Happy Sunday,
August 16th everyone.
Here in Calgary it is about 10 to 6 and the mornings have gotten a lot darker.
I was up just after 5 and now I can just see the glow of the sun starting to rise in the east.
The small sliver of the moon is still out.
It's very very small.
No birds are even chirping yet.
The world here in Calgary is still quite quiet.
What I wanted to share with you this morning and this week is a reading at first from a book that I've been reading recommended by a wise friend that I admire and respect deeply.
It's been something that's really been helpful for me to read the last week or so.
I wanted to share a part of it with you and then a reading at the end.
The reading at the end will tie it all nicely together.
When I prepare for these during the week I simply ask my intuition and I ask the universe to provide a message to me of what would resonate.
The message that came through for me this week was a remembrance of a reading with the phrase,
Put the world back together.
I go through my readings with that phrase and that's the story I'll share at the end.
This beginning is from a book called Self-Observation by a person named Red Hawk.
I'll read it to you and then the story at the end hopefully will give you a perspective of how we tie this in.
The default position,
The first responder in the central nervous system of all mammals is the survival instinct.
That is ground zero in a mammal and it is in us as well.
Most humans live most of their lives in survival mode.
Any threat of pain,
Whether real or imagined,
And the first response is survival instinct.
It is the fastest thing in us,
Instinctive center.
It is hardwired into the central nervous system.
It is hot and it is powerful.
Its only function is to preserve the body from harm.
The survival instinct is located at the navel instinctive center and it houses the two primordial primitive primal emotions,
Rage and terror.
The first response is always and only selfish.
It's survival,
Fear based.
It cannot be otherwise.
Survival is always and only about me.
The survival instinct is housed in the instinctive center.
Therefore,
The first response to pain or the threat of pain,
Whether real or imagined,
Is always and only selfish,
Fear based and survival oriented.
You can predict it and you must now observe and verify such information for yourself by patient and careful observation without judgment.
Why judge it?
It is hardwired into the mammal instrument.
The mammal always reacts according to instinctive center.
It's not wrong.
It's the way it's meant to be.
And most human beings live their lives and conduct their relationships out of the survival instinct.
That is the why the that is why the world is the way it is and why we treat one another the way we do.
Survival instinct is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
If you hurt me,
I'll hurt you back.
Only more so if I can.
I'll just interject.
Right.
How is that working for us?
Survival instinct is unconscious and mechanical.
It has to be that way because when someone cuts me off in traffic,
I do not have time to think about it or emote about it.
That comes later.
I swerve to avoid them.
So when the gospels instruct me to turn the other cheek,
They're suggesting a very high level conscious and mature practice unavailable to most human beings.
My first response is always and only selfish.
The instrument does what it's created to do.
And when I do this over and over in relationship and the other does it to me as well.
The result is a string of failed relationships on a personal and global scale.
No relationship can survive when I am constantly reacting to every kind of hurt,
No matter how small,
With anger or fear.
Either striking back,
Hurting back or turning my back on the beloved,
Withdrawing my love,
Which is just another passive way of hurting.
Hurting back.
Right.
When we remove our love,
Withdraw our love,
It's just a passive way of hurting back someone.
Only the conscious being has any choice in the matter and we are far from conscious as we are.
To surrender the survival instinct,
To work the practice,
To turn the other cheek is a very high practice indeed.
Called in the shamanic traditions,
The warrior's maneuver.
This is a rational response to pain or the threat of pain.
This instinct is not rational.
But that's not what the blind spot does.
It makes rational response totally irrelevant to satisfying its need to be fed.
Rational response is the last thing it wants or needs.
To respond rationally would mean it's death.
But it has a very large vested interest in keeping my response mammal,
Immediate,
Selfish and irrational.
So the person of the work understands that the ordinary person has only two possible reactions to pain or the threat of pain.
And I understand that the survival instinct is always the first responder and the other as well.
I further understand that this first response can only and always be selfish.
It is about survival of the organism.
Period.
That is why it must be first.
It is how we survive the age of giant predators.
We are hard wired to have this first response to pain or the threat of pain.
We have no choice.
But the person of the work has a choice as to whether I react to the surge of the survival instinct.
I have a choice whether I act according to its urgent command,
Fight or flee.
I can choose to find myself,
Manage my body,
Observe without reacting,
Without judgment,
Without changing anything.
And keep the body relaxed when the adrenaline surge is sent down to the central nervous system.
