A man is known by the company he keeps they say. It sounds really simple but then perhaps it is. There is a simple law of attraction in play here.

photo credit: Haags Uitburo

Identifying with collectives

We are attracted to and surround ourselves with people who reflect our views, mood or some other part of our life. But this choice has less to with the person you are attracted to and more to do with who you are. To understand this you only need to look at your own life. If you were to pick one word to identify yourself, what would it be. Would you identify yourself as a man, woman, child, parent, black, white, American, Indian, doctor, yogi, Christian, or something else. There many be more than one word to describe you from that list and many more. But, which one would you pick first. And having done that, which one would you pick next. In fact do that right now. Make a list of all the words you identify yourself as and write them down. Then put them in a sequential order.

Done? Look at the top 3 word and hold them in memory.

A number of people identify with the keywords on your list. And together they become a collective. For example if you are a woman, then all the women in the world form a collective. If you are also white then white women also have a collective but a smaller one. Within that smaller collective are women from the middle class backgrounds who are single professional women.

Collectives are great and psychologists suggest that all your friends are people who also are a part of that collective in some way. Your closest friends are in the collective associated with the top keywords in your list. Examine the top three keywords in your list now and see how you identify with them.

photo credit: ervega

Fear

Many groups and collectives are formed for a common purpose but need something to hold them together. And there is nothing like fear to do just that. That emotion is so powerful and strong, and yet so easy to come by, that it is exploited in virtually every angle of our lives – sales, media campaigns, political speeches, and so on. Fear of the unknown. In a collective there is comfort in familiarity as there are known factors to work with. In the unknown, there is fear. And the most common manifestation of fear is in declaration of superiority. Be it colour, sex, race, religion or anything else! To believe that your idea or belief is somehow better than someone else’s.

It is not easy to overcome fear. To overcome it you first have to admit that you have got it and most people don’t even know it is there. The stronger the fear, the stronger the need to defend it. In the extreme case, to defend it violently. Take any of the extreme groups and you will always find fear at the heart of it. And the fear feeds the extreme mentality making the collective much stronger.

Universal law of attraction

Universal law of attraction means that similar energies will attract each other and people with common purposes will find each other. In anger you will find people to be angry with and in fear you will find other people who are also afraid. If you are an optimistic person then you will find other people like you and vice versa. If you change as a person and the people you relate to does not change in the same way then the friendship falters and you seek new companions. The thing that dictates the universal law of attraction and your friendships is in fact you! You are at the heart of the world you create for yourself.

A choice

But you have a choice! Turn the other cheek.

We all have a choice. We can become a part of the collective but don’t have to wear their values like labels. As an example, if you are a single professional white woman from middle class background then those are your features but it not who you are. You are a human being trying to connect to another. As long as religion, sex, colour, race, sexual orientation or anything else is the description of your features and not of you, you are free from the fear and the prison of your mind. When you become a white woman, fear creeps in. Fear of anything non-white. The unfamiliar – the unknown. Instead you could be a person who happens to a woman and she in turn happens to be white.

The labels will never unite the world. When you identify yourself with a label you enter a prison. When you break free of the labels, you are on your way to overcoming fear and freeing the mind.You have a choice! You have the key to break out of this prison. Free yourself of the labels.