150_Analysis Notes – 11/21/2020

Let’s talk identity as it relates to the conscious and subconscious minds. As I mentioned in the last entry, identity is everything to survival. However, we must remember that identity goes beyond self. Identity is how we define ourselves within the tribe. Of course, primal survival mechanisms define that sense of self as a measurement of our position in a small group. It is where we stand in our family of origin, position at work, or place in community. 

If anything threatens our positions, we suffer severe stress. This threat is the most common stress in our society, as our definitions of self are often vulnerable to societal rules. The way those rules affect identity is continually changing.  While gender roles aren’t what they once were, societal definitions of the past gave us a lot of data. For example, there is a high percentage of men who die soon after retiring from their position as the family provider and women who have suffered empty nest syndrome.

Like the changing gender roles, society is in constant flux. Highly successful people can become homeless because the industry where they invested thirty years no longer exists. Divorce or devastating losses through illness or accident can change the entire fabric of individual existence. Tribes change, and our position in the tribe changes, and because we now live in an ever-changing world, these changes are creating an epidemic of stress.

Our subject lived in a constant state of stress due to her the same kind of identity issues. She grew in an environment where she had little value. Whether it was in her family tribe or the tribe she craved in her neighborhood, her identity was expendable. She was the weak gazelle, continually willing to compromise her own identity to bolster others. She was the one who fell on the sword.

As we are evolving, it is crucial we now define our identity through global survival mechanisms, where we consider our place within the species. Humanity becomes our tribe. To begin, this takes away the need for tribal security, usually acquired as strength in numbers. In the above situation, having a strong tribe is as essential as having a strong position in the tribe. The captain of a sinking ship is still dying. However, as I mentioned, our global condition no longer provides resources to achieve the impossible goal of always being the strongest pack’s leader.

Our subject still seeks an escape from her tribe of origin because they are a dying breed. She seeks the more evolved, the more successful community model she observed growing up. They are still part of the social survival model. However, where her family was a failed experiment of the model, the family she now saves is a successful representation of the same model. 

On the one hand, we see the Social Survival model evidenced in her desire to move from a failing pack to a more successful group. On the other hand, we are also seeing her step into a Core Survival Model, as she is not defining herself within the pack, not entirely. Her definition is now one of Global Healer. She works with people of all tribes to promote healing. It has given her a tribal position within the strongest pack available, one with over seven and a half billion gazelles in it. She is now beyond the weakest of the herd and away from the pursuit of predators.

There are still hints of Social Survival in her pursuit of individual groups, but there is also the more prevalent influence of the global model.

So, what does this have to do with the conscious and subconscious mind? It is the parent, the guide, the resource of information that has helped her evolve. The subconscious mind is continually working to improve our chance of survival. Where those steeped in social survival models are looking to other humans to guide their growth, she is following information beyond anything she has been taught. There is no physical instructor here. There is no class she has taken or guru to guide her. Her evolution has been by internal voice alone and the confirmation of a glass sliding across a table.

Technically speaking, she is being guided by what some might call the voice of God. It doesn’t look like a burning bush or the vision of an angel standing over her bed, but it may well be the same thing. It is a suggestion of her subconscious mind. However, the recommendations are not the typical suggestions of habit. They are evolving directions of innovation. They are a new idea calculated from the same supercomputer that guides us in our dreams, calculating the best opportunities for survival. Wherever we believe God exists, the place she has found Him seems to be within the recesses of innovative thought.