I've often been aware of this deep instinct to survive in my work with people and just in observing myself and life around me. It is likely one of the most powerful forces we deal with on a day to day basis, yet we are rarely aware of just how many of our fears and patterns of behaviour are actually connected to this built in survival mechanism.
Where I find this drive to stay alive most interesting is in the way we've woven in all kinds of unresolved memories and beliefs and concepts making it almost impossible to tell what's really a threat and what isn't. Most of the time fearful responses are so automatic there isn't even a moment of questioning the veracity of the triggers. When following the thread of belief behind a fear based reaction, it isn't unusual to come to the place where a person's very survival has been deemed to be threatened when in fact there was no such threat at all. A very simplistic example of this is glancing in the back yard and seeing a length of rope in the grass and mistaking it for a snake. It isn't the truth but if you don't check it out you will never know.
So it is with all kinds of fearful reactions we have to things that happen in life; if we don't check out if our assumptions are real or not (more often than not they aren't) we just keep reacting fearfully to anything that triggers those deeply buried memories. They become part of the survival instinct which is thus distorted, often to the point of not being recognizable. That's why it's so important to keep checking out those fearful reactions, they are rarely what we think they are on the surface.
When we do see them for what they really are, distorted projections of unresolved memories, with compassion and understanding then we can move beyond them and live life more fully.There's so much more life to be lived.Namaste
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