CHAPTER 8

The First Responder— The Default Position

If we are observing clearly, what we will see (maybe not right away but if we continue to process) is that “I” is never angry. We will see that anger arises in a constellation that surrounds but does not interpenetrate “I”.

(Lozowick. Feast or Famine, 121)

You are a soul in a mammal body, oh weary Traveler. Thus, it is crucial to understand how this body operates, its inner functions as well as its external manifestations. Mammals learn in five ways: observation, repetition, modeling, trial and error, and play. Self observation utilizes all five of these learning modes. The intellectual-emotional-complex is hard-wired into the central nervous system. And the default position, the first responder in the central nervous system of all mammals, is the survival instinct. That is ground zero in a mammal, and it is in us as well. Most humans live most of their lives in survival mode: any threat of pain—whether real or imagined—and the first response is survival instinct. It is the fastest thing in us (instinctive center), it is hard-wired into the central nervous system, it is hot, and it is powerful. Its only function is to preserve the body from harm.

The survival instinct is located at the navel (instinctive center) and it houses the two primordial, primitive, primal emotions: rage and terror. Each of these two primal emotions triggers an accompanying action. If, according to my nature, my response to the threat of pain is rage, then the accompanying action is fight. If, according to my nature, my response is terror, then the accompanying action is flight. Thus, biologists have labeled the survival instinct the “fight-flight syndrome” Instinctive center is closely aligned with moving center.

The first response is always and only selfish = survival = fear-based (Thanks to Mr. Jay Landfair for this teaching). It cannot be otherwise; survival is always and only about “me.” The “survival instinct” is housed in the instinctive center. We have already established the instinctive center’s primacy in the human biological instrument: I feel it is the first to know and respond always (Ouspensky says emotions are faster; we disagree). Therefore, the first response to pain or the threat of pain—whether real or imagined—is always and only selfish, fear-based, and survival oriented; you can predict it, and you must now observe and verify such information for yourself by patient and careful observation without judgment. Why judge it? It is hard-wired into the mammal-instrument. The mammal always reacts according to instinctive center. It is not wrong. It is the way it is meant to be.

Most human beings live their lives and conduct their relationships out of survival instinct. That is why the world is the way it is and why we treat one another the way we do. Survival instinct is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” If you hurt me, I will hurt you back, only moreso if I can. Thus, it is war all the time, both personally and on a global level. Survival instinct is unconscious and mechanical. It has to be that way, because when someone cuts me off in traffic, I do not have time to think about it or emote about it; that comes later. I swerve to avoid harm. You hurt me and I will strike back. When the Gospels instruct me to “turn the other cheek” they are suggesting a very high-level, conscious, and mature practice unavailable to most human beings. My first response is always and only selfish.

Only the human mammal has a choice in the matter when it is hurt by the words or actions of another, and only a human mammal who is practicing self observation can hope to avail oneself of such a choice. Otherwise, I am enslaved by the “biological imperative.” The instrument does what it is created to do. And when I do this over and over in relationship, and the other does it to me as well, the result is a string of failed relationships on a personal and a global scale. No relationship can survive when I am constantly reacting to every kind of hurt, no matter how small, with anger or fear—either striking back, hurting back, or turning my back on the beloved and withdrawing my love (another, passive, way of hurting back). Only the conscious being has any choice in the matter. And we are far from conscious as we are. To surrender the survival instinct to the Work practice, to “turn the other cheek,” is a very high practice indeed, called in the shamanic traditions “the Warrior’s Maneuver.” This is a rational response to pain or the threat of pain. Instinct is not rational.

But that’s not what the blind spot does. It makes rational response totally irrelevant to satisfying its need to be fed. Rational response is the last thing it wants or needs. To respond rationally would mean its death knell. So it has a very large vested interest in keeping my response mammal, immediate, selfish and irrational.

So the person of the Work understands that the ordinary person has only two possible reactions to pain or the threat of pain. And I understand that the survival instinct is always the first-responder in the other as well. I further understand that this first response can only and always be selfish. It is about survival of the organism. Period. That is why it must be first. It is how we survived the age of the giant predators, who liked to eat us. We are hard-wired to have this first response to pain or the threat of pain. We have no choice.

But the person of the Work has a choice as to whether I react to the surge of the survival instinct. I have a choice whether I act according to its urgent command: Fight or flee! I can choose to find myself, manage my body, observe without reacting, without judgment, without changing anything, and keep the body relaxed when the adrenaline surge is sent down the central nervous system, preparing the body to fight or flee.

