Beware of Being Assimilated by Your Environment

Xuefeng

August 13, 2024

The environment’s influence on a person is incredibly powerful, and if one is not vigilant, it can destroy their ideals and prospects.

Cultural, living, geographical, and climatic environments all subtly shape a person's physiology, psychology, spirit, and soul.

When someone transitions from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one, they often experience discomfort at first, but over time, they gradually adapt. This means that the new environment has begun to assimilate their body, mind, spirit, and soul.

In The Shawshank Redemption, there is a character who, after being imprisoned for over twenty years, becomes so accustomed to and even fond of the prison environment that he’s completely assimilated by it. After his release, he is unable to adjust to life outside and tragically takes his own life.

There was also a woman who was kidnapped and kept in a basement, where she endured prolonged sexual abuse. Over time, she adapted to the abuse and even developed feelings for her captor, going so far as to defend him in court.

Large environments have this power, but so do smaller ones. Today, people talk about "circles," and each circle is its own micro-environment. Regularly interacting with certain people can alter your values and worldview. Even within a social media circle, if you linger too long, you may be subtly assimilated by the consciousness of that group. Most people think they are completely right, but from an outside perspective, they may appear deeply misguided, tragically unaware of their own errors.

Spend time with businesspeople, and your thoughts will revolve around how to make a profit. Spend time with philosophers, and your mind will be full of debates. Spend time with politicians, and you’ll be consumed with thoughts of power and control. Spend time with thieves, and your thoughts will focus on techniques for theft. The people you associate with are a reflection of yourself.

People deeply influenced by religious teachings often have rigid ways of thinking. It's hard for them to accept new ideas or step outside the boundaries of religious doctrine. Similarly, people in society who have long been accustomed to being slaves often lose the consciousness of being their own masters, which is both pitiful and lamentable.

Being unaware of one’s fixed mindset is not just a condition of the masses; it applies to acknowledged great figures and elites as well. In thousands of years of human history, there are very few individuals who have managed to remain unaffected or unconstrained by their environment.

If we wish to prevent our consciousness from being shaped and directed by our surroundings, the best way is to regularly change our living, cultural, geographical, and climatic environments. Stepping out of one's circle and observing from the outside makes it easier to clearly see successes, failures, rights, and wrongs—like looking at the Earth from the Moon, or viewing China, the U.S., and Russia from a global perspective. This way, it becomes much harder for the environment to control our consciousness.

For those with great ideals and ultimate goals, understanding the impact of the environment is crucial. No matter where you live, as long as the light of your ideals remains lit and your consciousness stays focused on your goals, you will not be swayed or controlled by your environment. This is the essence of "Take things as they are" in the four principles of Lifechanyuan Whether you're in the desert, the Gobi, a forest, or pastoral land, at the equator, the poles, in the countryside, or in a city, as long as your inner light is shining and your goals are clear, every place can be a stage for achieving your dreams and realizing your ideals.

The key issue is that the environment’s assimilation and influence on a person are subtle and imperceptible, making them difficult to detect. Even those with firm beliefs can be unconsciously led by their surroundings unless they change their environment every three years—not only their geographical and climatic environment, but also their living conditions and the people they interact with. Unfortunately, accomplishing this is as difficult as climbing to the heavens.

This is one of the arrays in the Thirty-six Eight-diagram Arrays.