The Gift of Fight or Flight?

My brain is an interesting place for sure. I've been considering what it is to either react or respond and what within my brain chooses one or the other of those two choices. 

It was very enlightening when I first read somewhere that if I speak to another person such that I illicit a response the conversation will be different than if I speak in such a way that I illicit a reaction.

That knowledge right there gave me wonderful freedom in knowing how to effectively promote a useful conversation.

For example, someone could say to me; "Why did you plant that bizarre, twisty shaped

shrub in your garden?" Or they could say; "Hmm, that is certainly an interesting choice of bush to put in front of your house."

In my brain the first comment heads me right to a reaction. "What do you mean "bizarre?" Why are you picking on me? You obviously have bad taste if you don't see this choice of shrub as being a good choice." And on and on it would go. My ego is activated and I defend and react and attack in return.

With the second comment I am invited into a conversation. I don't have to tamp down and restrain my injured ego, I can just explain what and how I was thinking when I choose that shrub and that spot.

This has a lot to do with the human brain's gift of fight or flight. How do you think that is so? And why?

Those Annoying Transitions of Life.

Fall is one of my favorite times of year.  It's so full of action both seen and unseen, and is the place holder of a new beginnings as well as a fading of what was and will never be again. 

Plants in my garden have been frosted and some will die and the seeds are being spread around.  Other plants are only losing their blossoms, stems and leaves but when I pull those up I see nice fat tubers that I am storing away in the cellar for that new beginning I spoke of.

Change and progression are one of the basics of living life but as humans we tend to fear the changes of life.

Not only does our conscious fear the changes often but according to what I learned in a seminar on the dynamics of the brain, our brain fears change!

If I am about to change myself there are ways that support change and ways of encountering that that sets up a reaction in the brain.

The brain can experience a direct attempt at changing it as a threat.  As such, the fight/flight reaction is triggered and chemicals are released that among other reactions tend to shut down the prefrontal lobe to focus on the "battle" at hand.

So thus the way to encounter my brain with a new habit or new way of being is to simply in peace, and with love for myself, start to learn a new way of living life or being and ignore the other unwanted habit or habits and thus not activate the reactive responses of the brain. 

So, living in peace become not just a way of being with others but a way of "living" with ourselves.

Gently and in fact lovingly noticing those habits or way of living that may have supported us in the past but are not working well now.

Often we need others around us to be with us in this process.  A friend or a community can support us in the upset and confusion that may result from suspending certain ways of thinking or acting and integrating new ways of thinking and acting.

Those friends can love us through those wintery seasons of change and casting off until there is the new birth of something else fresh and new on the other side.

He had all the gravitas of a 40 year old doctor (as his father is or was) as he considered my replies with a very direct gaze, and thought about what I had said. He never once smiled as we talked. I actually found myself a little intimidated by him at the same time I was enjoying observing his demeanor. 

This conversation went on as I was leaving a house where I was repairing blinds and needing more tools from outside, and one of the 3 1/2 year old twins queried me about what I was doing and which vehicle outside was mine.  

When I saw his twin brother I noticed he was more of a little irish redhead with a quick smile and more spontaneous way of being. 

Later I found out that his dad had had a stroke within the year and is no longer employed as a doctor and may never be again. So very sad. 


There are both pluses and minuses to working on 

being aware and involved with people. The beauty and charm of glimpses of maturity in a child and the painful and premature ending of an adult's life as they knew it.

As I have thought about this experience of mine, another conversation made me think of what we know of God.  I think what we know of God is what Jesus did with others.  He empathized.  He listened.  He was intuitive.  He used annoyingly unclear and open ended parables about how people relate to each other and God.

I have to think that when he was with someone he was searching deep within.  What is the joy in there?  What is the pain in there?  What made this person the person they are today?

Why do I think about this?  Well, because I feel like a large part of my life was lived somewhat in a narcissistic fog of internal pain.  That got old and I deconstructed my life and fortunately got to put it back together in a much better way.  For me what I really have wanted in this reconstruction is to in a sense come up to speed in terms of my ability to be empathetic and intuitive about others and to do so within the ever pervasive presence of God.  

I believe the deepest and richest way to live life is in connection with others in that context of God's presence.

They gain and I gain.  A relational win/win.  

"My concern for clergy is that they’re caught in a trap like the Emperor’s new clothes. Behind closed doors, clergy doubt much of what they believe. Is God there? Is the Bible accurate? We all have doubts. But, when most clergy step up into the pulpit, none of that is expressed.
The truth is that most people who come to church have lots of doubts themselves, but they cannot express their doubts, either, because the church has become this place where everyone is expected to be a stalwart of Christianity.
The congregation finds itself caught in this game in which everyone is trying to hide from each other. The church can become like this crack house, where everyone wanders in to escape their suffering for an hour with their weekly hit from the church."
Peter Rollins

Sadly there is very little acknowledgement in church that doubt is the very lifeblood of relationship with a mysterious and inexplicable God.  Taming him into belief systems that *I* hold onto, diminishes him into some kind of behind the curtain Wizard of Oz that I bring out on demand.  

Faith inherently requires an uncertainty.  and God knows with God there is enough of that to go around if we're not playing pretend.

 "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver [...] "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  

It's beyond a crying shame that elaborate houses of cards have been constructed and held onto like the very breath of life thus teaching everyone to live in inauthenticity where maintenance of the facade becomes the "lifeblood" rather than the messy and satisfying work of relationship.  

