Image by Patter Hill from Pixabay

Two people born into similar circumstances whether both have an upper middle suburban life, or both have a hard life to a single mom in the poor part of town… and yet one person will grow up a kind, aware person… and the other will be an empty, jaded, potentially cruel person.

That tells me it’s something other than environment/upbringing that’s the key factor. Maybe genetics plays a small part but mostly it has to be the consciousness/destiny of the incarnating spirit (or whether there even is a spirit).

Because if you take a lowlife and a monk, and have both die and incarnate into the same family, guaranteed the monk is going to come out a better person despite same/similar conditions.

But that aside, what we see of a person is the sum of their little choices so far in life (and hence also in their previous life, if they have a spirit that reincarnates). Maybe at various points in this life, they had the opportunity to ponder something, or learn something, and instead they felt the mild discomfort that comes with thinking and chose instead to distract themselves with stupid shit because it was more comfortable. If that’s kept up over decades, they’ll wind up a really shallow and jaded person. And it would be because fundamentally they are lazy comfort/pleasure seekers and don’t have, or haven’t developed, a sense of curiosity. Or maybe the pain of not knowing something is lower for them than the pain of thinking deeply, which would be a consequence of a lack of (or underdeveloped) spirit connection.

In your case, since you have a spirit and also went through struggle, that was a lot for you to deal with and process, a lot of yourself that you had to apply. Sad to say, that’s actually the best way to develop a consciously active spirit. Because in situations where there isn’t much stimulation, like say an upper middle suburban life where all is vanilla, the spirit tends to languish and disconnect from reality. Loss of meaning and purpose is one of the most harmful things. That’s why in a nice calm environment like a temple, the monks had to put themselves through struggle on purpose whether through martial arts stuff like the Shaolin monks or concentration and the fight for inner mastery.

Because I’m thinking how, sure, a vacation is nice, but compare a vacation where you just sit there on a boat and watch nice mountains pass by you, versus being on a ‘mission’ to make it up to the base camp on that mountain. The latter is ‘work’ but it’s also a vacation in that you get meaning and purpose from the challenge.

Life can be like that too. Not all struggle is good though. So much of it is redundant, negs hammering away at you again and again and again. So there’s definitely a sweet spot where there’s enough to bring the best out of you, give you something to learn and practice against. And a lot of people are missing even that. Or else, they suffer and struggle but never learn anything, just drink themselves away instead of confronting their issues.

Some people never introspect. They don’t even know the space inside their own mind. They’re always focused outwardly. They don’t remember their dreams. I don’t understand them, but they exist and I think most of those don’t have a spirit. Nothing much can be done for them… So it goes to show that we may all look human but behind the face it’s a whole zoo of different possibilities.