What happens, when we drive under influence of alcohol or special substance? Our pre-frontal cortex (pre-fontal cortex is the part that helps us in rational decision making) gets affected. Our judgement gets impaired and at this state people often behave in a way which they often regret later.
I wanted to call this blog – living under influence, as I think that we may be leading a life under influence and we may not be even be aware of it.
Love
When we are in love –dopamine (hormone that makes us feel good) and oxytocin (hormone that helps bond) are secreted and creates close emotional bond and heightens our pleasure and makes love a wonderful experience. Our pre-frontal cortex at this time tends to get deactivated. This means our ability to make sound judgement or executive decision gets impaired.
Fear / Anger / Stress
This state of mind causes secretion of cortisol which triggers our flight or fight response. In this state our prefrontal cortex gets impaired. This means our ability to make sound judgement or executive decision gets impaired.
In short, our emotional state has a big effect on how we behave and we are often not aware of it.
Our social nature
We are social animals. This is one of the most important parts of nature which has helped us to survive. We have a huge part of our brain dedicated to our being social. In fact – if you look at our life – we will notice that a very big part of our life is dictated by the social norms. This affects all aspects of our life. It is this influence of the societal force, to which we can trace back lot of our behavior.
Our identity
Within the societal context, our behavior is driven by the roles we play. Being father or mother or student / professor / manager / doctor is the influence that dictate how we behave.
As we want to excel, we often spend time reading things like – thinking like a leader, mindset of a successful entrepreneur. We voluntarily trade of our own way of thinking to the script of the identity of the roles we want to play.
In short, everything we do is under some sort of influence – could be our emotional state, our wiring as social animal and or our identity.
Who is living under influence?
We live, under some form of influence. Most of the time we do not even know what the influence is at that moment. When we live under influence, there is something fundamental in us, which is experiencing these behaviors and that experiencing identity never changes. We move thru different phase of life – from childhood to youth to old age. However, our underlying feeling of “I” never changes
Do we know what is this essential part in us? Do we really know ourselves?
If you look at the world from this place – you will notice that beyond our identity, beneath the roles we play beneath the difference of appearance – there is something universal.
When you look around, you will see that, what is fundamental to who we are we are, is the same in all beings. Our physical bodies are made of same elements. We have the same basic needs. Dog, birds, plants humans – beneath myriad forms – we are still the same. Depending on our place in the tree of life, we may have different in forms and yet beneath those forms we are part of one life.
Our essence – living in ecstasy
If you really look for yourself – who you really are – you will never find yourself. In fact, there is no single center in our brain where you will find yourself in our heart or brain.
This is the awareness and this is what we are. Life unfolds in front of this awareness as we move thru life with different identities.
Our Ife / our world is construct and the drama of life is being played spontaneously.
From this place the world unfolds without you or I being there.
The joy of living from this place is unfathomable. It is more than anything I could ever ask for. It is here we feel the true ecstasy.
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