Preparing the body to fight or flee.
The conscious being breathes in the navel center,
The instinctive center,
And relaxes the body.
Thus the energetic surge is transformed into a higher and finer energy which we may call love or wisdom or simply work energy.
The emotional center measures one thing only,
The amount of danger in any situation or moment or person.
Put it another way entirely,
It measures one thing only,
The amount of nurturing present in any situation or moment or person.
So again I'll interject,
Right?
So one way to look at it is we're assessing the amount of danger or we're assessing the amount of nurture.
If nurture is not there,
If we can't see it,
Then we see danger,
Right?
The greater the nurturing,
The less danger,
Therefore less tension in the body.
Thus the survival instinct is not triggered by the startled response.
Emotions are simply energy in the body whose function is to measure the environment for danger or love.
Nothing more,
Nothing less.
Energy in the body.
Now here's where it gets interesting.
There's only one energy and it is continually flowing in the body,
Otherwise the body would die.
And that energy is love.
The creator is impartial,
Objective love.
And this love energy is continually flowing into all living things,
Otherwise they would not be living.
And I'll interject once again,
What we see or perceive in a situation or person is based on our beliefs.
We either believe this situation to be loving or we believe this situation to be dangerous.
And therefore then we have a response.
It's those beliefs,
Those ingrained,
How we were raised beliefs.
So we will immediately default to these habitual moods.
And depression is one such mood,
For example.
It's the favorite of many people.
And why?
Because there's a payoff,
There's a trade-off.
Because it gets the attention of others who may then be induced to rescue me and take care of me,
Which is therefore survival.
There's always a trade-off.
Okay,
So finishing this part of the reading,
This is the last and then I'll get into leaving you with the story that will ideally help you within your day.
What I do with this energy depends upon two factors.
My received and constructed paradigm,
Right?
My mental,
Emotional construct,
That is what I was raised with,
That is my conditioning and programming,
Which becomes a default position.
Or,
Free attention of an awake and conscious person.
If I'm awake and conscious,
Then I am able to choose which direction I aim.
If I am an ordinary person driven by unconscious habit,
Then my default mechanism,
My habitual mood and choices,
Will choose for me.
The habit will speak for me in my name and using my voice,
The habit will act for me,
And I will be left to pay the consequences of such,
Sometimes life-changing,
Choices.
Sometimes paying for the rest of my life for a choice made by a mechanical,
Unconscious,
Habitual entity in the human biological instrument,
Which acts without reason or consciousness.
And only by habit.
It is energy and what I make of and how I use that energy is subject to my own inner state.
Either it's habitual,
Unconscious,
Mechanical,
Or else it's conscious from aim and intention.
And so you may ask,
Well,
If it's habitual,
I have no way to change it,
Right?
And it's understanding our beliefs,
Understanding where these come from.
Why do I believe that this person,
This situation is out to harm me?
And why do I believe this person,
This situation is not out to harm me?
Right?
And two people are going to look at the situations differently based on their beliefs.
And the trade-off for us in the long run is we either heal and continue to move into love,
Or we continue to hurt and question and blame.
So I'll leave this with you.
One Sunday afternoon,
A father was trying to read the newspaper,
But his little son kept pestering him.
The father grew tired of this and tearing a page from the newspaper,
One that bore a map of the world.
He cut it into several pieces and handed them to his son.
Now you have something to do.
I've given you a map of the world and I want to see if you can put it back together correctly.
He resumed his reading,
Knowing that the task would keep the child occupied for the rest of the day.
However,
A quarter of an hour later,
The boy returned with the map.
Has your mother been teaching you geography?
Asked his father in astonishment.
I don't even know what that is,
Replied the boy.
But there was a photo of a man on the other side of the page.
And so I put the man back together and found I put the world back together too.
Sometimes the answers to our challenges are simpler than they first appear.
If each one of us begins to choose to look at our beliefs,
To look at our habits,
To begin to choose the conscious way.
It is simpler to heal the world when we begin to heal ourselves.
And can the first responder,
Instead of being survival of me,
Be recognizing that I can breathe into my instinctive navel center?
And I can begin to see love instead of fear and survival.
It is now just after six.
The sun has risen a bit more,
The sliver of the moon is gone.
A bird just flew by.
And I can hear the first bird starting to chirp.
I wish you a beautiful Sunday.
Finding more love inside of yourself than fear.
