If people made you believe you were a fool, you would have to see the way you responded to their temptations and accepted the suggestion. You could compensate and become a genius—but your motive would be merely to change their viewpoint of you so you could change your "own" opinion of yourself.

And that would be the greatest foolishness of all! Think of it—you are spending your entire life proving to people that you are not stupid! How stupid can you get?

Surely it would be smarter to see the truth of how suggestible you are and how you "fell" to temptation, but you would need to face the truth—and as an egotist you will not be able to do it. You would rather keep proving that you are not a fool the way you are, or continue covering up.

The role others oblige us to play is accepted by our fallen, gullible, suggestible natures. We may feel self-conscious about certain ridiculous social customs, but if we play that role more fully we receive the applause we need—and so we don't notice how stupid we are, enacting those traditions over and over again.

If you were a cannibal, then you would conquer the anxiety of being a cannibal by being the best cannibal in the tribe, and so you would never come to realize how wrong it is to be a cannibal.

As a drunk you would develop a bigger capacity so as to receive tribute from your cronies. As an unscrupulous businessman you would be the biggest "con artist" of them all, so as to end up with the biggest bank account and the prettiest house on the hill.

Your problems start with the pressure of family and society, who are anxious to mold you, that is, corrupt you by getting you to conform. Then you may be led and used as they have been used.

In the beginning your initial need to respond develops your animal nature. Additional pressure, which you have not the grace to resist, molds you into the image of the source, complete with various emotions and habits that the ego struggles to suppress or to see as normal (or even "cute").

"Man born of woman is subject first to nature, and then to evil which is responsible for his natural identity."

By getting the usual assurances from those around you, you become more peculiar, eccentric and popular. Some of these silly, socially-imposed peculiarities may be noticed long before we are aware of our fallen physical identity. They can be a source of guilt and discomfort long before the time we mature to notice something wrong with our "natural" selves.

The abnormality of such rearing often drives young children insane, or at least makes them disturbed and confused, leading some to seek Truth long before their awakening at the appropriate age of anxiety.

It is nature that usually causes us to sit up and take notice of her. Given a fairly decent upbringing, few children would be troubled by self-consciousness before the age of puberty; but something obviously abnormal, unnatural and abominable is easier for a child to detect before he is graced to see the more subtle truth of his natural self later in life.

You are not self-conscious without a reason. The basic cause is the fact that the fallen identity is very impressionable. Notice the two elements in the foregoing principle; the fallen identity is one factor; the second is its compulsive sensitivity to the negative forces that are primarily responsible for its being what it is.

Man born of woman is subject first to nature, and then to evil which is responsible for his natural identity. When we sense compulsion or suggestion, we either go along with it as if it were our own idea, or we compensate; that is, we try to do the opposite, as if that represented freedom or the right action. No doubt the reader can find examples of his own behavior to illustrate this principle.

If we do well and are applauded for what we are, in fact, compelled to do, then we enjoy a false confidence in the belief we have acted correctly. But soon we experience fear, anxiety, self-doubt and the like. They drive us to act like trained seals. We ease symptoms by looking to people and pleasure.

We become obliging and helpful. We develop a need to be motivated, so as to feel as if we are doing something meaningful. Then we have a need for approval to erase the guilt of having done it—so the anxiety grows as a result of the cure itself!

The reason is plain to see. We refuse to stand still in the present moment to see that we are wrong. We are too proud to admit that we are inadequate or guilty—so if we can convince others we are smart, we can believe it ourselves. The beliefs of others become our hang-up.