The Beginnings of Man -Part 2

To understand why the nature of man is different from other species, we must first establish what our differences are from the primate world we physically evolved from….

Man’s inner characteristics are altogether different from the ancestral root which governs other species. Why then is he so different?

If you haven’t read Part 1 -here it is The Beginnings of Man -Part 1 – Mine Quick Voice of Aquarius

To understand why the nature of man is different from other species, we must first establish what our differences are from the primate world we physically evolved from. Our closest ‘relatives’ the apes, gorillas, and chimpanzees are like Man, family orientated, having respect for the hierarchical order of age and experience and are protective of their environment to ensure the safe upbringing of their young and provision of food. They do not desire to dominate other species or their like and will only kill or disable to protect their kind and the territory which enables their way of life. Their memory is instinctually formed from community needs. Their ego which is part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and unconscious is instinctually driven by their ancestral nature.

Human beings will go further to engage and unify with different kinds of people. They practice the hierarchy of blood ties but will not allow procreation to govern hierarchies of order considered necessary to defend the interests of like-minded need. They have an innate desire to dominate and control other species, and memory goes far beyond the need to remember place, person, and life-giving support. The ego that mediates between the conscious and unconscious is guided by two concepts which often war with each other, namely a need to understand rights and wrongs and the belief in their self-creation; I am what I am.

Whilst the environment engenders Man’s survival instinct so also does his self-awareness which ultimately governs his survival needs. It is evident from recorded history the ego of Man is intent on self-creation. Whilst conceptual values are broadly common across all ethnically different populations, conscious interpretation to effect the superego varies widely.  Whilst Man’s instinctual nature to survive is primarily engendered by the environment, it is the ego which decides the cause of threat, the outcome of which will always be predicated by the awareness of Self as understood by the ego.

Because the ancestral nature of Man is elemental in origin it means that the id -source of all his instinctual expressions can never be fully rationalised. In practise Man’s rational mind is constantly attempting to balance the promotion of his superego with the instinctual irrational impulses that are generated by his ancestral heritage.

The result? He is continually in conflict with himself, which is why history keeps repeating itself, or as some would say he never learns….

The Darwinian evolution theory states that species evolve over time through natural selection, where advantageous traits increase an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction. Molecular biology and genetics have confirmed physically formed evolutionary relationships, such as the close genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees and acknowledges all living organisms share common ancestors, but the sciences are unable to explain how the uniqueness of man’s evolution was caused or why his egocentric development is so markedly different to our nearest physical ancestors. Survival of the fittest does not give an adequate answer. And so it follows his relationship with the environment is different to all other individualised life species.

In addition to individualised species, perennial plant life is by far the most widespread kind of life on Earth. Man does not describe it as having consciousness as he defines that only able of a species who is consciously aware of evolving self-creatively; the ‘I think so I am’ argument. Perennial plant life and its interactivity with the elements of fire, water, air, and earth have a major influence on Man. In accordance with seasonal life cycles, weather conditions, and cosmical influences, the perennial life world can undo and destroy Man’s physical creations.

And as Man’s sensorial nature is directly influenced by environmental changes they do affect the balance of the mental and emotional order of his mind. It is accepted many species have conscious awareness of impending change, both internally and externally before they become physically fact. Man however is overly dependent upon the rational mind to advise conscious awareness and will dismiss or repress the instinctual response which is trying to advise him.

His inability to consistently channel instinctual awareness is entirely due to the development of his rational mind which restricts the id of his consciousness the ability to express awareness of his ancestral memory, implicit to his DNA. This points to a fundamental difference between himself and other forms of Earth Life, all of whom maintain awareness of their ancestral mind as expressed by their instinctual nature.

Is it possible that some form of unearthly life affected the development of Man, and were causal of the difference between himself and other forms of Earthly life? We know the Earth has historically been impacted by meteors, fireballs, solar flares, and planetary gravitational pulls, altering land and sea masses, their vibrational nature absorbed into the Earth’s crust, but such physical and neo-physical phenomenon would also have influenced all other life forms, including our nearest ancestors.

