority,
all you have to understand is what I've just taught you;
That they're understanding it through the lens of their experiences
they've had up to this point, with Authority.
Its coloring the way that they see the experience, in and of itself.
This process that I'm describing is actually called projection.
If you want to understand more about that, you can watch my video this titled:
Projection (Understanding the Psychology of Projecting)
For example,
in response to this most recent coded 19 crises
that we all find ourselves in,
let's look at people's reactions;
Somebody who grew up in a household
where they could expect their authority figures in their life
to take care of them,
where they could expect them to capitalize on their best interest,
where they could expect them to know better
and to actually use that knowledge to make the best choices,
would say something like this:
"Right now we need to trust
that our president knows exactly what he's doing.
We definitely need to rely on him
to know the best way out of this.
We need to trust him at a time like this."
On the other hand,
let's say that somebody in their childhood
experienced an oppositional type of a relationship
with the authority figures in their life;
One that was flavored with distrust.
A parent where they really couldn't
trust that parent to capitalize in their best interests.
You're gonna hear something more like this:
"My god, that president,
all he thinks about is lining his own freakin pockets,
regardless of the cost to the average citizen.
May God have mercy on us all."
If what you are wanting is truth and clarity,
it lies beyond projection,
no matter what that projection is.
So, we have to consider
that if we are in this modality of projecting
where we take our associations
and assign it onto whatever the future might be
or whatever the situation at hand is today,
meaning taking our childhood experience
and projecting it on to what's happening in the current reality
in our adult life,
then we may be missing the picture.
What I mean by this is:
We may be perceiving mal-intent
where mal-intent does actually exist,
or we may be perceiving mal-intent
where mal-intent actually doesn't exist and somebody is benevolent.
To the opposite,
we may be perceiving a positive intention, benevolence,
where it doesn't actually exist,
or to the opposite,
perceiving benevolence where it does actually exist.
Any four of those options,
could be the potential.
Those of us who were more fortunate in our childhood experience
relative to authority figures, will tend to project
positive on to situations where it doesn't actually exist.
Whereas people who experienced more negative associations
with their primary authority figures in childhood
will tend to project more negative,
than actually exists.
I also have to say that human beings
will argue viciously
for the correctness of their own associations
and the validity of them.
Now perhaps the most ultimate authority
that we all have in our lives
is what many people call Source,
God or The Universe at large.
So what do we do?
Yep, this circumstance is no different.
We take that primary association
we had with our authority figures in childhood
and assign it to the ultimate authority of all.
We project those expectations onto God or Source or The Universe itself.
This has serious implications.
I mean serious implications.
Both ways actually, but let's just talk about
implications if you had an adverse type of a relationship
with your primary authority figures.
It means that you will 100%
feel like the universe is against you.
This also has serious implications
if you had an unpredictable parent.
Because you're going to be extra confused.
Because what you're going to expect from the universe at large
is that sometimes it's going to support you
and sometimes it's going to destroy you.
Let's look at one positive thing, that might be negative.
If you're in this projection mode
because of associations in your childhood,
and you had a parent that really took responsibility for you
to the degree that they never actually asked you to take responsibility for yourself,
so you could expect them to carry you through life,
instead of owning your own personal power
you're gonna expect the universe to just carry you through.
In fact, if all I do is just think about Prince Charming,
the universe is gonna make him show up on my doorstep.
Our own consciously held attitudes
and more than that, feelings towards authority
can make a serious mess
out of our capacity to be aware.
A mess out of our capacity to perceive things clearly
and a serious mess out of our lives in general
because of how it makes us respond to authority.
We tend to polarize because of these associations.
Either towards over compliance
or complete and total rebellion.
In other words,
either you're going to give up
your sense of self for the sake of safety,
or you're going to become hostile.
Even in situations where hostility
isn't even close to what needs to happen,
because you're not even perceiving the reality at hand.
It causes us to unconsciously play out
the same experience in adulthood
that we had with our primary authority figures as a child.
And it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For this reason it is super important
to recognize those patterns that you have within you
that are making you ripe for projection,
relative to authority.
It's really important to separate out
that relationship you had
or association you've formed
through your childhood experiences with authority,
from the authority that may exist in your adult life,
in order to see
the situations that you find yourself in more clearly.
The reason we tend either over comply to authority
or become hostile relative to authority,
is because we're not actually in our own personal power.
Rebellion is not freedom.
It is not a state of empowerment.
It is nothing more than fighting against
something that you don't want.
Very different than going in the direction of what you do want.
Over compliance is to
surrender yourself completely for the sake of your own self-preservation.
It is making safety the single most important thing in your life
and dropping every other value by the waste side.
You cannot live a happy life if you're in that modality of living.
So... One thing I want to share with you,
the last thing I'm going to share with you is this:
The more empowered you are,
the more access you have to your awareness of your own free will,
the more squarely you stand in a place of choice,
the less issue you will have with authority.
Have a good week.
If you liked this video,
Be sure to share it,
like it,
and also subscribe to my channel so you can see more content like this.
But I want to personally thank you
for taking the initiative and having the bravery
to step into the space of awareness.
Not only for yourself, but for the benefit of those around you.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte