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Day 74: Transcending the Fight-or-Flight Brain

Posted on October 16, 2018

Today Chris doesn’t want to write his blog post.  But he’s willing to give “Me” a go at it instead, his “Higher Self,” which is really just the voice he allows to come through when he sort of turns his brain off and just lets the words flow.

There is a component of inspiration to this, or what you might call channeling.  It really is coming from a different place than the usual brain cogitations that so often lead many people awry.  Brains are useful things because they help you get along in this time and space reality, yet like any tool, they serve a purpose, yet can be misused, or over-used for the wrong purpose.

The purpose of the brain is to help you survive the Game of Life (no, not the board game!).  Survival is assured, cosmically speaking, yet the Game of Life, when viewed as a game of survival, could be compared to a sort of brawl or fight, with the characteristic dangers.  In this comparison, your brain is the first defense in the brawl.  Its many programs and components of machinery are wired to help you survive this “fight.” The so-called fight or flight instinct is what this wiring is about.

There is nothing wrong with surviving the Game of Life, yet it can become a problem when you constantly feel you are in stress or survival mode.  When that happens, when it always feels as if you are running from a bear or a lion, or brawling in a fight, the stress can wear you down.  The fight mode, or the running mode, both are a mode of stress.  Unhappiness ensues when you are constantly in this mode.  You aren’t built for constant stress mode.

Instead, you are built for rest periods.  Lots of rest periods!  And occasional periods of stress and activity.  But not stress all the time!

If you feel like your life is stressful all the time, it is because you are constantly in this mode of “fight or flight.” You are constantly running from or battling lions.  This will wear on anyone!  It doesn’t have to be your reality.  How do you change it?  What do you do to get out of that cycle?

As I have written before, it takes presence.  It takes checking in with yourself, becoming aware of what is going on, and allowing yourself to make adjustments based on a broader perspective.  That broader perspective is exactly what the fight-or-flight brain’s activity will tend to conceal.  Yet it, too, is available to you.

Just as Chris is channeling this insight, which he generally finds calming and pleasant and freeing, you have access to your own expanded perspective.  You can achieve it through meditation, through going on a walk in nature, through reading a book, through sleep, through yoga, through writing, and through any type of activity that is calming, restful, and helps you become present.  When you are present, you can take in the world around you AND, more importantly, inside you.  That world inside you is the world we are talking about.  When you align with that, you align with the positive mind states which transcend the world of fight-or-flight: joy, love, and peace.

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