We Really Want to Live at the Visceral Level
By
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
“Visceral: Referring to the viscera, the internal organs of the body, specifically those within the chest (as the heart or lungs) or abdomen (as the liver, pancreas or intestines).” Wikipedia
| “Visceral feelings are feelings that you feel very deeply and find it difficult to control or ignore, and that are not the result of thought. (LITERARY)”We want to feel love, joy, fear, anger, and be excited by the opportunity to test ourselves. But we often cut ourselves off from feelings that are available to us very naturally.
We get bored and seek thrills because in our daily lives we stop living in the hear and now. Outside stimulus or information enters the mind and our reptilian, limbic and neo cortex get together and decide that they “have seen that, been there” and cast it into a pile we also call “Personality”. Our personality spends a lot of time filtering and protecting and creating defense mechanisms so that we are not over whelmed with too many truths. There are by many studies 9 personality types. None are bad but they are all different in how they interpret and defend our world view. Our view starts at infancy. Behavior is a combination of genes and absorption of environment in our early years. By the age of 14, we have a personality that is acting out our world view. We only open up on certain occasions to get new stimulus. We get so trapped that we have to seek triggers to create feelings. We love movies, sports, news, and gossip that will make us feel. We often resort to habitual behaviors that will give us the feelings we think we need even if they are negative. |
If we want to get beneath our personalities into who we really are, we have to have the willingness to explore and connect with our deeper selves. We have to start eliminating all the distracting noise we use to fight boredom.
We have to start giving our mind/brain time to unwind and be bored to the tune of refreshing like we would do to rest our bodies after exercise.
The real feelings we seek are waiting for us in our own conscious levels in the same space as joy, happiness, inspiration, and love.
We have to start connecting to nature, creative activities, sitting peacefully in isolation, meditating, and outdoor exercise like running, biking, or hiking without headsets.
Beneath personality and defense mechanisms are universal truths with which we can connect.
With the right practices, it doesn’t take long to get to our deeper levels of consciousness; to our visceral level.
