Awareness

Our base nature is what we call "fight or flight." I think that this is our base nature physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Fight or flight comes from a place in our brain we call the fear center of our brain. It is that part of us that protects us from things that can hurt us, or from things that have hurt us. For instance, if you are speeding down the highway at 65 miles an hour and the traffic in front of you comes to a sudden halt and you slam on your brakes and come within inches of the car in front of you - you feel shaky, anxious, nervous and it may take you a little bit to feel "back to normal." This is the biological response of flight or fight. If you have ever had the experience of going to eat dinner somewhere and then getting sick right after that and a month later someone ask you to go back and eat there again - what do you say? "NO" And why, because for a brief moment you remember getting sick, you smell the food, and you do not want to go back there. This is your brain reminding you that you got hurt there and do not do that again!

This is how most of us go about our lives, living out of this base nature, this gut level response, reacting to the things around us without much thought. It is our fallen nature. Look at the story of Adam and Eve. What was their first response after they fell?

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Genesis 3:8-12

They reacted with "fight," they argued about whose fault it was, and they also reacted out of "flight," they hid from God.

Why I am saying all this and taking the time to explain it? I believe that our lives, living the way of Jesus, should be lived in overcoming this base nature. We need to be more aware of the world around us and learn how to slow down these reactions and learn how to be more loving, kind, and compassionate with all we encounter. This is hard to do if we are reacting out of fight or flight. We are not aware of the reality of our lives if we live out of this base nature. We are blind to the reality of God, the reality of how we are taken care of by the Creator, and we are blind to how to make decisions that are good for us and will lead to a life of peace.

Spend some time each day in silence to notice your thoughts, how much of them are spent in fear and worry and anxiety about what may happen and what we need to hide from or fight about. This is what a quiet time should be: yes reading the scriptures, prayer - but also some time of meditation to observe your thoughts and learn how to take them captive, thinking like God. When we can overcome this fallen, base nature, our lives can become a place where anything we dream or think of is possible. We are connected to God then, we are free from fear and anxiety and then "with God all things are possible."

Namaste'