Remembering.

One of the most important things that babies do to ensure their survival is that they do not inhibit full-bodied emotional expression.  They trust that natural intelligence coursing through them and allow for it to manifest authentically as a result.  They cry out when they need something, and it allows their caretakers to know when to feed them/clean them/rock them/touch and hold them/make eye contact with them, etc.  This then enables them to survive, grow, and perhaps even learn how this ever-developing expression of intelligence might allow them to support the entire species' immediate growth and survival as well.

Unfortunately, by the time we've reached adulthood we've often received so many mixed messages about whether or not we can trust our natural intelligence that we begin to mistrust some of our survival-linked impulses too.  I think that the consequences of that inner-breach are absolutely devastating PRECISELY because that kind of internalized mistrust risks threatening our very survival most of all.   It seems to me that the real threat arises when we no longer have access to a reliable relationship with our instinctual ways of perceiving information.

I don't mean to suggest that we surrender to every instinct, but instead that we learn to understand and work with the intelligent information that those instincts can contain.  Without this basic trust in our natural intelligence, we often began to ignore what we know and ultimately run the risk of misunderstanding what's really happening in any given moment.

Furthermore, this kind of suspicious or dismissive attitude toward ourselves creates a kind of inner-violence and neglect that will manifest in our outer world as well.  No one has ever said it better than whomever first said "violence begets violence".  It's often hard to understand or remember the origin of the original injury, but suffice it to say:  inner violence begets outer violence and vice versa.

The good news is that we can break this cycle of violence by turning inward with a different kind of attitude.  Often times it is too big of a leap to move from an inner attitude of suspicion and neglect to one of reverence and love.  For myself, however, I have discovered that I can approach almost anything with simple curiosity.  Curiously, I have also discovered that curiosity is really the only ingredient needed to begin.