Meta description: We’re going to look at human evolution to understand why we’re driven by survival emotions & how it subconsciously affects our life choices
Evolution: A Never Ending Process
Be honest with me, do you believe that evolution is taking place right now? Or somewhere deep down you are convinced that this is it? That we are the center of the universe and it starts and ends with us? That evolution has stopped and we are the ultimate creation and civilization?
Your brain has conveniently put a label on the limited world of the senses and blinded you from the big picture that the universe is 15 billion years old, multicellular life on Earth is 650 million years old and you will at best live for a respectable double digit figure.
There is nothing right or wrong, good or bad about it, nor is this a nihilistic approach. It is very natural to get sucked into the nitty gritties of life, to be self centered and be driven by the hormones of survival. I mean, a lion isn’t thinking about anything other than his next meal, which lioness to bone and how to maintain his territory.
Think about it, when we were in the midst of COVID, we were completely consumed by it. It almost felt never ending and we simply couldn’t think or see past it. A post COVID era which we are in right now, seemed inimaginable at the time.
And yet here we are.
Everything is subject to change. Every situation, physical and psychological, is impermanent. Both, the good and the bad. Evolution is a continual and perpetual process whether we choose to see it or not.
All this is to say that despite all the advancements that the human race has made, we are still more animalistic by nature than we think. Did you know that the genetic structure of humans is only 3-4% different from that of chimpanzees?
The scenario and situations have changed, yes. There is more convenience and comfort on the outside, but on the inside, we are still driven by the same things that drove our ancestors.
In varied degrees, our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are still driven by survival.
In this article, we’re going to take a stroll down the evolutionary path to understand how & why we’re driven by survival emotions, how it subconsciously affects our life choices even today and why it is almost a necessity now to transcend this phase.
Being Human – The Privilege
Think of a deer that just had a near death experience and got away from a tiger. Within a matter of seconds it goes back to grazing, as if nothing ever happened. Because other species’ neocortex (the thinking brains) aren’t developed. They are not able to process the information. The emotion of fear (in this case), does not get memorized in the body.
Now think of a stone age human who was able to process every experience. Of course, in the wild, most of these experiences are bound to be ‘negative’ and driven by survival. Afterall, the rule of the jungle is survival of the fittest. They were able to remember the experience and learn from it to improve their odds of survival.
So yes, the ones that survived in the wild and were able to pass on the genes to the next generation were driven by emotions of survival – fear being the primordial emotion, the fear of death.
Those same genetic and neurological wiring exists today in all humans by default to varying degrees. That’s why they are called ‘normal’ states of being in psychology. (We will go into more detail about this in a future article when I write about mind-made identities – the ego.)
With time, our dominance grew because of our growing brain which has grown 3 fold in volume since the stone age. Our ancestors’ emotions of survival drove them to create and expand their boundaries. Different clans/bands (whatever you want to call them) fought amongst one another for expansion and that’s how our history has unfolded, conquests and wars amongst different civilizations.
This brings us to the current day and age. The nature of our threats has changed and gone down drastically.
And yet, despite all the things we have achieved as a species, we can’t say that this current generation or time is the most blissful or joyful time in history, for us or for other life forms.
Physical pain has been replaced by psychological pain and humanity seems to create wars and demons within their own heads. It’s all the same to the mind. It can be evidently seen in the current state of the Earth with wars in recent times, increase in depression, drugs and alcohol intake, extinction of other animal species, reduction in forest cover and climate change looming over us.
If left unchecked, the human mind has a dimension of dysfunctionality to it because it is driven by emotions of survival which creates separation and enemies.
This can be attributed to the negativity bias.
The Negativity Bias
Imagine you’re in the Stone Age era. Let me give you two scenarios, please tell me which one is more fatal.
Scenario 1: You think there’s a tiger in the bushes, but there really isn’t
Scenario 2: You think there is no tiger in the bushes, but there really is
Obviously, the second one would guarantee your demise. You had to stay alert all the time. Your brain had to use the body’s sense perceptions to plug into the external environment and scan for the slightest signs of threat.
This would in turn mean that our ancestors were primarily in fight-or-flight mode, driven by the hormones of stress such as cortisol and adrenaline. In fight-or-flight mode the brain signals the body to send blood to the extremities (arms and legs) so that it can fight or run away from the threat.
There are no resources in the growth organs and systems such as the immune system, digestive system, reproductive system etc.
Now, fight-or-flight mode for a short period is fine. But no species can sustain it for prolonged periods. Stress and negative emotions such as anger, resentment, fear etc. weaken important systems within the body and you become more susceptible (heart diseases, viruses, infertility etc.).
The evolutionary evidence is that our stone age ancestors’s average age was 35-40 years.
As our threats reduced, our body went back to homeostasis (normal condition) and our average age increased to what it is now.
