Jesus in answer to your question...my current mindset is one I have had since I can remember. I was subjected to a lot of bullshit at a young age that forced me to internalize myself and spent countless hours on reflection. I came to the early realisation that what is within the mind is closer to reality than what is outside it.
I did not grow up feeling the world outside my head was a safe place so I did not buy into the beliefs that most others did. I found that within the mind there is total freedom, no rules and restrictions, and no reason to shun thoughts that would comfort me. I grew to depend upon myself and my silences to help me cope with the shit outside my mind. By the time I had grown and started to grow outside my mind I was firmly enmeshed in a reality not like the one poeple are forced to conform to.I had a certain degree of distance from it.
I explored my mind to the extent that I was one with it and did not fear it. The various levels of consciousness, and what I found there, were my teachers and my companions. I had friends outside my head, hehe dont get me wrong there. I am just saying that I have always listened to and respected the wisdom that came from altered perception. I filed my info away differently and accessed it differently. I became aware of abilities and gifts beyond physical constraints and I cherished them. I retreated there when necessary and grew to have a distaste for the comformity that forces people to turn their backs on their true selves. I did not want to spend my life chasing someone elses dreams and fulfilling someone elses goals. I was cynical. I was also in some way naive because 'resistance is futile' and we must all conform or be forced into tighter restraints and supervision.
I had to learn how to play the game without revealing what I held inside.
I became manipulative and calculating, and in this retained a seperation from owning the commonly held perceptions and misconceptions that make the machine run.
I became the dirt within the machine. I was in it , I was part of it, but I was still seperate from it.
I reached a point of decision. Which side of this mayhem would I call my home.
I could have easily fell into a life that we call depraved yet I chose the opposite and grew into that role. But I never left behind the perceptions that could have fed me in grwoing the opposite direction. I kept it all and formed a relationship of dominance over it. I am the master of my own internal rages and suffering and I decide how tightly to chain them up.
I obsorbed as much information about it as I could in order to better understand it and my place in it. And , I learned how to look like , and act like , the rest of the gears that turned.
I hate this system , I have a burning desire to see it fall but at the same time my level of connection to it forces me to feel my part in it and to protect this part like my own child because without it we have no structure to replece it. I want and need this structure for my children to live under until they know of a better way. I have an investment in its survival and so I protect it despite my despising it. I need it.
But within my mind the gears of a different machine grind away night and day.
I know who I am and I feel free in this knowledge.
I could go on and on but perhaps the rest is best for more private communications.

Peace.