To understand why humans are a uniquely different species and regard themselves as the Overlord of all other Earth forms of life we need to understand the nature of his consciousness.

Scientific research has been said to say some individual species don’t know they exist because they don’t possess reflective consciousness, i.e., the ability to know the self, and because they are driven by and totally possessed by the id. We should not accept this analysis because the instinctual self as manifested in a moving form exhibit both physiological and behavioural responses ultimately aimed at propagation which is compulsively selective. This means that vertebrates have awareness of what their need demands and that is a form of reflective consciousness.

                And any form of reflective consciousness, whatever the species, is a form of mind that interacts between the id and the superego. So, for example because a fish can feel pain it does so because it possesses reflective consciousness. Some animals, including our nearest mammalian world relatives the chimpanzees have well-developed egos, a strongly developed interaction between their id and Superego which for them is a function of their societal memory and parental standards.        

So how does Man’s reflective consciousness, the awareness of self, differ from his nearest mammalian relatives? In our own terms we describe our consciousness as the awareness of one’s mental states arising from the interactivity of the ego enabling the evaluation of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. And this differs in one critical aspect to the highest form of ego development in our nearest genetically comparable species, the chimpanzee, namely it is the ability to be selectively aware of our own mental states and decisively able to change their order and priority. Whereas the chimpanzee capacity to change order and priority is governed by the id’s memory reception. To put it another way their behavioural responses are predictable.

It is not because human brain is three times larger, but because it operates differently. Recent studies have shown that whilst we share anywhere from 96-99% of our DNA with the chimpanzee there are areas which instead of producing proteins, act by changing the formation and tactics of protein producing genes, which in simple English means humans have a DNA structure that enables thinking!

Am I saying that Chimpanzees don’t think? No I am not. What is different in Man is his ability to reason, whereas the chimpanzee only considers and decides on need. When human beings reason they invoke the order of their self-centred ego, which is forever unsatisfied with the responses!

Part 3 next week!

The Path of Self Discovery

Photo by JACK REDGATE on Pexels.com

Before I introduce my self-healing crusade, I must make a mention about scams. Over the past year the number of phoney emails, texts, and phone calls has gone through the roof. Often repeating hour on hour, day after day their scary messages. Media providers appear unable to prevent -never mind stem the flow of these opportunistic thieves. If it were simply a case of pressing the delete button we might simply write them off as annoying –but that doesn’t undo the damage they do to our well-being.

In some instances, so carefully presented they appear only to refer to you, they cause anxiety, fear, and distress. They also make you hesitant to answer the phone and maybe cause you to miss genuine calls for help, family and friends communications, and necessary updates on genuine commitments you have. And of course, if you link into social media sites –again you can be subject to unwarranted abuse.

Spare a thought for the seniors in our population, often having to battle with daily demands in order to sensibly live, who get caught up in this endless flow of scamming demands. It’s not just money we can lose -mental and emotional confidence in self can be lost also. People can become generally distrustful, less than willing to open up and share concerns and care –in short their identity is submerged and troubles of other kinds, seemingly unrelated, characterise their waking and sleeping hours.

Self-healing is not only practises to boost your well-being, but also the means of restoring awareness of your identity, an acceptance of change which alters behaviours;

it is a process to regenerate purpose -without which we are vulnerable to an ever-changing reactive world. In this post I want to make you aware, whatever you believe in, or not, whoever is important in your life, or not, self-healing can only begin when you realise the environment you occupy is a game-changer.

Environments directly and indirectly influence our behaviours -physically, mentally, and emotionally. I’m not simply talking about the mood of the sky we walk under, the appearance of welcome sun, the feel of natural places, or for that matter the closed in areas we can occupy, be they home, shops, places of work etc.

Environments are living entities -they breathe, give and take, characterise our responses on many different levels.

