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What’s your deepest nature?
The Practice:
Be home.
Why?
Throughout history, people have wondered about human nature. Deep down, are we basically good or bad?
When the body is not disturbed by hunger, thirst, pain, or illness, and when the mind is not disturbed by threat, frustration, or rejection, then most people settle into their resting state. This is a sustainable equilibrium in which the body refuels and repairs itself, and the mind feels peaceful, happy, and loving. I call this the Responsive mode. In a sense, this is our “home base,” our fundamental nature as human beings. (Obviously, I am not talking about the physical location where a person lives.) We are still engaged with the world, still participating with pleasure and passion, but on the basis of a background sense of safety, sufficiency, and connection.
But when body or mind are disturbed – perhaps by overwork and fatigue, or by the cough of a nearby lion a million years ago or a frown across a dinner table today – Mother Nature has endowed us with hair-trigger mechanisms that drive us from our resting state. Fight-flight-freeze systems in the body get activated, and related experiences of fear and anger, disappointment and drivenness, and loneliness, shame, and spite occur in the mind.
When we experience chronic stress (even if it’s mild), this state of affairs – in which the body gets worn down and depleted, and the mind gets frazzled, pressured, prickly, worried, and blue – becomes the new normal. It’s a kind of ongoing “inner homelessness.” I call it the Reactive mode, a disturbance of physical and psychological equilibrium that helped our ancestors survive to see the sunrise. But today, it undermines well-being, wears down long-term health, and can shorten your lifespan.
These two modes of living, Responsive and Reactive, are the foundation of human nature. We have no choice about the core need they attempt to meet – safety, satisfaction, and connection – nor about the brain’s capacity to be in either mode.
Our only choice is which mode we’re in.
Happily, the Responsive mode is the resting state, the default, of the body and mind. It’s what we return to when we’re not rattled. In the language of systems theory, the Responsive mode is the most fundamental “strange attractor” in the dynamic processes of your brain. Therefore, this mode is your underlying nature – not the Reactive one. You don’t have to scratch and claw your way to the mountaintop; if whatever is disturbing you comes to an end, you’ll soon come home to the lovely sunny meadow that has always been here – even if was hidden by the fogs and shadows of a troubled body or mind. Our deepest nature is peace, not hatred, happiness, not greed, love, not resentment or shame, and wisdom not confusion.
As soon as you have a sense of this natural home base . . . you are home! Because the body and mind are inclined toward the Responsive mode, any sense of ease in the body or feeling of calm, contentment, or caring in the mind will start activating related Responsive “circuits” in your brain.
Your body and mind want to come home: that’s where energy is conserved for the marathon of life, where learning is consolidated, where resources are built rather than expended, and where pains and traumas are healed.
Your whole being is always leaning toward home. Can you let yourself tip forward into your deepest nature?
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