The reason we fear spiritual maturation and self-actualization is actually the same biological reason we inherently fear snakes.
Though we may think that a fear of snakes is solely a cultural conditioning, which it can be, there are fascinating studies that point to our fear of snakes as a critical component of human evolution. One study was conducted where infants between six and twelve months of age, who had never encountered a snake or spider, either in real life or pictorially, were exposed to a series of slides. There were images of trees, and rocks, and flowers, and other insects, yet whenever a slide of a snake or a spider was shown, there was a distinct dilation of the pupils in each of the infants, that didn’t occur in response to any of the other slides. This pupil dilation is a direct response to the Parasympathetic Nervous System being activated, or in other words, the "fight, flight, or flee" trigger.
How could it be that infants, with no previous cultural conditioning, were afraid of snakes? Epigenetics certainly comes into play, as we now know that phobias and emotional trauma can be passed down through the generations in our DNA. So it’s reasonable that if Grandma Gina was terrified of snakes, that her decedents may carry shades of that terror.
But other research supports the idea that this fear of snakes goes much further back than Grandma Gina, that it’s actually in the human gene, because if it wasn’t perhaps we would not be alive to even have this conversation. It’s our fear of snakes, as part of the greater drive for self-preservation, that kept our species on the winning side of natural selection. This is why our eyes are forward-facing, and why we’re adept at tree climbing, to mention two examples of how we’ve stayed one step ahead of our venomous predators.
So we fear snakes because we don’t want to die. Evolutionarily, that fear of death and instinctive self-preservation has kept us alive and allowed us the most advancements as a species--but only physically.
Because we don't exactly know what happens after we die, most of us tend to delay finding out as long as possible. I'm a big fan of being alive. That also means I’m a big fan of self-preservation. But the catch is that it’s not just our genetics that are fighting desperately to stay alive—so does our ego. In fact, maybe the ego is a direct result or natural byproduct of physical evolution. As our brains grew bigger and our genes grew more durable, we suddenly had the luxury of philosophical thought, because we weren’t fighting endlessly for each daily meal. We learned how to subsist, which freed up space in our mental capacity for existential reaching: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going after I die?
And along with that existential reaching, came it’s wicked step sister—existential answers. The idea that we can answer these questions is egotistical. How so? Because the ego thrives on false identities and the stories we tell ourselves. Were we ever supposed to be able to answer them? Are we kidding ourselves when we think we have?
When we attempt to answer these important questions, instead of respecting them as questions, we create a persona, an alternate reality, an egoic state. And that egoic state learns to fight as vehemently for life as our own genetics. We love to live behind the illusion of who we think we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going. This is the heart of religious struggle and warfare, cultural division, racism, and elitist thinking. On a personal level, it’s the heart of mental illness, where reality is fractured and we no longer live on the same plane as those around us.
Letting go of the egoic illusion is the way we experience spiritual maturation and self-actualization.
What is critical for our long-term physical survival—the fear of death—is the antithesis for our spiritual survival. We are a living paradox, asked to self-preserve in our biological make-up, and simultaneously asked to die egoiclly over and over again. Eve’s fall was the metaphorical egoic death. Christ’s crucifixion and the narrative of the atonement was the metaphorical egoic death. That’s what every spiritual guru and book of scripture is actually pointing to.
Our task is immense. We have to overcome our own inherent biological drive to stay alive and willingly die in order to spiritually come alive.
In biology class you learned that evolution is the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth. Darwin espoused, quite convincingly, that this is made possible through the process of Natural Selection. When three key components are in place, evolution occurs:
- Variation
- Differential Reproduction
- Heredity
Take an example of beetles, where some are bright green and others are dark brown (variation). Birds swoop down and gobble up the bright green beetles because they’re so easily spotted along the dirt floor, which creates an imbalance in numbers (differential reproduction). This means the brown beetle population is now outnumbering the green beetle population, and therefore producing more brown beetle babies (heredity). And just like that, certain species go extinct while others continue to evolve. Eventually, certain desirable traits that promote survival continue to get passed along, while less favorable traits (such as bright green beetle pigmentation) get nixed (unless you’re a jungle beetle where green becomes the camouflage and brown is so yesterday).
But what does this look like on the spiritual plane? Is natural selection still happening where spiritual evolution is concerned? In physical natural selection, we’re talking about various organisms—the first key component. But in spiritual evolution, those various organisms are housed in the same host: you, me, and all of us. You have within you the green beetle of narcissism coexisting with the brown beetle of empathy. Which one will win? Which beetle (or more poetically, which wolf) will you feed? Both are vying for life, after all.
In this regard, spiritual evolution is a harder undertaking because we actually have to choose it. We have to instigate it. We have to allow it. This is not the case for physical evolution. We could hardly prevent it even if we tried. It’s an incredibly slow moving ordeal that takes eons of time to carry out, which is why we will never complete the human taxonomy charts. The branches of extinct species that had to have occurred in order for the modern homo sapien sapien to even be what it is today is beyond measure, and would likely require a terrific algorithm to represent. Incalculable species died in order for us to be alive, and we have been millions of years in the making.
Is spiritual evolution just as tediously slow? Yes, and no. Yes, because spiritual evolution is inseparably linked to physical evolution. In other words, it’s only possible because of the other, as we mentioned before--existential outreaching is a luxury. So in all reality, our millions of years of physical evolution has been leading us to the potential of spiritual evolution. In reality, the quantifiable answer to “Where am I going?” is "You’re going, you’re evolving, that’s the point."
And in the same breath we can answer, no, spiritual evolution is not so slow if you recognize that it’s not a one time occurrence and there’s no stopping place. It’s achievable every day, in your lifetime, and it will never stop. It just is.
We must be be willing to let an incalculable number of our egoic faces and identities die in order for us to evolve spiritually. And to do it, we must overcome our fear of snakes, the great snake—the Cosmic snake. You know her by many names: Chi, Holy Spirit (being "reborn"), Tao, Ruach HaKadosh, Divine Energy. But my personal favorite is Kundalini Shakti. She is the energy of spiritual maturation that lives within all human beings. In my next essay, we will explore the nature and process of spiritual maturation through the lens of Kundalini Shakti.
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