All living creatures with fully functioning nervous systems sense danger and safety in exactly the same way physiologically, but we interpret them differently. Human beings have developed a complex system to respond to danger and safety and these systems vary from person-to-person depending upon their experiences growing up. Our social conditioning and cultural heritage build upon our instinct to survive by defining what’s safe and what’s dangerous. But, unlike animals who define danger and safety in terms of their physical survival with little emotional complexity, human beings over complicate everything, burying the underlying instinct to survive so deeply that most of us would not link our emotions to this fundamental drive; and yet, that is their genesis.
Agency is knowing that the differentiations constructed by our conditioning are arbitrary; that I cannot exist without you; and that we cannot exist without one another. And, as we explore our internal voices, messaging, emotions, and the mind during meditation, we sit with our fundamental fluid vulnerability directly experiencing our connection to the earth and to community as we are, not as we have been defined. We become human beings whose need for protection evaporates through this experience and we get to spend the rest of our time on Earth doing what we are supposed to be doing – helping the world to improve for the wellbeing of all.