The conscious being breathes in the navel (instinctive center), and relaxes the body. Thus the energetic surge is transformed— into a higher and finer energy which we may call love or wisdom or simply Work-energy. I am able to use this energy not to strike back or turn my back, but to objectively understand both my inner reaction and the actions of the other. Then I am able to make a calm assessment of my best and most productive course to aid the relationship to achieve its highest potential, regardless of the cost to myself personally. This, some awakened humans have called unconditional love.

Along with the “first responder” in the central nervous system, but housed in the emotional center instead of the instinctive center, is what is known as “the default position.” The emotional center is many times faster than the intellectual center. Emotional center’s job is to measure—it is a measuring device hard-wired into the central nervous system of the biological instrument to ensure its maximum chance at survival. Thus, it works closely with the instinctive center’s survival instinct. The emotional center measures one thing only: the amount of danger in any situation or moment or person; put another way entirely, it measures one thing only: the amount of nurturing present in any situation or moment or person. The greater the nurturing, the less danger, therefore less tension in the body. Thus, the survival instinct is not triggered by the “startle response.”

Emotions are simply energy in the body, whose function is to measure the environment for danger or love. Nothing more, nothing less—energy in the body. Now here is where it gets interesting: there is only one energy—and it is continually flowing into the body, otherwise the body would die. What is this “only one energy”? Love. The Creator is impartial, objective love, and this love-energy is continually flowing into all living things, otherwise they would not live.

But the human biological instrument, as a result of training, conditioning, programming, is trained to identify and turn this energy into various “moods” according to the “paradigm” (= “mental construct”) which it has been taught, and which works best for it to secure what it thinks it needs for survival. These various moods, when they are successful, get me what I think is necessary for my survival. Thus they become habitual; they get “hot wired” into the emotional center as a “default mechanism” so that, under moments of extreme duress, the central nervous system, and its part which is the emotional center, will immediately default to these habitual moods. Depression is one such mood, for example. It is the favorite of many people. Why? Because it gets the attention of others who may then be induced to rescue me and take care of me = survival. Of course, this sort of reasoning and behavior and habit is constructed when I am very small, as a result of caregivers who do not give appropriate response or information at the time I am in need of them. There is no “fault” here, merely mammals enacting their habitual patterns of response, according to their conditioning. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons for four generations” (Exodus 34:6-7). That is, habitual emotional, mental, and mood patterns run for hundreds of years down the genealogical trees of families, from one generation to the other, endlessly (which is what is meant by “four generations” = endlessly). These habitual emotional patterns become a default position in the emotional center whenever there is a threat— whether real or imagined—in my environment.

So in one family, the default mood may be anger, another depression, another pollyannic happiness, another drug addiction, another abuse, another emotional withdrawal—absence both physical and emotional, abandonment, like that. The list goes on. Emotion is energy in the body, measuring the amount of danger or love. Period. What I do with it depends upon two factors: 1) my received and constructed paradigm (= mental-emotional “construct”)—that is, my conditioning and programming, which becomes a default position; or 2) free attention of an awake and conscious person. If I am awake and conscious, then I am able to choose from aim. If I am an ordinary person, driven by unconscious habit, then my “default mechanism,” my habitual mood-choices, will choose for me, the habit will speak for me in my name and using my voice, the habit will act for me, and I will be left to pay the consequences of such (sometimes life-changing) choices, sometimes paying for the rest of my life for a choice made by a mechanical, unconscious, habitual entity in the human biological instrument, which acts without reason or consciousness, only by habit. Depression is one such habit. It is often but not always arbitrary, as are my actions in response to it. It is energy—what I make of and how I use that energy is subject to my inner state: either habitual, unconscious, mechanical or else conscious, from aim, intentional.

Only by patient, honest, relaxed self observation without interference with what is observed, may I begin to see, understand, and make conscious choices from aim, instead of being a mechanical, unconscious automaton driven by the first respond-er and the default position. Only then do my relationships have a chance of succeeding, being fulfilling, and feeding the soul.

You Don’t Know What Love Is

On the way to the picnic I stop to buy

an apple pie and the big bag of corn chips,

my favorites.

We get there and drink beer, grill burgers

and have a good time.

Just to show what a good guy I am,

I leave them the rest of the apple pie

but I wrap and fold the corn chips carefully

and place them next to our cooler so

they will come home with us. They are

my favorites.

The next day I go to the kitchen for corn chips but

they are nowhere to be found; I look

everywhere and then

I go in the laundry room where she is

doing the wash and I ask her, Where

are the corn chips?

I left them there to be nice,

she says, and that is how the fight starts.

It goes on and on, but it ends the way

they always end: she is in tears and when

I try to comfort her by saying I love her, she

says, You don’t love me; you don’t

know what love is. And I am thinking,

not out loud of course, That’s a

goddamn lie, I love

those corn chips.

(Red Hawk. Wreckage, 20)