No matter how evolved we think we are, our brain will always focus more on negative news than positive news. Even if you had 10 wonderful moments in the day and 1 awful moment, your mind will naturally gravitate towards the 1 awful moment and focus on it.
It’s not your fault, nature has just wired the brain that way for survival. It is designed to create separation – us vs them. The ‘us’ depends on your social and cultural upbringing and can be anything you identify with like your nation, caste, football team or sometimes it’s just you. You versus the world.
This has sped up due to social media where you are constantly in comparison with others which creates guilt, lack, resentment, fear (of missing out), hatred.
Because it wants to take no chances at survival. You may think that a small altercation with a family member or a rejection at work isn’t a life or death situation, but your brain doesn’t think that way. To it, all threats are the same, physical or psychological pain all have the same neural circuitry. It takes an attack on your identity or sense of self as an attack on life itself.
Can you pause and take a moment to simply go through your day or recent times and assess this behavior in yourself? Can you consciously focus on the good (maybe a great conversation, a small success at work, a beautiful scenery, or just a sense of gratitude that the sun came up on time every day and gave you life) that you simply shrugged off?
And unfocus from the exaggerated bad?
Close your eyes for a minute and assess your past week and the mental activity that went with it. Do this 1 minute activity, please?
The mental activity is not you. It is a mind pattern in you because of conditioning through life situations.
I know we all have our baggage, but believe me, they are not the end of the world. There is more to life, there is a deeper dimension than our individual life situations (job, health, relationship, family). Understand and acknowledge the difference between your life and life situations.
It is crucial that humanity identifies the mental noise for what it is and rises above it.
Human Being – The Responsibility
As an evolved consciousness that can think and feel as complexly as you do, haven’t you wondered if there is more? That there is an additional dimension to us that the animalistic ones?
So far we’ve spoken about the animal side to us – The Human side. Now we focus on the Being.
Yes we are all living beings, but why are there no tiger beings or whale beings or plant beings?
Why are we human beings? What makes us human beings?
It is the being dimension in us that makes us unique, that makes us divine. We have the ability to consciously regulate our emotions. We have the privilege to be aware that we are aware. Aware of what? Our thoughts and emotions!
If you can be aware and observe your mental activity (i.e. thoughts) and bodily feelings (i.e emotions), it means that they are not you. You are the consciousness or the formless dimension that allows the human experience to be.
Can you consciously embody the being dimension into this human experience? It is the being dimension that can keep a check on the surviving mind. It is the being dimension that will help you thrive.
Conscious Evolution and Evolution of Consciousness
No other species in the world can become conscious of their consciousness. They are simply driven by the mind which is driven by survival. And that is the case for most humans too.
For the first time, we are at a stage where a species can determine its level of evolution. Till now, it was all in the hands of nature, it was at the speed of nature. But nature’s gift is such that it wants us to take up the next stage of evolution.
It wants consciousness to evolve, it wants conscious evolution to occur. It wants to see its own creation, through consciousness, through you – the conscious being.
The current phase of evolution dominated by the thinking mind has served us well so far and it was a necessary step in the evolutionary curve, but it is time to rise above it now. To leave the mind-made ego and its dysfunctionality behind. Pain and suffering was important. We had to fall down from grace and forget the truth in order to experience the plethora of human emotions on our way back home. Because there is power in human emotion.
Evolution always happens through challenges. It is impossible to not have challenges. If you are at the top of the food chain, a lion or tiger, they have a challenge of finding food. At the bottom, they have to avoid being food.
Taking this same correlation to humans, even if someone is rich and successful, they still have challenges. Even Ronaldo, who is the most celebrated sporting icon also has challenges in different forms. And a poor person also has their own set of challenges. Internally, they are all the same. We forget that finally we are all still the same species, simply living here for a few years.
Your mind is trying to convince you to be special by chasing a better job, a better house or a better partner simply as a way to strengthen its identity and survive life. But trust me, that’s a never ending cycle that will simply run in loops until one day you realize the truth of it all.
Understand that true genius never comes from the mind. Any artist in any field will tell you that their work came from a deeper place. And the mind was simply an enabler. They unknowingly had access to that dimension in them, when they were in the zone.
The fact of the matter is, you are already a beautiful unique snowflake. You are already a miracle of nature. You are floating on a mud ball in the middle of nowhere, breathing and beating your heart 24×7 365 days. Don’t get bogged down by life. You are life!
This does not mean becoming complacent. Chase your dreams, but now they will be in line with the universe and coming from a deeper place. They will not be egoic creations that will eventually cause suffering to you and everyone around you.
You will be driven, inspired and have a sense of gratitude towards everything and everyone around you. Your genius will flow and the world desperately needs your genius.
Understand that there is nothing superhuman about all this. Just that being human itself is super.
And as the uncle of a famous superhero once said,
With great power, comes great responsibility
Can you rise up to the challenge and consciously evolve? Can you bring consciousness into the world and save it? There is no way to fight against darkness. You simply throw light on it and darkness goes away. Your consciousness is that light.
