Evolutionary Conflict

There may be no reality more camouflaged than the humble aspiration to know oneself. Our attempts to understand "the self", relative to the world, thrust us into an internal chaos that so exemplifies the experience of "being human." 

The brain presents obstacle after perceptional obstacle to the understanding of "the self". What may be most compelling is how this convoluted thought process is a problem of our evolved consciousness trying to outmaneuver our primitive minds.

Yes, the growing pains of human evolution. 

What follows will be an examination of our perceptional distortions when viewing "the self" so we can begin to comprehend what it means to be in evolutionary conflict... 

You, like most, ask "Who am I?" and believe you are receiving some semblance of truth in response. Never would you have imagined this simple inquiry leading you down primitive neural networks entirely misaligned for the job. 

The brain's primary function in regard to appraising your "self" is to survey your current circumstances for evidence of formative moments of "rejection". That followed by forceful persuasion to only behave in the ways that led to validation at earlier life stages. 

A "pack mentality" so to speak. Not the existential quest you believed you were on, is it? What furthers the paradox is even the primitive agenda is not accomplished. As we survey for familiar evidence of past wounding, we are dismissing MOUNTAINS and MOUNTAINS of evidence to the contrary. 

If our brains would just let us come up for air, we'd realize those old concerns are no longer relevant to our experience, if they ever were. 

We as humans have become indescribable. Our value is immeasurable. Our existence is ineffable. Yet we are operating on faulty platforms that orient us around the basic premise of being wounded beings. 

Fortunately, the brain has an innate willingness to evolve into ever grander perceptional paradigms that make sense of its experience. To use this mechanism to evolve our self-perceptions requires immediate suspicion when we collapse into wounded thinking. We then must branch into our newfound logic any way we can so new neural pathways are formed. 

Suspicion is the key. When you find that glimmer of suspicion, you are merging one thought paradigm with another. Imagine it as a form of distortion infiltration. 

Once these branches of thought unite, your collapses into shame and wounding have an exit. Each experience becoming more and more porous with the practice.

This is the practice of merging the evolved self and the animal mind. It is the process of softening the separation between the two. It is interrupting our ability to submit to one logic and then swap for another. A practice that continues because these regions of the brain have yet to come into harmony.  

This practice is a powerful step in approaching the mind as a frontier we must cultivate. It is a shift into participating in the mind's process versus surrendering to its content. In other words, it is human consciousness willfully participating in the brain's rewiring.

"The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of the planet, it can be a conscious choice. Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself." 

-Eckhart Tolle

Ever so consciously,

Samsara