Attachments pt. 2 - Internalization

Are you using knowledge or is knowledge using you? Using the Five Levels of Attachment for the backdrop of this series, I discuss how these attachments distort our reality. 1. The Authentic Self 2. Preference 3. Identity 4. Internalization 5. Fanaticism Level 4 - Internalization: At this stage... "my identity in the form of my knowledge gives me the rules and guidelines by which I live my life." Internalization describes a degree of attachment to knowledge where our identity becomes the model in which we accept ourselves. This is domestication through attachment. At this level our narrators have begun to set the conditions by which we domesticate our identity. They measure our acceptance and rejection of ourselves and others based on the beliefs we use to construct the mask of our identity. We will distort the information we receive to reinforce the conditions of which we expect from life. The narrators also serve our need to validate who we are in our personal dream, as well as the face we present to the world . Our knowledge is corrupted. Our sense of self is the personification of our beliefs and our will is subjugated by the need to fit in with the dream.. Thus our mask may not necessarily be in the form of our passion, but we will wear whatever mask we think we need to be accepted. At this point we’ve lost our sense of respect for self and others, and conditional love is all we know.