I am the consciousness inside the human Akshay Modak that helps him chase his dreams. And through his dreams, Akshay Modak acts as a vehicle to bring consciousness into this world!
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INPUTS – DO NOT INCLUDE THIS PART IN BLOG
We couldn’t have been given such a consciousness simply to survive. No, we are meant to thrive. If we are ruled by the hormones of stress, we are
How? Not by doing away with survival emotions, but by rising above them. Not by doing away with thinking, but by rising above it.
Sure the situations are different. If we are constantly driven by the
This is the ultimate form of
Evolution. The survival instinct. Going beyond.
Nervous system is 600 mil years old
Multi celled creatures 650 mil years old
Life on planet 3.5 billion years old
Genetic difference between us and a chimpanzee is only 1.23%
Evolution is continuing
How memory is a powerful tool for survival. If you can see something, predict it, then you have a better chance of survival. But as the human evolution has progressed, our survival has been taken care off. We do not want to survive, we want to thrive. And that can not be understood by this young mind. When I say young, the neocortex is still young in its evolutionary stage. Only a few million years old. It does not know, that you
It tries to protect you. It does not feel good, it feels familiar.
Protection does not mean good. Protection means feeling familiar. It has seen this in childhood and you survived it, it takes that as a sign that this is the best thing for me because it was an emotionally charged event. The body makes a note of this.
Surviving or Thriving?
2 types of mistakes
The ones that survived passed on their genes
Survival of the fittest. But, do you want to thrive or survive now?
Conscious Evolution and Evolution of Consciousness
No,
But now, it is time to go beyond thinking. Not below thinking, that’s a step backward. To think consciously and sharply. To use human intellect to serve our desires, and not be a prisoner of our own intellect. Of our own karma.
Are you up for it? Can you rise to the challenge?
When you build a wall around yourself to protect yourself from emotional hurt. They do a fine job in protecting you. But darling, that wall is not more different from a prison, is it not?
You are safe in a cage, in a prison. But are you truly free? You can survive, but can you thrive? This is not an argument, I just want you to ask yourself. Maybe you do feel free. Which is amazing. Carry on then, business as usual.
Do you really think evolution has stopped? Is that possible? Do you think this is it? That your 80 to 100 odd years of life is it? The universe is a billion years old. Humanity has been on this planet for some million years. And yet, your brain has convinced you that this is it, your life is it – the world starts and ends with you.
Can you consciously ponder over this point for a moment?
There has to be more to life than this right? This does not mean to take life seriously or to just while it away. But a fine blend of both, somewhere in between. Somewhere that can’t be explained or understood by the thinking mind. Something that can only be understood with that which is in line with the universe.
Slavery was when physically they were bogged down to an area. When someone locked the door from the outside. But this, you locked the door from the inside. Isn’t that a more worse form of slavery?
It is easy to be who you never want to be. Why? Karma!
What is it that you call karma? Unconsciousness. Unconscious thought and emotional patterns that you picked up from highly charged life events. Meaning to say, life events that left a mark on you, for good or for worse. You don’t pay attention to it when it has left a positive mark on you but we do remember the negative ones.
Why? Because that is fodder for the mind. Say
You can only see something that can stop light. What allows light to pass through can not be seen through our eyes. Only that which stops light. But sometimes you need to close your eyes to see, to see that which does not stop light. To see that which has never occurred in the past – a vision, a dream, a reality
But get to know yourself.
This does not mean you don’t enjoy life or don’t think or feel emotions. No all of that is the human dimension in you.
To err is to be Human. To emote is to be Human.
But to forgive is Being. To forget is Being.
You don’t have to become a super human. You just have to realize that being human itself is super. Human Being.
Making a simple thing complex is not intelligence.
Making a complex thing simple is genius.
Keep it simple. Just breathe and be happy
Making a problem out of a situation is not genius
Finding a solution out of a problem is genius
Connect the human to the being.
The next stage – consciousness
The soul had to fall down and forget to experience the plethora of human emotions
It is simply not the nature of life to be comfortable and not challenging. That expectation is what causes misery. That mental talk is what kills the joy out of the activity, when it becomes the means to an end. When you use it to reach to an end destination, and totally discard the journey. Life is a journey. Every minute you are a minute closer to your death, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. So what you make of it is completely your doing.
Would you want to watch a movie in which nothing ever goes wrong? It’s finally a reflection of you.
Don’t believe it, seek it.
Now you could argue that this was such a long time ago, but it really wasn’t. There is so much memory in each of the trillion cells that make you up from head to toe. It is the same reason why you look the way you do and scientists say there are statistically 7 people with the exact same face as you throughout the world. The memory is a lot more intense on the inside than on the outside.
It makes sense right? We’re all part of the same race with the same origin.
