Conscious Choice: Beyond Self Development

August 2006 | Body & Mind Health

Beyond Self Development

By Julia Mossbridge

One thing that has always bugged me about the New Age/Alternative Spirituality/Whatever-we-call-it-now movement is the seeming over-emphasis on personal issues. Sometimes it seems that there is this operating principle that, if we can all just each individually get ourselves enlightened, recovered, and healed, then we can move on to enlightening, recovering, and healing one another. Maybe I’ve read this wrong, but there definitely seems to be a directional flow to the way the work is supposed to go: 1.) get it together personally, and 2.) if you ever get there, use your newfound enlightened state to help others. The problem I’ve had with this is that virtually no one feels they’ve gotten it together personally, so when do we begin to help others?

I can think of many instances where this rule hasn’t been followed, and I certainly don’t mean to dismiss those communities and movements who operate on both levels simultaneously, or even follow the reverse rule—community first, individuals second—a policy that clearly has its own blessings and shortcomings. But I have always felt that the alternative spirituality movement has a chronic, and perhaps unhealthy, focus on the improvement or development of the individual as a primary goal. Inwardly, I’ve often questioned this wisdom, even though this column sometimes echoes the same sentiment. This questioning has come to a head over the past few weeks, when I added to my daily practices a few minutes of compassionate prayer for others ... and have experienced a dramatic improvement in both my emotional and physical health.

A recent article by Dr. Sheila Wang, Research Director of the Judith Nan Joy Integrative Medicine Initiative at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, speaks to the relationship between self-focus and negative feelings. She describes two neurohormonal systems that co-exist in mammals: the self-preservative system and the species-preservative system. The job of the self-preservative system is to protect the individual who owns it: it manages finding and keeping food, aggression, and avoidance of perceived threats. The species-preservative system, which uses some of the same underlying neurohormonal pathways, is involved in bonding, mating, communication, and altruistic acts of compassion. Dr. Wang cites evidence suggesting that the species-preservative system grew from the major evolutionary step that mammals took beyond reptiles, the development of maternal-infant bonding behavior. The systems that were necessary for empathic communication and action in the mother-infant bond could then be used more broadly, generalizing to mates, friends, and others within and beyond the species.

Interestingly, Dr. Wang offers evidence showing that these systems are mutually inhibitory—if one system is very active, it turns down the activity in the other. Unfortunately, if a child is repeatedly traumatized during the formation of the mother-infant bond, the self-preseveration system will be active almost continuously unless it can be consistently reassured that the environment is truly safe. However, many adults find that using the species-preservative system in a habitual way (for instance, practicing compassionate action or meditation), quiets the self-preservative system, so that it does not need to be on high alert unless a change in the environmental situation warrants it. In fact, according to Dr. Wang, individuals who commonly experience compassionate feelings also are likely to have primarily positive moods and be in good health. Conversely, predominant negative emotions are associated with an over-vigilant self-preservative system. So, a reduced focus on ourselves, and thus a reduction in activation of the self-preservative system, can actually increase our happiness and health.

Perhaps the reason why there seems to be an individual/community directional flow to the alternative spirituality movement is that many of us were, in fact, traumatized in our childhood. Maybe we really do need perpetual reassurance about the safety of the environment in order to eventually switch over to our species-preservative systems. Certainly, we must respect these needs. But it’s also important to understand the research suggesting that we can use dance, drumming, meditation, prayer, energy/body work and other means to activate the species-preservative system and simultaneously de-activate the self-preservative system, so that we can enlighten, recover, and heal both levels at once.

Julia Mossbridge, a Chicago-based writer, is also a mother, cognitive neuroscientist, and author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul’s Work (New World Library unfolding.org).

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