There’s no such thing as a ‘clean’ environment -they comprise many influences, some of course are human, some are nature generated -some positively healthy, some not. But what we must understand environments are not static -they are forever moving and changing. Because we are influenced by the space we occupy it points to the fact we are not walled-in containers of energy -quite the opposite, we are instrumental of living forces 24-7.

You wouldn’t think so given how we mostly define our wants and needs rationally, which if they do account for our environments -it’s in acknowledgement of our need of place, like or dislike. Whereas the reality is our entire nature -be it the manner of thought, expression of emotion, or our insight of purpose, is integral with the space we occupy.

If you’ve had a personal reading with an astrologer, they will advise on strengths, weaknesses, opportunistic trends, and periods of time when the going can get tough -and when best to action your intentions. And you will also know you can’t get the personal reading unless you can advise time, date, and place of birth. Planetary forces are yet another level of environment that influence our BodyMind character. The astrologer can advise on these planetary force influences uniquely configured at the time of our birth , which you take with you throughout your life. It’s another way of recognising environments are not pick and mix options -they are part of us and we are part of them.

So, to summarise -self-healing can only be effective when we actively acknowledge, accept, and implement the influences we give and receive from the environments we occupy. To do that harmony between our conscious, unconscious, physical, emotional, mental nature has to be our purpose. In short we must develop BodyMind consciousness.

And why is this self-healing development especially important right now?

The world is in the grip of a pandemic -the virus that is causing lockdown, innumerable deaths, and other health issues is not going away. The science of vaccinology not only cannot keep up with the spread of variants, the means by which it combats the virus development is only partially (time bound) effective. Which is why next week I’ll be talking about defence -how YOU can mitigate -even defeat the virus.

The poem I’ve written for this week can be interpreted in two ways -a call to someone you love, and as an invocation to the undiscovered Self.

If I could be

If I could be where you are found
when night gives way to day
beyond the boundaries of my sense
then this all too busy mind
would rest and I would simply be,

where the crocus stamen imitates the sun
leaves grow green and branches stretch
and a thousand sounds I cannot hear
form a circle where you are found
there I will rest and simply be.

To Know Oneself

Photo by jonas mohamadi on Pexels.com

In last weeks post I wrote about the health damaging effects the lockdown is having -whilst the News maintains and reinforces ‘stay at home’ messages on the one hand and encourages you to believe all will be well when everyone (including children) are vaccinated. The ‘Sword of Damocles’ (fear of the unknown) not only engenders negativity -it represses our energetic nature, which is root and branch to sensible life.

Scientists tell us that our energy comes from food -that chemically we are machines, and from input we form adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the primary source of energy for all body functions, and our stored chemical energy is used to replenish the ATP we require for sensible life. The scientists are right but only partially right -the tail is wagging the dog!

Last week I proposed this question – Can we identify the energies we feel within ourselves? And my answer was -it’s bio-magnetic, interpenetrating every cell of the body and is a movement of force, and its emotional character stimulates thought. Environment is everything. Individually we generate environments from within ourselves and by interacting with ‘foreign’ environments. When we are prevented from doing this -as we are by the lockdown measures, the ‘machine’, lacking the stimulus, behaves badly. We overeat, under exercise, get depressed, get bad-tempered, and lose hope.

Personality changes.

Personality is defined as a characteristic set of behaviours, cognitions, and emotional patterns evolving from biological and environmental factors -as such it is generally referred to as our character, and as you might expect there is no generally agreed definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions with one’s environment, defining personality by its traits and behaviourally based approaches. My understanding of personality has developed from the interaction I have with other species of earthly life, higher forms of life, and the awareness of parallel worlds.

All life is cyclical. Time measured observations show life spans vary enormously, from micro-seconds to millennium. The human physical cycle has a potential of 120 years that has rarely been achieved because the inheritance at birth, and the environmental mix of outward and inner demands exert influences to shorten life span. The human personality begins as a formation of characteristic traits in the foetus, comprising parental physical, emotional, and mental conditions, and higher vibratory influences varying in accordance with environment the foetus and its mother occupy. In the pre-natal state, the child’s Earthly Will nature is absent -at this juncture of life the child’s soulful nature is all things to all men.

