zoofence.com

I too thank you for inviting me. I don’t remember leaving my email address here, but I am glad I did. It has been a long time, and it is nice to be back.

Thinking about the posts about Iraq and the earthquake deaths, I suppose we need to remind ourselves that at some level, human beings are members of the animal kingdom, and as such, they are motivated by survival. At that level, it is normal and natural that we should fight to keep ourselves, our family, our tribe, and our species, alive. When we feel threatened, we respond instinctively.

We are also spiritual beings, of course, and at that level, our perspective is different. Our identity is no longer limited to the “human body” but to all of life. I wonder if there is a survival instinct even at that level? Is there such a thing as the Divine Survival Instinct which motivates God? I don’t know, but they say “as above, so below”, so maybe there is.

Good question. How about this:

If God is all there is, then is not our very own survival instinct Divine?

In the beginning, when we perceive ourselves as separate from one another and from God (“I am me on earth, God is He in heaven”), we naturally feel vulnerable. Why not? In that paradigm, we are vulnerable … to disease, disaster, death. And so there is the survival instinct. But if God is all there is, then the body and its life (however defined) are Divine, and as long as we perceive them as real (even as ourselves) then for us not to cherish them and protect them seems to me inappropriate, even maybe blasphemy. Thus, at that level, the survival instinct, properly expressed, is a proper expression of devotion.

As we evolve along the spiritual path, we begin to see ourselves differently, more widely, more broadly, less tensely, less insistently. And, our lives being ourselves seen outwardly, as we change on the inner, the outer we experience and encounter changes as well. Also, our survival instinct changes because what we consider to be vulnerable changes. But it is still very much a part of what each of us considers to be “me”. However “spiritual” we may consider ourselves to be as seekers, the natural instinct to survive remains alive and powerful until we transcend (or whatever is the correct word) the idea of “me” and “mine” altogether. And, again, it is perfectly okay, and perfectly Divine (if not always perfectly joyful) that it should be so.

Eventually, we know ourselves to be all there is. The sense of a separate “me” is completely erased, or rather realized never to have been at all. There, the concept of vulnerability is known to be, and to have always been, an illusion. Now, the survival instinct – lacking a function, nothing threatening anything, nothing to defend – dissolves.

So, the Divine creates (manifests as) a function (survival instinct) so long as the illusion of vulnerability (itself equally Divine, of course) persists. When the latter has run its course, the former expires.

I cannot help but repeat myself: God is very good, very clever.