The infant metaphor…

We come to understand our bodies through our sense, and the first sense we come to trust is our sense of motion. We stop feeling like we are falling down a bottomless pit when we begin to recognize patterns in pressure. That there are things that remain consistently in place when we press against them.

After that realization we begin to explore what is doing the pressing. My pressing hand feels different than my pressing forehead. We develop a sense that not all of me is in touch with the same things, in the same place, but guess what this all centres around? The rooting reflex.

We are first our mouths, our breathing, our screaming. This is the first sense of self we have, and our first sense of control. Breathing is the easiest and perhaps only thing that functions both automatically, and under voluntary control. So our first sense of happiness, and comfort, was feeding. We still feed as adults. Most of our behaviours are a form of feeding. This is why vampire symbolism is so fascinating and powerful for us.

So as we come to understand pressure, the connection we make between pressures and our sense of self is hand to mouth. In fact, the hand to mouth self is our first sense of self. This happens in utero. Before we are even born our first shock, or first fear, is the need to feed which is also our first sense of love.

Slightly off topic but maybe not. I’ve been wondering what the whole zombie apocalypse fear is a reflection of? Loss of individuality? Fear of being outnumbered? One and the same. Fear of initial rejection. We have a fear of no contact. We fear those who display contact addiction. We fear the socially maladjusted because they are displaying contact addiction. We fear they have no self and want ours. They want our breath, our space, our flesh in the dramatic case.

Or we become like them. Yes. We can also fear that we are already among them, that we are already dead in a way and fear our craving for contact. We can convince ourselves that we deserve to feel dead inside. That not only are we among the hungry dead, but among the damned as well. In philosophy, it’s the notion of the p-zombie. It just stands for philosophical zombie.

You have a life, but are you really faking it? And if you are, can you get a life? What would you have to give or prove to have a life?

Does that answer the zombie fear friends? Perhaps it’s also the reason why when someone seems socially anxious we often comfort them by jokingly saying, “I don’t bite.”

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~