Humankind has seen amazing progress in the last thousand years, but what is the basis for this progress? It is that we have raised our awareness of many aspects of life. We know and understand more about the world than people did a thousand years ago. We can therefore formulate a universal law of progress:

All progress is based on a raising of awareness.

Unfortunately, we have been focused on raising our awareness of the outer world, the material world, and we have put less attention on raising awareness about the inner world of the psyche. We have been looking out more than we have been looking in, but as we have seen, we are psychological beings and every aspect of our lives is affected by our psychology.

One effect of this external focus is that we have created technology with a destructive potential without having developed the psychological maturity to use the technology in a non-destructive way. Another effect is that even though many people have become more materially affluent, they have not become happier or more psychologically whole. They have become more materially wealthy but psychologically impoverished.

We have said that you were brought up with an inadequate awareness of your own psyche. Unfortunately, you were also brought up with an inadequate awareness of what kind of world we live in.

In order to make the best use of HAP, you need to make some adjustments to your world view. Obviously, this can be controversial because people can be very attached to the world view with which they were brought up. So, let’s start by looking at why some people are ready to kill other in order to defend their world view.

A world view is a basic human need

You have probably come across the concept that we humans have some basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter. But in actuality, one of the most fundamental human needs is the need for security.

This need is not a material need, such as food, clothing and shelter. It is a psychological need. You may say that security also relates to the physical body and the survival of the body, but the need itself resides in the psyche and it must be fulfilled in the psyche.

Why is that? We earlier talked about the core of your psyche, which is that your conscious self has the ability to mentally step outside your current situation. This is what gives us the ability to imagine or project that something could happen to us in the future. We now see three factors:

The world is unpredictable and bad things could happen to us at any time.
We have the ability to project that something bad could happen to us in the future.
We must find a way to deal with this insecurity about the future.

This creates a psychological pressure upon all of us. You see that some soldiers who go to war break down psychologically. Even though nothing has happened to them physically, the insecurity of what might happen is more than they can deal with. Some people are overwhelmed by the insecurities of everyday life or a crisis situation.

So we could say that the most fundamental human need is for some sense of security about the future.

We could also say that we live in a world that is so unpredictable, chaotic and violent that the psychological pressure created by the world is more than we can live with. We are constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed, and in order to avoid this, we MUST find a way to make the world seem less dangerous and to make out future seem less insecure.

Basically, if you fear that you could die any second, how can you function is your daily life? So we must find a way to deal with the insecurity that we cannot personally change.

Another say to say this is that is that we cannot psychologically function in this world. But since we cannot get away from the world, we must force ourselves to function psychologically in an impossible situation.

Take note that this is not about changing the world. Obviously, in many of the modern nations, people have relatively secure lives, yet mental institutions are still full of people who are overwhelmed psychologically.

The real issue here is that in order to function, there must be a state of balance or equilibrium in our psyches. It is a bit like riding a bicycle, where the basic need is to keep the bike balanced. The insecurity of the world is constantly seeking to pull us out of balance so we fall down. Our psyches must therefore constantly seek to create, maintain to restore this equilibrium.

How do we do this? One of the basic ways is that we create a view of how the world supposedly works. This world view then becomes our psychological basis for dealing with the insecurity of the world. The world view explains how the world supposedly works, and this gives us the sense that we have some control over our future. This becomes the basis for our psychological equilibrium, our inner sense of balance.

This understanding explains why people can react so strongly when they think their world view is threatened. We all know that history is littered with examples of people who had adopted a certain world view (be it political, religious or something else), and when they felt it was threatened, they were ready to kill the people who represented the threat.

The reason is that for these people, their world view was the source of their psychological equilibrium. This allowed them to cope with their fear of the future, but It was a fragile balance. If their world view was threatened, they feared that they would be plunged into such insecurity that it would be overwhelming for them.

This became an existential threat, similar to when another person comes at you with a sword, ready to kill you. For such people, defending their world view is an act of self-defense, an act of psychological survival. And psychological survival is as important to us as is physical survival.

The essential human dilemma

Where does all this lead us, what does it have to do with your personal situation? Well, as you grew up, you came to accept a certain world view. This world view is your personal foundation for your sense of security, equilibrium and balance.

What happens when we come to accept a certain world view? Our subconscious minds use the outer beliefs of the world view to create certain programs. These programs are designed to establish that inner sense of security by explaining how the world works and how we can protect ourselves and deal with the insecurity of the future.

We have other programs that are designed to maintain and defend this psychological equilibrium. Which means that these programs will see anything that questions our world view as a threat to our security, even our psychological survival. This now leads us to the essential human dilemma:

All progress begins with a raising of awareness.
Raising awareness means you come to see more than what you can see right now.
Your existing world view has been used to create subconscious programs designed to give you a sense of security.
These programs will resist anything that threatens your present world view.
Your subconscious mind will resist any new knowledge that goes beyond your existing world view.
Your own subconscious mind will resist the knowledge that can help you raise your awareness and improve your Life Experience.
The key to making psychological progress, personal growth, is to break your subconscious mind’s resistance to change.

Obviously, if your subconscious mind had total power over you, you would not even be reading this. The fact that you are reading this means that you are not completely controlled by your subconscious resistance to new knowledge. Yet you may still have some programs that will resist any perceived challenges to your world view.

The most common effect of this, is that people close their minds to new information. They either refuse to study it, or they study it only with the purpose of refuting it. This is because their subconscious programs are constantly seeking to turn back what they see as a threat to your sense of security and equilibrium.

So the choice you have is simple:

Do I really want to change my outer situation and my Life Experience?
If I do, it is absolutely necessary that I raise my awareness of how my psyche works. I must uncover subconscious programs and dissolve them.
In order to come to see something I do not see now, I must take in new knowledge and allow it to shift my awareness.
In order to shift my awareness, I must become aware of how my subconscious programs are seeking to defend my present world view.
I must consciously override the tendency to ignore, reject or refute all new knowledge.

You can do this by coming to the following realization:

By accepting a certain world view, I do not become that world view.
I am more than my world view (Because I have a core of my being that can step outside my beliefs).
The world view has caused my subconscious mind to create programs, but I am more than those programs. I have not become the programs.
I can come to see the programs and if they limit my growth, I can dissolve them.
Coming to see and dissolve limiting subconscious programs is in fact what personal growth is all about.

The basic question is: Are you happy with your present Life Experience? If you are, you have no need for HAP. But since you are reading this, there is a high probability that you want to improve your Life Experience. And we have now seen how this can be done.

Obviously, by you reading this, your subconscious programs have not instantly melted away. So as you read on, you may still encounter some resistance to what is presented here. Yet by becoming more aware of it, you can make it easier for yourself to evaluate what to accept and what not to accept.

It might also help you realize What HAP is and what it is not.