Gifts and flowers wrapped in pretty paper, consumer products and food carefully arranged, wrapped to show only the best side and covered in ‘information’, advertising, brides in designer gowns, all fashion and clothing styles, makeup, hairstyles, uniforms, costumes and suits, rituals and customs, car models, fancy picture frames, book covers, house designs, perfumes and deodorisers, grant applications as justifications for support, resumés and curriculum vitae, the profiles, charters, brands and principles of companies, charities, institutions and governments, politics, corporate social responsibility and philanthropy, military might and posturing, bluff in all its forms… gosh, a lot of stuff comes packaged!
Underlying these could be any number of things going on that bear close scrutiny:
- Engagement of emotions.
- That the essence of the thing is perceived to be ‘not good enough’ to stand alone in its truth.
- That perhaps the thing is actually not that good and would be seen as such and rejected unless covered up by ‘packaging’.
- That some kind of ‘force’ is required to make the thing acceptable to the senses, to ‘sell it’ to people, regardless of its merits.
- That appearances are used to override our natural sense of what is and is not necessary, or even right for us, and thus gain power and control over us.
- A belief that people fall for deception and are able to be deceived by appearances.
- That people will not speak up when they find they’ve fallen for deception and have been deceived by appearances.
These things say a lot about the motivation behind packaging, and they say a lot about us who do it, and who ‘fall for it’, and who don’t call it out for the deception it is.
When I sit down to ponder on ‘packaging,’ the list grows exponentially to include things I normally would not think of as packaging.
But when you really look around, the whole of our modern life is based on packaging: putting a layer of illusion (of varying degrees of untruth) around something’s essence in order to ‘look better’ or look different from what it truly is, to increase reception (by deception) so that it can be desired more, taken in and accepted, not for itself, but as the ‘whole package’. A lie, basically.
It doesn’t stop with material things. In fact the material things are probably the smallest component of the ‘global packaging deception’. Into the packaging ‘package’ there’s our own behaviour of putting on appearances:
- Pretending to be happy when we’re sad.
- Saying we’re fine when we’re actually feeling awful.
- Being depressed or having disorders when it serves to protect us from engaging with people and the world.
- Appearing to be full of energy when really we’re tired.
- Looking fashionably cool and aloof when really we’re craving love and connection.
- To be seen as an atheist when deep inside we have a sense of divinity that we don’t want to admit to.
- To appear stupid when we don’t want responsibility.
- To look strong when we feel vulnerable and wobbly.
- To look sexy when we don’t feel like it and really want intimacy and love.
- Using pseudonyms and anonymity.
- Name-changing: to look authoritative when we feel insecure and inferior.
- To appear intelligent and knowledgeable when we feel inadequate…
This list could go over pages and pages…
And then there is the most insidious form of packaging of all… the appearances of things and activities that seem fine on the surface and that we accept, but which contain within them energy of a kind that is not what we would approve of or accept, if we were aware of the nature of the energy behind them – for example, religious leaders who are paedophiles behind the scenes, or lovely-sounding music written and/or sung by abusive drug-takers.
What if we unpacked ourselves? What if we opened up, threw off all our packaging, our illusions, caps and covers, and allowed the world to see our true selves?
An immediate effect for me as I’ve begun to ‘unpack myself’ lovingly is incredible relief – to drop the tension of living a lie. Another: an increased sense of togetherness and relatedness. I increasingly discover that I and the people I meet, who also felt ‘packed up’ and separate, are more alike than we thought, carrying the same hurts and experiencing the same quandaries and difficulties in various shades and tones. I begin to see that even some of the ‘truths’ of myself that have been exposed during various stages of unpacking have (still) been deceptive packages and that another layer, or twenty, may have to come off for the shining spark of God at my core to be fully revealed.
What if as one humanity we did even the first layer of unpackaging together?
Might it bring compassion for others, as well as understanding and acceptance? We could begin to see the true essence of everyone and every-thing. Our sense of truth could naturally rise; we might no longer be fooled by appearances and could better discern the quality of energy behind everything and thus refine our choices.
What if ‘packaging’ could then become a way of supporting and expressing the true essence of people and things instead of creating a false appearance to hide it?
What if our clothes, makeup, houses, work, all the stuff and activities of how we look and live life, could then be shared, joyful celebrations of truth – the truth of us? Would some of our habits and behaviours fall away? Would we no longer need to consume so much or change fashions, emotions and moods as often as we have done? Would possessions, acquisitions, quests and dissatisfactions start falling away?
With an unpacked humanity, perhaps our companions – the planet, plants and animals – could breathe a sigh of relief!
