Why Do We Feel Wrong?

Why do we feel wrong?
Social pressure to conform, to look right:
“Do I have to be like them?”

We can feel wrong because of social pressure when we find we’re in conflict between personal direct experience, and a desire to belong. Our having to conform doesn’t align with the pure perception of just seeing.

Society encourages conformity in order to maintain ‘harmony’, but this comes at a personal cost as we see the hypocrisy and misery that this conformity creates. We publicly go along with a group to avoid conflict, while privately disagreeing with the form that group takes.

Constant pressure to fit in stifles and limits individual experience, making us feel like puppets. Research – such as the Asch experiment* – shows how most people will deny their own senses or morals just to avoid standing out. This can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and even burnout, as we’ve had enough.

Our survival no longer depends on group belonging, as we recognise that this holding-on instinct is overriding our natural, original being.

This is the start of our path,
and it’s what the Yanas (levels) are all about.

Realisation isn’t a group event. It’s about breaking out of a collective way of thinking, when we stop being part of the crowd, and become the authentic energy which was denied us. We have to expand or explode. 🙂

Collective thinking provides a script. It’s comfortable because it removes the burden of personal responsibility, but breaking out into true insight requires intellectual isolation. It’s a solo mission.

Realisation drops that script, which can feel like losing our protection. Groups naturally filter information to support their own narrative, and realisation happens the moment when we look past that filter and see something the collective isn’t allowed to acknowledge.

In a group, authority is external: the leader, the trend, the norm. Realisation shifts that authority inward. We begin to trust our own observations more than the consensus, which is the ultimate act of rebellion. 

Our path is a lonely one, because it requires leaving the well-trodden way of the masses to actually realise the cause of suffering and confusion; conformity to a projected self.

*The Asch Conformity Experiment (1951) demonstrated that people would give an obviously wrong answer just to fit in with a group of fake participants.