Ever wonder what makes a Qaddafi? Here’s a thought: It is exactly the same component in you and me that thinks I am better than person A and not as good as person B. It is the deeply entrenched program and social training to be better than – and one up on – the next person, rather than simply to excel for its own sweet sake.

Ever diss someone, or judge someone harshly? Ever diminish someone or have someone seek to diminish you? Ever get seriously on your own case with “not good enough” about this or that? Underlying that behavior is the judgmental and separation program the culture has immersed you in since you were born.

This is a way of looking at the world that is NOT universal – there are cultures that do not train their children to think this way. It is not “innate human nature.” It is simply endemic in hierarchal societies – and unfortunately most of the earth’s human population lives in such societies.

As I explain in detail in the Free Download, the core of this mind trainingis a sense of being separate from others – just like Mr. Qaddafi. What does this have to do with earthquakes and hurricanes? Well, when you aren’t mentally and emotionally trained from birth in how to experience yourself as connected to the world and are instead trained in feeling separate from and either better or worse than others, you are automatically denied the experience of a startlingly different and healthier sense of reality.

This happens to include how you would view and relate to the natural world.

We are not better or less than nature; we are in symbiotic connection with it. And when you cannot “live” that truth, then what takes hold is the false human belief that nature does not react to the human species in a major way. Otherwise that false belief would be a thought your mind would never entertain.

In this other reality, there would be no Rick Perry’s or Sarah Palin’s denial of the human contribution to global warming (which has accelerated hurricanes) or to earthquakes as we drain oil resources from the substrata, blow up the substrata by “fracking” for natural gas, dig deep wounds into the seabed, eliminate entire mountain ranges for mining purposes, and so forth. Such denial would literally be unthinkable.

Without judgmental and separation conditioning by the society, there would also be no wars, only collective thinking on how best to raise the quality of life for humanity without harming other species or each other. What a paradise, you say? You bet…except that the gap to get there is immense and is the same that causes you to think person A is better or worse than person B – and causes Quaddifi to be Qaddafi , who is just a more extreme expression and example of that core separation mind training.

How did that gap come about? The short version is that we innately very wise and sensitive human beings get diverted from our true selves by the nature of what we experience from childhood on. Few of us experience unconditional love, unconditional and open communications, and unfettered education in and permission for our feelings. Few of us are nurtured in a way that we retain the sense of connection with which we came in – nurtured in a manner that allows us to feel 100% safe, fully seen and appreciated, and free to express ourselves, including our emotions.

Instead, we deal with the shock of not getting this nurturing experience by developing the coping mechanisms I detailed in my earlier blogs and by developing a chattering, judgmental mind (vs. evaluation thinking) infused in us by the society. We also develop strong negative emotions that look for outlets, such as venting on someone we judge against.

All this separates us from our real selves – and so we try to make up a “self.”Psychologists call this the creation of the “Idealized Self” – a picture of ourselves that we think will work in the world and which we form up roughly from the age of 3 up to teenage years.

The deep and wrenching problem is that this false self – this “double” as they call it in the East – is trained in competition between humans to be one up or one down – it is not trained in experiencing and creating connection. It is a purely reactive self-image that we want the world to salute – and beware if the world doesn’t. To protect itself, most of us are busy jumping on other people’s cases and on our own and vice versa.

Just think of how you behave in relationship when you think you’ve been slighted. That’s a measure of how vulnerable you are when your self-image is challenged.

This one-up, one-down stuff runs a huge amount of human affairs. It accounts for much of our anxiety and all of our repression and societal rip-offs. The gangs on Wall St. who rigged the political and financial system at the expense of hundreds of millions of people around the world, love the top dog role all that money and power brings. They are completely separate from the consequences of their behavior – basically disconnected in their mental realities.

The bigger truth is that none of us get off lightly with the up-manship mentality. We clique up in HS with “in” and “out” groups. We huddle up ethnically and racially. We clique up politically and decide our team is better. We clique up over sports and as nation states – and God forbid a politician should suggest that the U.S. is not top dog, the absolute bestest and mostest and most innocent and most extraordinary do-gooding thing ever. As top dog we can justify bombing to death 2 or 3 million peasants in South Asia who don’t want us in their country, or justify destroying Iraq.

That disconnected mindset has no bounds. The Nazis said the Germans were better than the Jews and, accordingly, gave themselves the right to mass murder Jews. Many Jews and most Israelis say the Jews are better than the Palestinians and therefore the Jews have the right to steal Palestinian land by force of arms and brutally suppress any resistance.

You get it. Just think of the groups or people you put over others – and then recognize that the very process of your doing so is and defines separation thinking. Out of that destructive way of framing the world, you get every form of poverty and oppression as the “winners” constitute themselves as separate from those below on the class and cash scale and manipulate the system to their advantage.

Or maybe you just strive to be cooler than everyone else!

This way of thinking has a profound effect on individual lives. It is at the root of disrupted lives, anger, depression, and dysfunctional behavior of every stripe. It creates social injustice. And it is the root of the sense that your own life might not be working as well as you’d like.

Fact is it can’t work as well as you’d like unless you retrain yourself to live and express from your authentic self and not from your programmed, separated, Idealized Self.

It is the work of Life Coaches like myself to train people to get their false selves (and their childhood training in creating disconnection) out of the way so they can experience the fullness and joy and true success of a connected life. That leaves the only major question for any individual.

When do I start?