So here’s today’s slogan:
“Unpack yourself today! And bring a friend or two, or 7 billion!” |
By Dianne Trussell
Related Reading:
~ Returning To Our Essence
~ Trusting and Expressing From My Essence
~ Magic of Knowing… We are All One & the Same on the Inside
Words on Serge Benhayon 
“To appear stupid when we don’t want responsibility.” Ouch! I can see that one in my life, and it’s true, there is an aversion to deeper responsibility, and by claiming to not know more takes one off the hook. I’ve even seen pets acting dumb on something to avoid their responsibility and the subsequent consequences. It reminds me of stories of very clever people in the news who have acted criminally and masterminded fraud, often creating technologies to do so, and I always feel ‘Why don’t they just use those skills to get a legitimate job?’ And it’s the same for us, our cleverness to play dumb could just as easily be used to make loving change.
Being honest with why I have my layers is a great start to unpacking them.
I love the simplicity of what you see is what you get. No trick nor gimmick.
If we all unpacked at once that would change so much and the reality is that we all have our areas in life that are simpler to take the wrapping off and others where we feel quite stuck, so never judge yourself simply remove what and when required.
I agree we have made packages of nearly everything to make it look as though we are coping with life when we are clearly not coping at all. For example recently at the A&E of a major hospital there where several young men who came in having sustained sporting injuries and they looked hurt, shocked and withdrawn. And I mentioned this to a friend asking why they would want to do this to their young bodies they felt that what they were doing was no different to studying hard for some exam and in doing this putting their bodies under immense strain. At the bottom of such behaviour is the need to be seen and recognised and this is how we have built our society where what we do is more important that who we are and how much we damage ourselves in the quest for this acceptance and recognition and when we are young we think we can get away with it, it’s not until we are much older that we realise we didn’t get away with anything and the consequences of such behaviour can be far worse.
It pays to ask ‘what is the purpose of our packaging of ourselves’ for this quickly reveals any underlying agendas.
To live ‘unpacked’ there must be a willingness to be honest about the layers that cover up the Truth inside.
The bare naked Truth is often not appreciated nor wanted in our world – but this is not a reason to keep it hidden.
“Our sense of truth could naturally rise; we might no longer be fooled by appearances and could better discern the quality of energy behind everything and thus refine our choices.” Wow I like that very much and I am sure living like this would change the world a bit. Thank you Dianne for sharing your experience with unpacking yourself – it is very inspirational for me.
We are so easily led by what sounds good, looks nice or even feels bliss-full and it is very easy to be deceived by good words and right marketing if we are looking for relief. The only way I have found to start to consider the difference has been through being willing to see things for what they are – manipulation and all and to see how I have been part of the game. Being willing to see truth is the freedom that changes our movements.
I have had a term for as long as I can remember that I used when I knew I was not living true to myself. I called it the ‘best managed version’ of myself because that is what it is like – a managed or staged or pretend version or performance of who we are rather than just honestly being the real us.
This is great Andrew, the ‘best managed version’ of yourself – it really does show very picturesquely what we all often do when not living the Truth.
It is very tiring and exhausting to live life as a packaged version of ourselves.
I agree with you that the list of how life, and the humans in it, package ourselves up could be endless. This one has been a big one for me – “Looking fashionably cool and aloof when really we’re craving love and connection.” I have played that aloof card on many occasions, not a super successful strategy, but one I have deployed nonetheless.
There is no greater freedom for us to know in this plane of life than to openly live the power of who we are, the light of our Soul as the Sons of God that we are. Anything less is a reduction of our true potential as such denying our true responsibility, our part in living our purpose as a Brotherhood.
When we start to unpack ourselves we allow for the building of relationships without the unnecessary layers of stuff that only serve to keep us isolated from each other.
“Unpack yourself today! And bring a friend or two, or 7 billion!” It is time to unpack ourselves and reveal what really lies behind the lies and deceit we have willingly accepted as being the truth.
We get attracted to packaging but we attract packages.
It’s like there’s this notion that we need to dress up, cover and disguise to be seen and accepted – but what if we were all naturally stupendously amazing? – This, we have never ever given a full go, but definitely worth a try.
We easily put up appearances in order to deflect or hide, yet whatever disguise we use there is still a beautiful person on the inside just waiting to get out.
“What if we opened up, threw off all our packaging, our illusions, caps and covers, and allowed the world to see our true selves?” I’d say that we were all be very surprised with what greeted us, especially the fact that under the carefully crafted facades we are pretty much all the same. And what a relief it would be for each of us to no longer have to live the lies, and with the subsequent ripple effect having a huge impact on every single part of the world.
When we receive a parcel we wonder what is inside and remove the packaging. When we we remove the packaging from ourselves or another we find the love within.
Often we not only pack ourselves up in false layers but go around in packs with others who wear similar false packaging. Then the whole things gets very convoluted because we judge others who are also wearing false packaging whilst championing our own and in fact they both come from the same shop.