Understanding Survival As An Act Of Love

Our body and mind have a range of physiological needs, ranging from purely physical needs to more subtle relational needs (they are social animals), and they also have the need for contextual orientation (meaning).

The defensive systems alert the body-mind physiologically from danger (toxicity) on the basis of a primitive alarm system called fight, flight, freeze, tend and befriend system that is highly sensitive to environmental stimuli and has a built-in bias towards recognising these stimuli with a high amount of caution.

The high-order faculties of the mind and body utilise rationality and imagination to orientate the mind and body into healthy, nourishing situations through learning appropriate skills to navigate the world, recovering from physiological injury, including psychological trauma, and adapting to potentially disabling characteristics of the mind and body.

These processes, though designed to protect the physical entity of the mind and body, become conditioned on the basis of us being a psychological entity where we have lived in ignorance of our true nature of being indestructibly whole as we are.

This is like pouring fuel on the fire.

Instead of calming the alarm, we just make it worse.

This means that the mind and body's primitive physiological alarm system will be triggered based on a conditioning that recognises the environment as a separate entity and, therefore, fundamentally a potential threat, even when, for the most part, it is not physical, but it is assumed to be psychological because of this conditioning.

Thus, many potential nourishing situations for the mind and body are blocked due to associations the mind and body have on the basis of believing to be a separate entity.

An example of this would be public speaking.

Putting our heads above the parapet by speaking in public, as it were, is always a potentially dangerous endeavour, which is why most minds and bodies have a deeply conditioned fear response in the face of it.

For the most part, we see that by speaking out, even on apparently non-contentious topics, we face the possibility of facing anger and abuse and worse from other minds and bodies.

However this also hampers our ability to enjoy our life, for authentic social expression is at the heart of so many important aspects of our lives.

There will always be a need to be cautious on physical grounds about situations, however if our protective system is conditioned on the basis of the belief to be a separate psychological entity, we will draw back from our natural expression.

As we recognise our nature as being impersonal awareness instead of personal mind and body, this unnecessary layer of conditioning is naturally dissolved over time from our protective systems. Hence, they cease to trigger our mind and body into anxiety unnecessarily.

Another more extreme component of this alarm condition is psychological trauma.

Here a particular incident was so threatening that the memory of its modalities was stored in the primitive alarm system so that it become hypersensitised to recognising these patterns.

This is in effect, and injury and its effects are debilitating.

Such trauma memories are deeply embedded into the physiological make-up of the mind and body.

We may need specialist help to fully reframe and heal from the effects of these, and fortunately, this is now available.

When it comes to the higher order faculties of the mind and body to utilise rationality and imagination to orientate the mind and body into healthy, nourishing situations through learning appropriate skills to navigate the world and recovering from physiological injury, including psychological trauma, and adapting to potentially disabling characteristics of the mind and body, here too the conditioned belief to be a separate will have a significant impact.

Clearly, if our primitive alarm system is being triggered because of this belief being activated, our higher-order faculties will be swamped with unpleasant emotions, and their own processing will become absorbed by these rather than constructively focussing on daily living.

This will only damage our ability to learn skills, organise recovery from physiological injury and adapt to potentially disabling characteristics of the mind and body resulting in a mal-nourishment of the mind and body in some way or other.

Again, as we recognise our nature as being impersonal awareness instead of personal mind and body, and the conditioning of our alarm system is reprogrammed, higher-order faculties of thinking and imagination are freed to naturally turn outwards again to the constructive organisation of physical survival and beyond to enthusiastic, creative expression.

On the surface, this may make a non-duality sound like a sophisticated form of psychotherapy.

However, the recognition of our true nature reframes all the above processes in a much more profound context.

The survival mechanism of the human mind and body is seen as part of the experience of revealing our true nature of love and not just in prosaic physiological terms.

The very mechanisms by which they are encoded reflect our innate qualities of love, understanding and beauty. These survival systems and how they operate are all opportunities for us to express these qualities.

As the hermetic principle states, “As above, so below”.

As we reframe our understanding of human survival in the light of understanding, we are universal love incarnate this deeper meaning becomes clear.

Love

Freyja