09- Triphasic Neuroception

SAFETY, DANGER, AND LIFETHREAT

Is it possible that the first lesson on the first day, from the moment you emerge into the earth situation, this having a body, the lesson that you will spend your life learning, is the difference between safety and danger? Between what it makes sense to move toward and what you need to move away from? That this discernment will continue to grow more and more subtle throughout your life?

Even single-celled organisms are endowed with the chemistry required to approach and avoid. Is this the original feeling? The wellspring from which all others rise? The trunk from which all others branch? Attraction/repulsion. Approach/withdraw. Turn toward/ turn away. 

Our mammalian nervous systems are organized in such a way that the parts of us that are most human–most open, connected, fluid, flowing, creative, generative, and relating–are also the most vulnerable. Our deepest availability is most easily harmed.

Our mammalian nervous systems are organized in such a way that the parts of us that are most human are also the most vulnerable.

And so the doorway to them opening is of safety. We require safety in order to open. Opening cannot be forced. Like flowers deciding to bloom, safety is a sovereign determination made inwardly. Force the bud and it will not blossom. 

Watch a snail pulling back into its shell when threatened. Then watch the slow re-emergence, the gradual way it comes out again, tentatively, re-inflates its rubbery antennae. The gate on the snail shell, that threshold across which the soft body either blooms or suddenly withdraws? It is called neuroception.

Continuum of vulnerability by way of snail: