The Physical Nature of Humankind: Understanding Who You Really Are

HJ: If you are curious about the reasons behind the obvious — why things are as they are, then this excerpt if for you.  Those who seek to understand the self and their reason for incarnating at this time will find much guidance and wisdom in the message below.  The physical body is a magnificent and yet somewhat mysterious biological vehicle for the soul, however, this mystery need not be so.  What is lacking is a succinct explanation of the fundamental nature of consciousness (spirit) and the role of the human body in its manifestation.  Everything begins to fall into place when have this depth of understanding and suddenly our life experience and worldview takes on a new frame of reference.

Hopefully this piece will fill in many of the missing gaps you have in understanding the physical nature of humankind.

– Truth

The Physical Nature of Humankind
Spirit as Self in Physical Form

By Cosmic Awareness | Cosmic Awareness

—

Excerpt From the Lessons of Enlightenment by Cosmic Awareness

With Lessons Alpha One and Two, a conceptual boundary between mind and
spirit has been established. It is now possible to discuss certain aspects of man’s
physical existence that have gone unnoticed, for it is the physical response of
the body that ensures the preservation of the integrity of the spirit. It is essential
to understand these physical processes, for they underlie most of human motivation
and behavior—including, of course, those actions that wreak havoc upon
civilization.

The body is spirit in the flesh, and the body’s prime directive is to ensure the
continuance of the physical form so that Spirit can be developed and expressed.
The body has a built-in knowledge of what it is and what it is not. It operates
upon a self/not-self distinction, with a primary goal of self-preservation.
The body has a tremendous amount of mechanisms that operate toward the goal
of self-preservation. Science has acknowledged this fact as a basic foundation
of evolutionary theories and explanations. But lacking an overall framework
with which to interpret their findings, many highly important systems remain
misunderstood, resulting in confusion within the Mind of Man. The spiritual
nature of humankind—as well as the interference effect of the mind—remain
mysteries, and therefore obstacles to human progress. Humans remain cut off
from the very biological process that can lead to their salvation.

Nevertheless, this spiritual safety-net is still quite successful at keeping humans
from complete befuddlement within their own camouflage, for when the messages
of the spirit fall upon deaf ears, the body takes over. Unfortunately, when
it operates outside conscious understanding, the physical reactions can compound
problems until the spiritual message is finally heeded. It is now of
central importance to understand the spiritual defenses and how they operate in
the body. When this process is understood, humans can begin the evolutionary
journey that has thus far been postponed.

Human Emotion: An Undiscovered Sixth Sense

The one process that crosses the spiritual, the mental and physical realms is that
of emotion—human feelings of pleasure and pain. This is the singular, most
powerful—yet equally misunderstood—human system. Vast benefits lie dormant,
and unnecessary suffering results when this power is not harnessed.

Indeed, human emotion exists as an undiscovered sense, and perhaps the most
powerful of them all. Like physical pain, emotional pain grabs the attention of
the individual and cries out for solution. But feelings remain profoundly misunderstood.
In describing this sense, it is helpful to contrast thoughts and feelings, for the
two are often confused. l) Thoughts identify, organize and categorize information,
always leading to other thoughts. Thoughts exist within the bounds of
mind. 2) Feelings only arise when ―the self is involved. The self is the spirit as
it is experienced in the body. So unlike thoughts, feelings involve the body as
well as the mind, and they lead to actions. Although they are related, feelings
and thoughts are completely different experiences. For example, it is one experience
to conceptualize the features of a bear with such mental thoughts as:
the bear is a member of the mammal family; its skin can be used to make warm
rugs (when it is dead—while alive, it tends to object), it lives in caves and eats
honey. There is quite again another experience when looking such a beast in the
eye, and thoughts turn to the fact that the bear is likely to be dangerous to self survival.
Fearful feelings and active responses, perhaps flight, will result.

Thought is a process, while emotion is a communicative and active sense.
As a sense, emotion not only offers sensory input, it has three essential interacting
functions: Human emotion is the l) language of the body, as well as the 2)
language of the spirit, and is 3) intimately connected with the contents of the
mind. For the spirit, feelings communicate intent and how well it is being carried
out. For the mind, feelings give feedback regarding the suitability of
mental tools at carrying out spiritual intention. For the body, feelings motivate
the person to actions that carry out spiritual intention, and if frustrated, those
that accomplish self-preservation. Together, these three functions of emotion
drive human behavior.

Without the intended flow of feeling communication, mind and body can often
work against each other. When this happens, the spiritual self-preservation of
body can override the goals and intentions of mind. This is a last ditch effort to
preserve the needs of the spirit, but can serve to bring about results quite unbecoming
to the divine human.

Such behaviors are intended to communicate that a level below which the spirit
cannot dip, has been reached. Instead, such defensive maneuvers tend to become
habitual and accepted as inevitable, albeit undesirable, human behaviors.
Not to mention that death can, and often does, result if mind and body continue
to oppose each other—the spirit simply chooses to vacate, acknowledging a lostause.
This misunderstanding and miscommunication can no longer be tolerated
within the species of man. The events of the past century show that selfpreservationary
acts can actually destroy the planet. Humans intuit the spiritual
way, and although it is far afield from what they have created, they still desire
to attain it. This last five decades in history have been a wake-up call that humans
for the most part, have begun to answer. The key to a turnabout course is
the reestablishment of this inner communication between spirit, mind and body.
The secret to restoring the inner communication lies in understanding the
physical feeling system, listening to its wisdom and learning to operate within
its parameters. Only then can humans return to their intended evolutionary
course from which they have strayed. This begins with the understanding that
the emotional system is part of the physical immune defenses.

Feelings and the Human Immune System

Self-preservation is the goal of the human immune system. It operates upon a
highly sophisticated range of abilities and features that distinguish self from
that which is not-self. The immune system is best known for its role in fighting
disease processes. It is poised to identify and eliminate any foreign invaders
which threaten the health and vitality of the self—the body.

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For example, if a virus should enter and reproduce within the body, the immune
system springs to action. It elevates the local temperature, organizes helper, killer
and memory T-cell, enlists macrophages to consume or ―eat up‖ the invader.

It then produces antibodies so that future invaders of the same type will quickly
be recognized and eliminated. It accomplishes all this by recognizing the
chemical difference between cells that are part of the body and belong there and
those that do not. Antibodies mark invaders with the ―non-self‖ red flag so that
they cannot reinfect the body. It is overall a very elegant bodily system of self
preservation. Scientists are finally awakening to the interrelations between mind and body,
and specifically how emotions affect physical health. They know that inadequate
emotional expression is correlated with a heightened stress response,
impaired immune functioning, cardiovascular disease, psychosomatic illness
and a predisposition to develop cancer. But they have not yet made the obvious
conclusion that emotion is a part of the immune defense system.

As part and parcel of the human immune system, the emotional system plays an
immensely important role in human self-preservation. It functions as the physical
aspects of defense, but it operates also within the realm of mind. Just as the
cells of the immune system signal invaders of the body, so do emotional feelings signal
invaders of the mind. Likewise, as the active responses of the immune cells remove the
invaders, the hardwired reactive behavioral responses to human feeling are intended to
make corrective adjustments that include removing invaders.

This is the spiritual safety net in action. In the case of emotion, the invaders are
beliefs that are chosen and retained which do not contribute to, but limit, self
development and expression. This is an ultimate reality-checking device that can
ensure that the portrait each human paints of reality includes the very essential
qualities necessary for the expression of spirit. Any limiting beliefs are, in
fact, invaders.

The feeling system is the long sought interactionary device between mind and
body, theorized by philosophers uncomfortable with scientist’s reductionism
and mechanistic view of human nature. (Humans are not merely machines
without free will, self-direction and intention. And the mind is far more than
simply ―a brain). Such a mind-body communication device is the only escape
from the mental isolation (and imminent fear) of a mind set adrift from external
―reality, let alone spiritual intention. Mr. Descartes himself, (our enlightened
philosopher), suggested that human emotion was the interactionary device between
mind and body, yet he was met with disdain due to the many limiting
ideas within mass consciousness.

As a key defense then, emotion operates as a feedback device that exchanges
information between mind and body. The goal is to keep the mind aligned to
the needs of spirit that are biologically encoded within the body. This system
virtually takes over when most spiritual communication with mind has been
interrupted due to limited beliefs. The spirit sneaks in the back door, so to
speak, through the feelings and reactions of the body, to bring about the intended
need fulfillment of the spirit.

This is not the easiest way to communicate, mind you. But it at least makes
some communication possible, when humans are so completely enmeshed
within their own mass creations that they no longer have direct, conscious,
mental communication with their own spirit. This is the physically encoded information
that spirit will not let humans go without. It will haunt them with
individual and social pain until they finally ―get it.

Feelings Communicate Essential Spiritual Needs

What will haunt humans until they are met, are the essential needs of the spirit.
These needs are biologically impressed upon the body to ensure a minimum of
spiritual development and expression within the physical realm. When these
needs are met, humans can successfully go about the business of self development
and expression. When they are not met, humans flounder in frustration,
bad feelings and misunderstandings.

There has never been any consensus in the Mind of Man regarding essential
human needs. Thus, with no official recognition, acceptance or definition of
them, it is not likely that they are well accommodated within human civilization.
Wherever the spirit is not accommodated, there will exist a predominance
of self-preservationary behavior.

Now is the time for simple, yet complete, acknowledgement and acceptance of
human spiritual needs. There are two main categories of human need. l) The
Individual Needs, and 2) The Connection Needs. These needs exist within
every human being. They are inborn. Regardless of the widely varying cultures
and systems of living, the tacit goal of all social structures is to accomplish
need fulfillment. When the individual’s needs are met, they can share their
effective methods with the world. From these offerings rise social structures.

Those cultural institutions that have endured must contain some successful
need-meeting tenets, but for the most part, mass consensus is choked with conflicting
dictates due to the lack of understanding of human needs. These
―invaders‖ must be purged from the individual and mass consciousness for evolution
to proceed unimpeded. This, of course, is not possible without first
understanding the needs themselves.

The Individual (Power) Needs

The individual needs take precedence over the group needs. If individual needs
go unanswered, the self-preservationary reactions will occur. Such acts often go
directly against other individuals, or the mutual goals of group living, but are
intended to preserve the individual. For without individuals, there can be no
groups.

Although the need for group connection is very strong, the need for survival is
necessarily stronger. This way the spirit is assured that although groups, even
civilizations, will come and go, the individual will always survive to create new
ones. Thus, it should be accepted that the individual needs will always take priority
over group needs. It should then be no surprise that when societies do not
accommodate the needs of its individuals, they will act out against the obstacles.
This is inevitable. This is right. This is just, in the highest sense of the
word. This is spiritual intention.

What are the individual needs? The human physiological needs for air, food,
warmth and procreation are already fairly well understood. It is quite obvious
what happens when the needs go unmet. Therefore, most social structures are
fairly successful at accommodating them. But there are individual psychological
needs which are impressed upon the body by spirit and which speak through
the human emotional system. These are the needs that are unrecognized, dishonored,
denied and for the most part, remain frustrated. But they are
experienced in some form within each and every human being the world over.
The individual needs are about development and expression of spiritual (or genetic)
potential. They translate into the need to explore, create, find meaning
and successfully interact with the environment, the need for power and equitable
freedom to control one’s own destiny, and to ultimately contribute their
unique offering to humanity. Although there are many forms through which
these essential needs can be met, they are at the core of human motivation and
behavior. When an adequate level of individual needs are being met, then the
group needs are experienced.

The Group (Connection) Needs

The group needs are essentially about maintaining an awareness of the spiritual
connection with All That Is. They translate into the need to commune, affiliate
and interact with other humans and life forms, to be accepted and recognized as
unique, to love and be loved and to experience a spiritual connectedness with
the world.

These needs interact, of course, and there are no hard and fast rules about priority,
other than that an adequate level of individual need must be met or itsrustration will
interfere with the relational group needs. These needs and their
fulfillment are the biologically ordained translation of spiritual intention. They
are the level of spiritual expression below which humans cannot dip without
emotional, physical and social repercussions.

The feelings constantly report the spiritual need-fulfillment status. This is the
human insurance policy that prevents the species from complete severance from
spirit and complete disorientation within their own camouflage. Humans should
be extremely thankful to their ―good fortunes that they are endowed with such
insurance. They should be highly reverent of these needs, and the feelings that
communicate them. At bare minimum, they should be aware of them. Humans
should ensure that every society accommodates them fully and equitably. For
this embodiment of need, of course, is not simply due to lucky stars, need fulfillment
is the goal; it is indeed spiritual intention.

Human need is the principle upon which the information is exchanged between
mind and body when spirit is essentially left out of the loop (as is now the
case). Emotion is the language. Human feelings signal need fulfillment, or lack
thereof, through the experience of pleasure or pain. It is an information exchange
system—a feedback system—both mental and physical.

Feelings as Feedback Between Mind and Body

But what is feedback you ask? Feedback is an information exchange system
that relates the status of two things and keeps them at some preset level of balance.
Feedback systems are elegant and abundant in biological systems, from
chemical reactions within single cells, to complex ecological interaction in the
biosphere. It is one of nature’s favorite systems to keep physical forms in their
required state of balance.

