Nurture is essentially the instinct to procreate, provide for, protect and pass on any knowledge, customs, morals, ethics and beliefs to the next generation. By nurture one is ‘compelled’ to blindly defend one’s ‘own’ – regardless of the sensibleness and appropriateness of the action. Nurture causes us to care for, comfort and protect those we consider our ‘own’ and leads to dependency, jealousy, empathy, duty, sacrifice for others and needless heroism. Nurture also causes us to feel sorrow for ourselves and others similarly afflicted persons, to desperately cling to others for comfort and solace. Women are programmed to reproduce the species and men are programmed to provide for, and protect, the offspring – a blind and unremitting instinctual drive. When nurture fails within the species, as it inevitably does, we turn to animals, pets, trees, ‘endangered’ species, ‘mother’ earth and other non-reciprocating, safe objects. For the spiritual seeker, the journey ‘in’ is a journey to find one’s instinctual self – one’s roots, one’s original face, the Source, etc. If, on this inner journey, one ignores or denies the passions of aggression and fear and concentrates one’s attention on the passions of nurture and desire, one can shift one’s identity from the psychological thinking neo cortex – the ‘ego’ to use their term – and ‘become’, or associate with, or identify with, the good feelings of nurture and desire. This is a seductive and self-gratifying journey, for one is actively promoting the flow of chemicals that give rise to the good, pleasant, warm, light-headed, heart-full and ultimately ecstatic feelings. These flow of chemicals overwhelm the neo-cortex to such an extent that they become one’s primary experience, and the input of the physical world as perceived by the senses and the clear-thinking ability of the cognitive modern brain are both subjugated – or ‘transcended’ to use their term. One then ‘feels’ one has found one’s original ‘self’, which one has of course, though t’is all but a fantasy of one’s imagination. Thankfully there is a third alternative, which is the total elimination of one’s ‘self’ in total – the whole of the amygdala’s instinctual programming that gives rise to the animal passions. Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless Peter’s & Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. |