I often think about what sacrifice is and what it means to me.  Or how do all things work together for good.  And how pain and disappointment and hurt and injustice become part of anything meaningful.

For me this consideration is built into and around "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."  A cosmic undergirding of all that is.  A tapestry interwoven and inseparable from love.

Linked with this fundamental is the obvious corollary of the redemption and transformation of what was, into something completely different,  much akin to the fable of the spinning of straw into gold.

 Perhaps a mythic thread that penetrated into children's stories as the best ideas so often do.

But those beautiful and rewarding considerations don't necessarily always redeem the painful coming to terms with having been abused and then recovering from that pain.   To start the process of accepting and confronting the damage done to the soul and spirit is often daunting and a weary process.

Many roadblocks seem to occur both from within and from without.  To even begin to look at what happened so often involves sorting out the true assignment of fault.  This is often discouraging because self blaming and shame and self-loathing is so often an integral part of that process and seem such an integral part of who we are until we gain the ability to see clearly.  .

The defining moment of recovery I believe is when the anger and confusion and trauma starts to disappear into a realization that whatever happened, it sucked, it was wrong, it may have zapped out our chance of any thing like a normal childhood,  but now we can gain from the experience and let the whole process be submerged in that amazing cosmic force of turning straw into gold.

What was intended for evil gets used to bring glory to God somehow in ways that actually we may never see or even understand.

I think that is the final part of a recovery.  That gift of understanding that it wasn't all  just a nightmare but something is being redeemed and transformed into some good, and  often in someone else's life.

Since I have transitioned out of the norm of church attendance, and also been considering some different ways of considering my relationship with God, I have encountered many people with far different beliefs than mine.  Some consider themselves atheists, some consider themselves agnostic and others hold some variation of Christian belief. 

In that process many of them are talking about the process they are in,  and the questions they have and also how realizing what they used to believe so dogmatically they are now not so certain about.

This can create quite a stir among others both for them selves and for the "weak" ones out there.  (Whoever they are.)  

In considering the reaction to this processing of beliefs, it seems to me that much of the reaction on the part of non-questioning people is some sort of fear or something that is tapped into within them when a friend goes through a passage of questioning.  Sometimes there is such an energy to the reaction I end up thinking there must be something being "hooked" inside the person with the concern.  It's perhaps stirring up their own latent questions or concerns.  
And then from that unstable base of action they take the iron sharpening iron concept and slice away doing the damage that abstract concept often does because it is out of the context of an authentic, loving, and trust based knowledgeable relationship.

People at peace seldom get all worked up over other people's processes.

 
I don't think God gets all that hyper about it. He is not limited and in a hurry. My belief is that he just keeps loving. Inexorable. Tenderly.  He is very secure I believe about his ability to care well for his child.  

I felt some sense of panic when my kids and then many of my friends questioned all sorts of things. I actually had to entrust them to who I really believed God to be and be with them in the process.  Prior to that I was praying frantically for them and felt guilt about perhaps not praying enough for them to in effect I guess "cause" God to take notice and deal with what I wanted done.  
Oh yeah, and hopefully deal with whatever insecurities their process brought up in me.


Regarding how to effectively love and affirm someone going through that process, it's remarkable how much openness and resulting possible transformation can occur with a little bit of investment in relationship. It really is simple. For some strange reason perhaps those inner insecurities and fears,  often people want to ignore or bypass relationship and try to make a change in the transitioning person right away.

 I will say that to converse with someone with different or perhaps even stronger held views than mine is intimidating or can be, so I can understand the drop in, drop the bomb, get out of town mentality rather than to build a relationship where intimacy and trust would be born. 
I am noticing that in my own life nowadays so I'm understanding of that point of view.

As I did with my kids, I am learning to lovingly and trustingly be with the person as they and God deal with whatever is going on, being sensitive to some part of that process I may be invited into.

 Trust me, people going through that process do value and appreciate someone with them in the journey.  

‎"Once you label me you negate me."
Søren Kierkegaard

Exactly. I just become a semiotic device in your thinking. All that I am becomes merely a sign within your thinking. In your interaction with me actually you will not be interacting with me, you will be interacting not with the full me but the symbol that I now am for you. 

This is exactly why Peter Rollins, the author of How (Not) to Speak of God,  talks about adopting atheism for lent. To allow for the sign that God may have become in my mind to be replaced by the living and active presence of God. 

Signs certainly have many purposes but you can never have a dynamic relationship with a sign. It merely points to something.

Anytime a human or a being becomes a sign for me, at that point the life is drained out of them and they have become a marker for what they represent in my mind. 

Which needless to say minimizes or shuts down any the beauty of the interaction with a human being because the interaction is with a semiotic device in my brain. 

What signs might you become in my mind? Old human, young human, smart human, crazy human, black human, white human, male human, female, intellectual, uneducated, pretty, engineer, day laborer,... you get the point. 

Love means I care enough to notice when I am assigning (good word here ;~) a place holder or sign in place of the living and dynamic reality that is you. 

We all do it, it's the way the brain functions. Our brains always seem to want to assign meaning to what we see and conceptualize "what it is." 

Signs and labels kills the person and closes the latches on a small box with a rounded top and gilded hinges. 

Love creates an opening of an unknown size where the other person can become fully alive in the relationship and actually according to Carl Rodgers the aliveness enabled can show up in every part of the person's life.