A feedback system compares two things, signals an imbalance, then effects a
corrective change to restore the balance. For example, a home heating thermostat.
The desired temperature is compared to the actual temperature and when
the balance is upset, the heat clicks on or off to restore the balance.
Spirit is experienced as emotion within human mental and physical realms.
(This is the disconnected Will aspect of spirit). The feeling system is part of
the immune defense system. Thus, the two things that are compared by this
feedback system are internal and external worlds—self and non-self.

The human feeling system exists to mediate humans in their physical world. If
internal mental thoughts lead to external actions that result in meeting the needs
in new and creative ways, the person becomes aware of this through positive,
good feelings. Likewise, if thoughts lead to actions that do not meet needs, or
external obstacles are encountered, this is known to the person through negative
or bad feelings. These are the comparative and signaling aspects of the feedback
system.

The Hardwired Responses

The next step in the feedback cycle is the corrective action. The emotion comes
with physical arousal—body energy—that is intended to motivate corrective
responses. These corrections can be mental adjustments or they can be physical
actions. But they are intended to be corrective in the highest sense of the word
they are the singular process preventing utter human enmeshment within the
Earthly camouflage. Emotional reactions are the final vestiges of a vital, unbreakable,
spiritual, communicative tie.

If humans had come to earth and become completely enchanted by their own
early creations, they still would have had this corrective safety net. If such
enchantment had led them to choices that endangered their very lives, they could
fall back on automatic responses that could rescue them. These active responses
follow emotional arousal and are often acted out without much
conscious thought or mental involvement. Or, they are often acted out with
highly creative mental involvement. They base nearly every human action, yet
their nature is grossly misunderstood. Each and every evil act of human beings,
as well as most every individual and social ill, is traceable to one of these self
preservationary responses or a perversion thereof.

The two general categories of hardwired corrective response are to approach
and to avoid. It is the basic spiritual directive to ―approach that which causes
pleasure and to ―avoid that which causes pain. The ―approach response accompanies
good feelings. It is intended to lead us in those same directions we
are going—those that are working, or improved directions that meet needs in
new and creative ways.

The approach can be in the acquisition and implementation of a creative idea,
belief or strategy. It can be a repetition of an existing strategy or a refinement
following a pleasurable outcome. It can be a simple physical approach to that
which is attractive in any sense. This is a ―hard-wired‖ self preservationary response
that can also facilitate self-development and expression. This establishes
a cyclic relationship where the pleasure becomes the goal. The evolving beliefs
and actions to attain it are finely honed and thus verified by subsequent pleasurable
successes. Although there are some cultural complications, following
positive feelings to attain positive ends is quite intuitive. For the most part, it
happens very naturally and without too much mental interference. For the positive
feelings of joy are the resonance of a satisfied spirit, and humans know this
within every fiber of their being.

The avoid responses can be quite a bit more complex. These are the responses
that get humans into a great deal of trouble. They are generally known as the
responses of fight and flight. They exist so that the human can forcibly remove,
or escape from, an obstruction in the external world. The avoidant responses
can be productive and positive, or they can be extremely destructive and debilitating.
We will be discussing these responses at length, for they are the core of self understanding
and the place where positive action, rapid growth and change, can
occur, once they are understood in their entirety. But first, it is necessary to
have the underlying conceptual foundation of the feedback system and how it
has been affected by the evolution of human mind.

The Fully Functional Feedback System

The emotional feedback system is part of the physical immune system. But, this
safety net offers far more than simple self preservation. When it is allowed
smooth, unimpaired functioning, humans operate upon the hedonic principle of
approach and avoid. This follows spiritual intention and motivates innately
moral responses.

Humans read the feedback feeling signals to understand the nature of their relationship
with the outside world, as well as with the other humans they
encounter. They use their feelings to judge how well the contents of the mind
are doing toward creating a reality that meets an adequate level of human need.
They can continuously adjust the beliefs and other mental tools so that they are
afforded maximum self development and expression. They can take external
active communicative steps to remove unnecessary cultural obstacles. They experience
far more pleasure than pain. They experience balance between mind,
body and spirit, and they experience glowing, vital, energized, physical health.
Civilizations can evolve based upon the individual contributions without unnecessary
restrictions that inevitably reflect in social symptoms of fear, anger,
violations and despair.

Thus, the feedback system can, at minimum, accomplish self-preservation. At
maximum, it can assure self development and expression—and in doing so restore
the inner spiritual guidance that has so long gone unrecognized. When the
spiritual messages received through inner communication are acted upon by
individuals, humans will automatically begin disassembling the rigid mental
constructs that now inhibit other spiritual communicative pathways. There will
be an unfolding of inner senses that existing beliefs flatly deny.

This is the path to the raising of human consciousness. This is the first and direct
path, for without understanding these core features of human nature, free
will is misdirected and the status quo of self-preservationary actions will continue,
and continue, and continue, ad infinitum.

The Self, The Mind, The Body

History has been limited to this cycle because of the lack of understandings that
these Lessons seek to impart. They are reasonably straightforward and elegant
in their simplicity. Indeed, many of the core ideas already exist as general
knowledge, but certain subtleties have allowed the bigger picture to remain
hidden.

A major subtlety is the relationship between emotion and the immune system.
Another major subtlety is the confusion over such concepts of mind, self, spirit,
body, where one leaves off, and where another begins. We have offered the
very important distinction between mind and spirit, and now must build upon
that understanding and define the self. For these two subtleties interact to create
a major impediment to the fully functionally emotional feedback system.
We know that the human immune system is driven by a self versus non-self distinction.
So is the emotional system—with some crucial differences. Within the
immune system’s biological definition of self, everything inside the skin constitutes
self and everything outside the skin (in the outside physical world), is
defined as non-self. It is due to this rigid biological definition of self that part of
the communication system breaks down. For the biological parameter of selfakes no
distinction between mind and spirit, for both are considered as self,
for both exist inside the human body.

Initially, when humans first donned the chemical cloak, there was virtually no
mind, merely straight-line communication between spirit and body through inner
senses that now lie virtually dormant. This refers mostly to the receptacle
aspect of human mind, for ideas could ebb and flow like tides in and out of
physical consciousness. The feedback system compared inside and outside
worlds, just as it does for immunity. The entire inside world is self-mind, body
and spirit. Once the individual mind and The Mind of Man began to accumulate
and retain information, externals became the overpowering controller, and the
internal system became skewed. This was ―The Fall from Grace.

Mind now exists as an interloper, a monkey wrench of sorts, smack dab in the
middle of the feedback system. The problem is that mind not only is part of the
internal environment—the self—but it is also part of the external environment—
not self. The collection of man-made ideas that are passed down from
one generation to the next, come from the Mind of Man—the outside environment,
the not-self. They then become absorbed into the self concept as they are
accepted and retained within each individual mind. The feedback system necessarily
compares self against not-self. Therefore, the dual nature of mind
confounds it.

This is the underlying reason why emotions are no longer understood as motivator
of desirable behavior, let alone spiritual intent. They often seem to spur
unwanted, even destructive actions. Part of the reason for this is because needs
of the spirit are not understood and are often further obscured and contradicted
by the cultural dictates within the Mind of Man. Thus, the emotional signals
seem random, chaotic and the bane of human existence. For despite the association
between physical illness and lack of emotional expression, virtually every
society has rigid rules in place to suppress or control the effects of understanding
emotional human nature.

The rest of the reason is that humans do not understand the nature of the corrective
signals of the feedback system, nor the most spiritually desirous way of
responding to them. The solution to this problem lies in a universal understanding
of the divisional boundary between mind and spirit.

This is why it is now crucial to understand and honor boundaries and features
of mind as distinct from those of spirit. We know now that mind and spirit have
very different attributes, as well as virtually conflicting goals. Spiritual intention
is at minimum, self-preservation. It is, at maximum, self-development and
expression. The spirit cannot be expressed if it is not preserved.

Even without the potential development, some expression is better than none.
Thus, the self-preservationary goals are hardwired within the body to at least
ensure that humans have vehicles for spiritual expression. But once they are
there, they have the goal of developing the mind in ways that maximize such
expressions. So there are conflicting goals within the body—to both mentally
self develop and to spiritually self-preserve.

All emotional signals are based upon the self-preservationary directive without
regard for the mind that evolved later. The emotional system does not
in and of itself consider mind at all. It simply signals faithfully the message to
self-preserve and motivates certain actions that support that goal. The answer to
the dilemma now facing humans is to embrace the language of emotion and realize
that it requires one interpretation for features of mind to self develop
and the exact opposite for features of spirit to self preserve. This will resolve
the seemingly conflicting messages of human feelings and reestablish the inner
guide.

To this end, we can now turn to a more specific focus upon the emotional nature
of humanity