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Is Our Behavior Governed By Our Animal Nature?

posted by Deepak Chopra Aug 28, 2009 5:03 am
Is Our Behavior Governed By Our Animal Nature?
66 comments

The equation between human and animal nature is crude and usually moralistic. I can observe the animal nature in myself without being ashamed of it. I eat, breathe, excrete, have sex, and inhabit a physical body because these are my animal inheritance.

There is no conflict with spirit in any of these things. The old religious prejudice against the body in favor of the soul blinds us to a simple fact: There is no shame in being a mammal, given the beauty and wonder of the animal world.

Every behavior has a genetic imprint. There is no reason to focus on only our so-called lower nature. Altruism is imprinted in our genes; many creatures beneath us on the evolutionary ladder will sacrifice their lives to save their offspring or defend a colony at the risk of dying themselves. A honeybee dies after it uses its stinger, yet the hive survives.

Genes don’t distinguish between high and low behavior. Love and nurturing are genetically imprinted behaviors; so is language going back tens of millions of years. The most sophisticated functions among humans, such as my ability to type out these words, is rooted in brain structure. It will probably turn out that spirituality is too.

A certain portion of the brain is rational, and this higher brain produces the best in human behavior. Neurology locates various behaviors in specific portions of the brain, with the implication that these are control centers, switches that go on and off to make us feel what we feel and do what we do. But brain chemistry isn’t the primary cause of change, only the indicator.

Everything spiritual is experienced as thoughts, feelings, or actions, all of which depend on DNA. So if you want to blame genes for violence, you have to blame them for sainthood, too.

Adapted from: Peace Is the Way, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2005).

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66 comments

66 comments

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66 comments add your comment
Lauren R.

I wish there was more scientific information in this piece, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Dwight Baker

Diversity

I like your style, your writing is as prose, go for it do not allow them or anyone to quite your message, God and I knows that your heart is HIS heartbeat, your steps are ordered by HIM.
Only TRUTH will set the many captives FREE

Dwight Baker

MY TAKE for what it might be worth Return to the TRUTH

How be it so few understand they are NOT GOD

How be it that so many on this post believe they are GOD

And how be it in the near term that those who post this idiotic nonsense return quickly to
The sane and humane ones begging for a solace?

For the entire root and core of this nonsense is WHO IS THE REAL GOD?

Then look in the mirror and see that you are a human and all others like you are human
Then finally realize GODS GREATEST CREATION was mankind.

Then in your quantum what ever try to fathom GOD taking out HIS greatest creation?????

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 1 of 7

Apologies for the late response, lost internet connection during the blitz and needed to digest your shit.

Your behavior Night Cat is an attempt at hostility towards others…men by the sounds of it. It probably stems from the fact you were abused by a man in some way or fear it. The women who support you in this form of assault give you kudos, since, the ability to attack others in a social network is a drug some of the weakest people and victims (with choice) in the world take part in and gain a sense of justice through. Behaviorally it’s your animal exposed in a perceived safe environment and is as ugly in a controlled environment as it is in the physical environment, without the catastrophic effects you perceive your words to incur. I wonder if you would actually say such things to persons face and live to show the tails. As a demonstration of aggressive nature it as a purpose, but, no meaning, other than the one you think your defining for it, which is rejection.

Rejection is a globally common approach to appreciating human behavior, since rejection defines the nature of behavior in rebellion, as a response to rejection. We can look at aspects of rejection in every aspect of social evolution in the world hierarchy of false order, generating chaos, since, there is no framework of common universal order in the global sense of meaning to order, which is bizarre, since, we apparently rejoice in all things animal according to you and your G

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 2 of 7

I have no remorse or sense of delusion in calling you liars, because, you clearly are. Yet, objectively in sense of rejection we share, something arrogant Americans fail to limit, but, instead generate through the predatory legacy of control, authorized by God itself and is fascinating to observe, since, it forms the response to identity in many developing nations who want the dream, without the dreamscape and scapegoats, but, will inevitably manifest the same credentials.

Rejection is a cycle in the personal, family, community, national and global sense of the meaning, contaminating natural behavior into an unnatural aspect of reality in time. Your reality as people of faith some how losses its claim of pure divinity, it doesn’t sparkle the way ‘turning the other cheek used to define a sense of self fulfillment. When you demonstrate the same behavior as the sinners, atheist and abusers of the world and claim higher authority, on what grounds relative to ground zero, do you base this status on?

Ego combined with the authority of God is not God, its just you crying rejection and fear of others not combined with your collective superiority complex, validating a factual demonstration of an inferiority complex through deception.