The bond that most mothers feel during pregnancy is created by their own nature needing to bind their Earthly Will with the unborn infant. From the moment of physical birth, the child is in conflict with its inheritance -activity that will ultimately shape its own Earthly Will.

Initially, a child is only outwardly interested in food and comfort. Instinctually it knows that food is necessary to survive. Comfort arises from the satisfaction of receiving food, and it generates awareness of energy as a source of protection. The ego is born -the new born child aims to survive. As the child grows, day by day, week by week, the environment it occupies attracts; initially the mother, then the father, then other siblings, family etc -all of which is based upon a like attracts like basis. The child’s reception is governed by its instinctual mind, a complex of physical emotional influences that draws upon the soul nature’s demand to support survival.

The world of Men is the major force of attraction because instinctively the child knows that from the focus its mother has given by her Earthly Will. The child has has an inborn knowledge of the natural world, which was received during womb life; it is accepted without question because it is naturally instrumental -the conscious mind has yet to develop rationality. As reception of outside influences increase it will change and re-evaluate the dependencies it has on human influences, and develop a Will of its own.

From this beginning the personality takes shape, traits, and behaviours develop in the instinctual mind, and will form the basis upon which consciousness will develop. The influence of family and other human beings is critical in determining how that child will develop in later years. Human consciousness begins its development from the moment a child is born, and it is radically different from the consciousness it has prior to birth.

In the pre-birth state, all influences, whether they originate in physically transmitted DNA of human character, or they come from other soul-like sources, are not subject to the formulation of an identifiable character -ego is absent in the foetus. What is present is an instrumental form of consciousness that acknowledges, accepts and releases without establishing choice. As such it has a universal nature, and its direction and life span is determined by the balance of influences present at any one moment of time.

There’s an old saying; to know where you are going, to determine your future, you must know where you come from -or to put it more simply; to go forward you must first go back.

I will continue this theme of self-discovery in next week’s post.

As I’ve been talking about self-discovery, here’s a poem I’ve written that makes a comment on that. By way of explanation to aid reading, Azoth is the name given by ancient alchemists to mercury, the animating spirit hidden in all matter that makes transmutation possible, and Hur is the name given to the Earth’s inner chamber -its ancestral heart.

Azoth’s Daughter

When your eyes hook to the morning star
still and shining, free from tears;
sleep warm lungs slake the cold unfeeling air.
Untold thoughts of troubled dreams disperse
and the earth untrammelled by your feet awakes.

And as your senses find their root in earth
The pretence of knowledge dies;
you become the bride of nature -the soul
formed dream, all true and understated.
Your voices stilled by heavens majesty.

And when you have gotten empty
the worldly oyster smashed in search of pearl;
your body becomes the honeycomb chamber
for every seed bearing tree.
Your love a legion of unlimited power.

And if your senses can remain alive
To dissolve the last of human care,
love weary worshipping truth is discovered
with every fish, fowl and bee;
in the wheel forming heavens of Hur.

Truly the daughter of Azoth;
at one with the life giving earth,
shape shifting intangible air.
in marriage to the polygamous sea
aflame in the untouchable fire.

Spiritus Animatus!

It’s with great pleasure that I can announce the publication of a new book on Astrology by my wife Pam, who many of you know is a professional Astrologer. The book ‘THE MAP of LIFE’ is available in bookshops and on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Map-Life-PamAshenden/

A flash of light in the universe and a new soul is born. See your map of life simply explained and unfold before you with this easy to understand guide to Astrology. This easy to understand guide shows you how a horoscope is put together. Examples of famous people give insight on how Astrology provides maps of life which can guide and advise the best course of actions. Pam’s spiritual approach gives a deeper understanding of natal charts, shows how to know yourself and others and encourages you to be your own astrologer. Know yourself, understand your strengths so you can overcome your weaknesses and live a happy life.