I believe that before Human beings emerged, there was nothing called 'the sacred'. There was practicality - a long, long time of it. There was cause
and effect - and even before the sense of the sacred emerged, there was the implicitness of its presence in the functional and motivational dynamics
of living organisms. The cell considers the glucose to be 'sacred'; its need to function properly means it will always seek what it needs to
survive.
Similarly, any behavioral function between organism and world has a 'power' about it; its continuous presence in organizing behavior gives it a
'godlike' power; the affects we feel - the meanings which arise from 'within', in animals and also in our own reflexive cognition, is felt but
never 'known' in any metacognitive way; but we can see how essential these 'pathways' are.
The entirety of evolution up until the emergence of humans has been an evolution of the 'horizontal'. Rightly is the gnostic cross the recognized
symbol for Earth - the 3rd planet from the sun which hosts life. The horizontal refers to 'dynamical' interactions between objects. The horizontal
precedes us; before there was ever a mind able to reflect, the horizontal relations between organisms were 'selected' by the horizontal effects upon
their functioning by other objects. The horizontal is first; it describes the foundation and base of what consciousness will later work from in its
growth and development. Meanings - the basic 'crux' of how we think - comes from the body - the affective body, the body that is used in movement
and provides source material for meaning. You cannot cut the vertical from the horizontal if you want to stay sane and in control of your existence.
Nothing makes sense - and worst of all - happiness and relief from suffering cannot be found - without a thorough investigation of the horizontal.
We can call the vertical the 'existential'. What is 'existential', from a brain science perspective - that is, from a biodynamical account of
image-formation (meaning)? In brain science, the idea of 're-entry' is essential to anything having to do with metacognition (i.e. existential
perception), and this function appears to be mediated by the evolved frontal cortex, which in turn is ontologically 'reusing' the images formed
through early-life interactions with mirroring caregivers. By the time 'existential images' form, there is a whole pre-history of
affective-interactions which produce 'images' in the form of the feelings we experience in our bodies. These feelings are the base for
'metaphorical transformation' - or the complex image-schema derived from the semiotics of movement in a 3 dimensional environment, and interaction
with 'others' who serve as the source of social (as well as existential) meaning.
The social is initself a basic geometrically organized dynamic operating between 'self' and 'other'. These categories of relation are based in
affective-predictions of the other's body language, so that when a body-language is displayed, the organism reflexively represents what it believes
will happen; this expecatancy is of course quite recognizable in our experiences, yet, because it is a process, and not a 'thing', people tend to
ignore it as something which actually matters. Indeed, all existential perception is 'run through' the social dynamics underlying affect. If our
world is competitive, our 'god' is competitive. If we contemplated a situation different from our own, its still the primary attractor, or
archetype, or "god", which affectively frames how you experience and perceive the 'other'.
The idea of 'accepting the ground', or overlooking how feelings frame the way we think and reflect and assert something, is a profound error in
judgement that derives, quite deliberately, from the self's understandable need to protect itself from perceptions that are experienced negatively by
it. This 'reflex' is part of the circular process that operates within the mind - perception is largely passive (even if there are active dimensions
to it, it is still in the larger scheme of things passive) whereas cognition is inherently adaptive - inherently about self-protection; furthermore,
this cognitive response is more like a 'pyramid', then a point: there are unconscious 'knowings' from past experiences which cumulatively
'select' the conscious experience that would (based on past information) produce the most 'relaxed', or effective, way of processing the upcoming
relationship.
I believe everyone knows this is the truth about how our minds work. Knowledge matters, whereas ignorance can allow the formation of false and
irrational arguments that are, fundamentally, built around the subject of self-defense, knowledge can recognize what is real, what matters (literally,
'changes things') and so, we can and probably would feel a great deal better when we are in attunement with the natural world, rather than in
opposition to it - as if our understanding and self-belief weren't in themselves reflexively organized around self-defense processes. We avoid this
fact by pretending that are feelings aren't 'temporally longer' ontological objects - frameworks which frame our psycholinguistic mind, and
therefore fundamentally encompassing our cognitive processes.
Whereas feelings are built in early-life, cognitions, or self narratives based in a 'psycholinguistically' organized belief system, occur later.
Both of these processes are reflexes, even if people like to believe that the latter is 'true' simply because they experience themselves thinking it
- as if it hasn't been proven again and again that we are more often than not overly confident about the source material of our experiences.
I don't mean by the term source material mere visual images; I am talking about the feelings that arise, and how we interpret those feelings. The
former is largely a function of early life brain development, where 'affect regulation' is predominantly built with reference to how well the
primary caregiver regulates us. We know from our feelings how well they did. Many, if not most of us, feel a lot of negative feelings because a good
chunk of the general population has been traumatized in this 0-2 year range, and because of this intense dysregulation, have become incredibly
anti-social in their self-organization; this may go a 'avoid individualistic' way, where friends are more or less people with alike views; or, they
can become a full blown narcissist with intense 'self-belief'. Whichever way they go, they have a common 'sociopathic' relationship to other
peoples needs and emotional realities, and they don't realize that their contempt derives from their own extremely wounded 'inner core self' which
hates others because the other in their own development was so negligent and/or abusive in their relations. Having your needs ignored at such a basic
age where self-regulation is a physiological impossibility is an intense cruelty; and we - or society at large - pays for it by not realizing how
differently organized human beings can truly become. It's not their fault - true; but it's also deeply important that we find a solution to this
problem - because perception is indeed a function of the 'attunement' between self and reality. Denying the latters relevance to your own internal
perceptual experience is deeply deluded - and if were ever going to help ourselves through this complex situation we find ourselves in, it can...