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 3 of 7

You said ‘We rejoice in all things animal’, since, when? Religion as only ever contaminated natural behavior with its translations from the coloring books, which are what they amount to in every aspect of diversification, impeding, distorting and perverting reality to satisfy its own blood lust to achieve wider membership, whilst attempting to procure divine authority of that which owns its own authority and not the authority you and the owners of the death star infect it with.

If this single vessel carrying all vessels of life is divinely coordinated, then why does it have a wobble that determines its future will be one of collision with another object? Whilst the experts say don’t worry, its thousands of years away, lol, if this planet as a wobble how many of the other snooker balls on the 3 dimensional game table have wobbles and have they accounted for the trajectory, lifespan and collisions of all aspects in the gardens future or are we just endlessly blind to our own condition and response in condition, that culminates in a rotten garden as opposed to a living one, contaminated by misappropriation of value.

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 4 of 7

All human life as an inalienable right to associate its identity with the identity and belief in self validation and group identity with a meaning to the context of that identity relative to the whole identity of the same. All meaning relate to body, mind dualism and soul, non soul dualism and all rights are equally viable to interpretation within a democratically approved framework of authentic representation. To impede the rights in association of one group is not humane or ethical to the nature of oneness, its deformation. Deformation achieved through false representation of power and ownership, to the individual representation of uncommon selves.

So Gods work is all about culling those who oppose your indoctrinated values in control of ownership through manipulation and when you reject ideas, you metamorphosis your identity into terrorism, how rewarding this must be in acquiring control through deformation of character. Your nature and religion is a violation of anything to do with God. Its an ego driven lie machine infecting nature through its control of civil law, human law, when the only law it as claim too is laws relative to being, which it only as a partial share of with all other belief identities and as failed to validate to any significant effect in relativity of all humans who own the right to have their own identity infected by a common disease ridden legacy.

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 5 of 7

The objective in any sense of the meaning of an objective is intentions defined by good outcomes as opposed to outcomes that divide and limit the potential of positive input to the common output, relative to universal viability with earth and all vessels of life upon it. If God made it diversely incredible he had a purpose in mind beyond the purpose of translation through text, which defines a greater intention than the intentions that contaminate the validity of good intentions in the universal sense of the meaning defining the nature of common character and chaos.

The evolutionary aspects of diversity are universally equal to oneness as opposed to the division in division derived from other aspects of association necessary to achieve autonomy in a civilized context of meaning to order, that defines universal relativity in order of trajectory aligned to the common future and the species with rights in the same avenue of association in common time.

What’s the difference between direct terrorism and indirect terrorism? Open to any terrorist calling each other human, since, I don’t have a problem with God, just the people who apparently represent it and claim everything from anyone who does not conform to their contamination of equality in rights.

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 6 of 7

Now, you appear to be claiming ownership of a social network and want to reserve it for your own ideas of belief in your own ego club, how perfectly you people define oneness between yourselves and how righteous this makes ones own club appear to it’s own malicious version of equality.

When the indigenous native Indians said ‘white man speak with folk tongue’ how perceptive they were to our malicious two faced identity, nothing changed.

We live in ‘the control people, disconnect people from their right to collective ownership of the common future club’, because, your uncommon values give you righteous divinity outside authentic discipline, to be judged by others, you forgive yourselves for the crimes you commit against others and are accountable to no one but your own intentions to deceive, based on translations you are unable to validate to the meaning and purpose of common human members of our main group significance, rendering every living beings value as insignificant with no credibility to their own identity in community with Earths common value.

How ethical is our twisted faith law to the value of common law in equality of Earths universal significance and common credibility to everyone in all meanings relative to common survival, authority in ownership, responding to instincts as opposed to God’s bullshit.

Diversity of Metamorphosi

My shit - 7 of 9

God’s work is all about culling those who don’t share your ego driven crusade to be indifferent to everyone but your own identity, how totally in accord with the nature and behavior of religions in general. Is it any wonder so many people chop and change their faith to remain true to themselves, since, only self knows value in the value of the path it resonates with.
Your path night cat is obsessed with Crowley, alas membership in that order is low, so shout and howl all you like, I don’t think many will join your occult obsession, because, they own common sense to reason for themselves beyond the appeal of skull and bone rituals.

The coffins I refer to are a metaphor of the mind and the mind control people like your self respond too, writing admirable profiles, but, failing to validate the order in which they naturally occur.

You God lovers are responsible for the mass proliferation and productions of weapons outside a universally viable framework in which weapons are produced to the value and order of humanity as opposed to the value and disorder of its uncommon groups, wasting resources, wasting time and filling body bags like honorable cowboys avoid doing on a regular basis, that’s how much you respect human nature.

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