Biological evolution…to love?

[2 minute read]

Who/what are we? Where did we come from, and how? What is our ancestry and origin? And what is our trajectory – our “why”? How have we survived as fit? What are our defenses? On what strengths are we built?

Remember learning in biology class about endoskeletons (like ours) and exoskeletons (like insects, lobsters, snails)? Our vulnerable tender flesh lies exposed, so we survive by moving away from environmental threats, and toward nourishment, minimizing competition.

Our psyche, mind, hearts, and spirits reflect this evolutionary pattern, don’t they?

Evolution has not fashioned us as sedentary animals with a hard outer shell like oysters (though our pearl, too, lies within). We have evolved by survival as highly mobile (animated) animals.

Our structural form and support comes from the inside, and is moved by contractions that pull on our support system from outside it.

Our firm foundation and strength are inside of us. Sages throughout ages have called it the soul.

Unlike the protective outer shell of cockroaches, our protection and strength come from the inside.

Sedentary clams rely on currents of the ocean to nourish them. Currents outside them dictate their fate. Our origins lie in ancestors that evolved out of the ocean, taking a piece of the ocean in their insides. That ocean moves around inside of us, and the current is supplied by the beating of our heart. That is how we are energized and nourished. That is our fate.

When the heart stops beating, our embodyment is dead. The ocean currents inside of us are no longer animated (“anima” is Latin for “soul”).

When alive, and our ocean container is pierced, we bleed because of our beating hearts, and others see the piece of our inner ocean pour out from inside us, exposing our vulnerable and tender basis for being. And so it is when we authentically love.

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Neil D. 2021-12-10

Related: We harden our shells… Like turtles, not cockroaches

We harden our shells… Like turtles, not cockroaches

Your fingernails are not alive, don’t hurt when you cut them, but protect the living tissue of your fingertips, which is where contact with a nail is sensed.

The shell of a turtle is alive and can feel. Turtles cannot live without their shells; it is part of their skeleton and their skin.

The shells of most smaller animals are not alive. As insects grow larger, they must molt, replacing their old shells for a larger one, or they suffocate and die. A snakeskin is also shed by a growing serpent.

This is biological development, anatomical growth.

What about your psyche, mind, heart, and spirit?

Those too require shells as you grow. To advance from one phase and grow into the next, you need protection. Yet, these are inseparably continuous developments, not dramatic events – except traumas.

If you leave a stage too early, and expose your soft vulnerability before it is ready… you’ll dry up, or predators will traumatize you… uh-oh. But too much protection, too thick a shell that you cannot escape, and you suffocate and die if you don’t shed or molt? Not really…

We do not molt anatomically like insects and crabs, nor shed as dramatically as snakes.

Our emotional shells are like a turtle – alive.

So they hurt.

Just as we would die biologically without our skin and skeleton, a turtle dies without its shell. Whether wounded and scarred – or not – it must carry its living protection on its back, and all around its Self.
Or, no more living turtle.

Neil D. 2021-12-08

Thanksgiving Magicians

If you have deeply cherished memories around holidays, you may cherish the season… *too* much – filling it with a wonderfully complex soul-mix of expectations and hard work to pull it all together, reinforcing the value placed on those memories year after year.

We “make holidays happen.” There’s nothing particularly enchanting about the depths of winter per se. We *make* it so.

The eyes of our heart also see most of society doing the same, and the bustle culminates in the warmth of gathered loved ones. It’s all very magical – a blend of reality and fantasy that can’t be detangled, and so we are almost entirely unconcerned with detangling it.

It’s part illusion, but illusion that promotes and highlights very, very real connection between souls – both amidst the bustle of strangers on city sidewalks adorned with silver bells, as well as feasting with loved ones within four walls.

“It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” As years roll by, we feel the absence of the departed who have been woven into our deep-heart memories of the season. Some have departed this realm, or some have departed to separate lives within this realm and now have their own circles that make it impossible to gather as one circle again. Or perhaps they choose actively against the old order, which hurts just as much, if not more.

Perhaps you’ve experienced some holiday days alone. The absence of connection amidst the universal spirit of goodwill can be excruciating. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and never before had you realized how highly your own spirit soared by connecting so fondly to other soaring revelers.

Perhaps in solitude somewhat unwillingly, you had a gathering inside yourself. Your full Self gathers your components. The part of you which craves the belonging and love from others had to gather with the part of you which pours out love and welcome on others. At this feast inside of you can gather the guest which senses its separateness in the world, across the table from the guest within you who senses that your being is part of a larger universe of being.

That thanksgiving meal can be quite a delicious blend of flavors. And that complex blend involves no delusional magic or fantasy. It is the *magic* which is you, in your fullness.

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Neil D. 2021-11-26

“Healing” and “Recovery”

“Re-cover.” I don’t like the word, and how it impels us to chase it – more running, which is the root of our pain to begin with.

When we seek to recover from something, what does it mean? A wound was exposed, and we want to cover it again (re-)? To re-store our identity, or sense of self? Be more self-ish? Yeah, I do think that’s what people seek in recovery. To feel again as they once felt before. The illusion of strength once held. To make the masks of personas as impenetrable as before. To acquire more masks that falsely convey strength to onlookers, even when looking upon our own selves. To return to fooling ourselves and others. To return to being better actors (hypocrites). To feel better via false feelings. To substitute positive feelings for the negative ones.

I don’t like the word and notion of recovery. Or healing. Especially when they mean those things.

In the upper room where Doubting Thomas encountered the resurrected Christ, Yeshua invited Thomas to probe his wounds with his fingers. His wounds were not absent in his risen body. He did not run or escape from them. No recovery or healing erased them when he was saved from hell and death, born again, a new creation. They are part of him for eternity. He carries them now and forever. So, now, what is it you want to cover?

To heal is not to fix our wounds. It is instead to grow large enough in awareness (consciousness) to carry those wounds in their rightful embodiment. Now, and for eternity. We already are enough to do that. And the evidence is plain: Our wounds have not killed us. We didn’t need to move on, move forward, leave that baggage behind. We may wish to, but we haven’t. And won’t. Any more than the risen Jesus did.

When Yeshua healed others, he did so by awakening them to their enoughness already. You are already enough to carry your wounds. The evidence is inarguable. Perhaps you just want it to be easier. Like a pill to fix us.

Heal the disconnection from our pain, so our pain no longer feels separated, abandoned, lonely, orphaned. When we carry it with us like a tender baby, it knows we love it.


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Neil D. 2021-11-24

Do you have affection for the words “healing” and “recovery”? Do they mean something very different to you? Share a Comment with us, below, please…