There’s a virulent virus that has spread throughout the U.S. It makes you sick, but it can also earn you more money and enhance your social status. It makes you unhappy, but if you don’t have it, people think you’re weird.
Long ago, the virus was identified by wise seers from India and Tibet. They named it “titan realm vision” after a group of compulsive strugglers — beings who competed with the Gods they tried to emulate and who simultaneously lorded it over the lower beings.
People infected with titan realm vision believe that life is an effortful climb and that the only safe place to be is on top. They see life as a contest with winners and losers.
The virus creates show offs, manipulators of public image, exaggerators and liars. Infected beings deeply doubt their own self-worth and so struggle to prove themselves by making great efforts to master life (or at least present the appearance of mastery).
Titans are unhappy, restless, anxious beings who compete ferociously to succeed in an attempt to hide their real condition.
Are you infected? Here are some of the symptoms.
- You believe that if you aren’t continuously growing, improving and getting more, you are failing.
- You define yourself by your mission. When you don’t have a mission, you feel empty and that life is meaningless.
- You subtly or not so subtly disparage others in order to distinguish yourself.
- You are always measuring your accomplishments against those of others.
- You feel your world is crashing down if you make a mistake or someone points out something you have done that is less than stellar.
- You find it difficult to take responsibility for your behavior, and you will defend yourself aggressively even when you know you are in the wrong.
- You do whatever it takes to hide your supposed shortcomings, including by tearing others down.
- You exaggerate your accomplishments or even lie about them.
- When life naturally takes a turn for the worse, you feel humiliated and depressed.
- You are haughty, or even mean, toward people you feel are less powerful than you are.
- You have a constant underlying feeling of anxiety that something is wrong with you, or that you are inadequate, or that you are about to be unmasked.
- You monitor other people’s reactions to you and take swift action to manipulate other people’s view of you when you imagine they are less than admiring.
- You swing between elation at “success” and depression at “failures.”
- You are exhausted.
One of the great cures for titan realm vision is recognizing how nature actually is. Circumstances naturally change. Whole civilizations naturally come and go. Life is not a ladder or a mountain or a measuring stick. It is more of an undulation. Surfing is a more useful skill than making a continuous effort to climb.
Graceful adaptation is the key to happiness. Competing to be “on top” is a recipe for suffering.
Want to know more about titan realm vision and how to leave it behind? Read this.
