life
Health Expand Your Mind... Featured Revolution Social Change Solutions Top News

You’ve Felt It Your Entire Life…That Something Needs to Change

We have felt it our entire lives. Something is not quite right with our world and we are beginning to see it more clearly every day. Masses of us are beginning to notice what seems to be “out of place” with our world, and we are starting to voice it; starting to take action in showing others, in being the change that can shift us out of this sleep state.

We know something doesn’t feel quite right; something is out of place. Is it our human nature that led us to be the way we are? Is this truly the best that we have come up with or built to this point? Do we even have a true human nature?

“We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don’t do so… I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner!” – Don Juan, Mexican Yaqui Indian Shaman

The above quote is referring to a part of our brain that is responsible for what we believe is our human nature: the R-Complex, as the medical field deems it, or the Reptilian Brain. This aspect of our brain lies in the left hemisphere and is responsible for reactions like fight or flight. In some ways we can see how this part of our brain can be useful; however, when we look around at our world, it becomes clear we have let this aspect of our brains rule our lives.

The truth is, when we look at the idea of human nature, we are often led to believe that things like greed, power, control, and survival are truly part of our nature and who we are. Yet when we look at the science of the mind, we see that these aspects are actually learned behaviors based on our conditioning. A learned behavior is something that does not already exist within us at birth but instead is something we learn as we go. Various life experiences shape these behaviors as we go through life. We take on what our parents teach, what education teaches, and what society teaches, and so we develop a series of learned behaviors. Truthfully, things like greed, competition, power, and control are all learned behaviors, that when paired with the reptilian brain, become a serious means for ruling our individual lives and in turn, the whole world.

If we look at other cultures who live without things like greed, power, competition, control, etc., we can suggest that maybe they just haven’t learned these behaviours. Or it can be true that maybe the behavior they learned simply doesn’t include these traits. At the end of the day, we need to feel and think about it for ourselves. The key piece of observation here, which is often thrown aside by mainstream minds as “airy fairy” or “junk science” is this: Does the way we are living now in our world FEEL peaceful? FEEL natural? By feelings we aren’t talking emotions, but rather that intuitive sense within us that goes beyond the mind and shows us something larger than our mental perceptions. This FEELING is so often tossed aside and beat up as being unmeasurable and therefore considered to be a  “quack” way of observing our everyday challenges. But look at where our mainstream ways have gotten us. We kill each other every day, we let mass portions of our population starve, we destroy our land and animal kingdom, and we slave away 40 hours a week our whole lives simply to keep the system running. Does this feel good? Is it possible that maybe it’s time we open up our minds to new ways?

I like to include action steps when talking about how our world functions because I feel that a lot of times we talk about things but never go after any solutions. So if there is one action step that I feel is most important, it’s observing ourselves. Whenever you react to something in your everyday life and it brings up things like fear, anger, judgment, etc., ask yourself if these things are natural within you. Are they something that will always be there? Or did you just learn to be this way? Is it possible that these are simply triggers we hold onto so strongly that we think they are naturally within us? Maybe we can set aside these triggers and open ourselves up to something beyond simply reacting all the time.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *