We think, we feel and we act.
These are the fields of life of being, becoming and doing.
As of late, my appreciation, awareness and consciousness of all that is around me underwent a major phase transformation from one of eternal chaos to one of infinite ordering. And that which was good, beautiful and true in this world screamed for attention.
What was responsible for this epiphany, and what helped me to make sense of all the none-sense around me?
Several pieces of the puzzle of life fell into place and allowed me to see more clearly than ever before where we all were coming from and where we needed to go.
In short, we have been sold a fake image of nature and that of the self, and have been programmed to believe we are whom we were conditioned to think, feel and do.
But who did the programming, the conditioning and why?
The beginning of that journey of true self-discovery started with an interview with David Icke in which he introduced us to the idea of the Phantom Self.
This interview piqued my interest to read his book Phantom Self: and how to find the real one…. Although what he has said and written is consistent with what I have discovered to be true, there was one suggestion he made in the book which I found very difficult to reconcile with my newfound world view. That suggestion that we were being manipulated from without by a calculating bloodline of “shapeshifting lizards” was difficult to accept on its face value.
However, as is usually the case, many synchronistic pieces of the puzzle of life-understanding presented themselves serendipitously and helped me to incorporate this conclusion in the most life-coherent way which before then was unimaginable.
Although he made reference to one of those pieces of the reptilian puzzle in his book, I hope to assist him by showing that he was on point and that the subversion from without by the bloodline of “shapeshifting lizards” was actually a projection of a subversion from within by an ancient neuro-circuitry that we have inherited from our reptilian cousins over time via evolutionary design.
Although from a structural point of view, MacLean’s triune brain theory has many critics, from a functional point of view, his construct provides an organising principle of understanding that connects all of the discoveries in interpersonal neurobiology into an adamantine whole.
For instance, in embryology, we learnt that “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” meaning “that the development of an organism (ontogeny) expresses all the intermediate forms of its ancestors throughout evolution (phylogeny).” Although this concept was eventually rejected by mainstream science, there appears to be a comeback in trying to see if this hypothesis has merit in its application to understanding human development. (Please see: Does ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny or is it a discredited hypothesis?)
Also, Darcia Narvaez has actually extended MacLean’s triune brain theory to develop her triune ethics meta-theory in order to understand the neurbiological roots of our multiple moral personalities. She wrote:
“Triune Ethics is an interdisciplinary theory whose goals are to link moral psychology to affective neuroscience, help explain individual differences in moral functioning, and suggest some initial conditions for moral development. It is also an approach that can be linked to social relationships, conditions and situations, thus providing a biosocial view of moral action.
Three types of ethics can drive human morality, as I outline in this 2008 paper on neurobiology and our multiple moralities (pdf). These are based on different affectively-based moral stances that persons can take: one oriented to security (the Ethic of Security) and focused on self-preservation through safety, and personal and ingroup dominance. Another is oriented to emotional engagement with others (the Ethic of Engagement), particularly through caring relationships and social bonds. The third I call the Ethic of Imagination, which is focused on creative ways to think and act socially. While these labels are not all inclusive, they do seem to capture three different ways of co-existing with others in the social landscape.
Each ethic has neurobiological roots that are apparent in the biological structures and circuitry of the human brain. Triune Ethics theory derives its structure from MacLean’s (1990) Triune Brain theory which proposes three basic formations in the human brain that reflect ancestral relations to lower-order species. Anatomically and biochemically, the three formations reflect the evolution of reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals.
Although the theory is on its face simplistic in separating brain structures from one another, in fundamental ways animal and human research support MacLean’s basic theory (Panksepp, 1998). Accumulating research in affective neuroscience not only confirms the general thrust of MacLean’s triune brain theory, but points out the critical importance of early experience in gene expression in emotional circuitry (e.g., Champagne & Meaney, 2006), personality formation (Schore, 1992; 1994), and cognition (Greenspan & Shanker, 2004).
Animals have not only evolved brain functions that facilitate learning but have “psychobehavioral potentials that are genetically ingrained in brain development” as “evolutionary operants” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 55). These operants are inherited emotional command systems that help animals (and their ancestors) behave adaptively in the face of life challenges.”
Moreover, Stephen W. Porges has developed his polyvagal theory also from MacLean’s triune brain perspective and has shown how our autonomic nervous system provides the neural platform for linking bidirectionally our internal physiology and external behaviour, thus again linking our internal thoughts and feelings with our external actions, respectively.
His theory is basically summarised below in the following few diagrams which were captured from his presentation entitled: The Origins of Compassion: A Phylogenetic Perspective.
The following images summarise applications of polyvagal theory to understanding the full spectrum of our being, becoming and doing.
So to return to the title of this blog article: “To mobilise or to immobilise, with fear or love, that is the question!” It should come as no surprise that to answer the question, “To be or not to be?”, it is NOT I think therefore I am, it is NOT I feel, therefore I am, but it is I mobilise, therefor I am!
As explained in this TED talk by neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, “the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement.”
And this movement, is simultaneously within our internal environment (physiology) and without in our external environment (behaviour).
As shown above, when we live in threatening environments, our physiology and behaviour are constrained in predictable but life-destabilising ways, and the range of fields of life value of thought, felt side of being and actions are severely constrained in a life-enslaving MATRIX of fight and flight and when life-threatening freezing and fainting. Within this false MATRIX of egotistical self-maximizing competitiveness, the “shapeshifting reptilian” and “predatory mammalian” neural circuits subvert from within the better angels of ourselves. As a result those who inherit these toxic and threatening environments and lifestyles will become in thought, felt side of being and action bloodline “shapeshifting lizards” with diminished empathic altruistic selves, as they subvert from without our narrative, laws and credit creation rules that structurally and culturally violate and terrorizes “the other” in their insecure schemes. This is in order to maintain their privilege, wealth, power and control. As a result, their life capacity for security is undermined and their capacity for social engagement and communal imagination is severely compromised.
As a result, they constantly mobilise with fear, via wars of all kind, from global wars, manufacturing false flag terrorist operations, police states, surveillance states, moving us from crisis to crisis of destabilisations at the level of the individual, family, community, institutions and the planetary life-support systems. In order to maintain this dominant ranking system, we are programmed to immobilise with fear, and our range of thoughts, felt sides of being and actions are also comprimised by our parenting styles, socialisation, educational indoctrinations, work ethics, addictions, and rampant medicalisation of normal adaptations to the abnormal toxic environments and lifestyles that are unnatural. These machinations are not conducive to collaborative and co-creative imagination that is the biological imperative of our social engagement neural circuits which have been gifted to us by evolutionary design.
However, we can transform our unnatural dehumanizing social structural and cultural memetic constructs so as to optimise our social engagement and life flourishing. In this scenario, we can now mobilise with love, as we reconnect with each other and with our Mother Earth. By focusing on provisioning of the universal human life necessities for all of humanity via an ecology of life-enabling vocations life-grounded in the civil commons of our social and planetary life-supporting systems, we can as a species not only create sustainable abundance for ourselves, but also for all of our evolutionary cousins, not only for now, but for the future to come. We can now non-violently work altruistically as a social immune system to prevent the free-riding narcissistic egotistic carcinogenic “shapeshifting lizards” from subverting from within our senses and sensibilities and invading and metastasizing to destabilise every domain and level of life organisation.
It is only by not squandering our energies and resources and by not depleting and polluting our life supporting systems will we be able to solve all of our global problems from climate destabilisation, nuclear Armageddon, to the pressing problems of social, political and financial instabilites.
And finally it is when we immobilise with love and become intimate with each other, at the individual and collective levels, when we pray, sing, dance and meditate, with our babies and children, our friends, our students, and all of our loved ones, and when we reflect and commune with the Almighty Father Cosmos and the Divine Mother Earth, then and only then, will we produce in unconditional love, bountiful offsprings of flourishing life. We will then discover what is good, beautiful and true, we will know what is right, fair and just, and we will for once and for all and for one and all live life in peace and in harmony with each other and Mother Earth in truth with an open mind, heart, soul and spirit.
I will leave you now with a speech that resonated with me yesterday and which served as an inspiration of the outpourings that materialised in this article that have just been channeled through me today.
