Causality: A Key to Peace

Causality: A Key to Peace

The key to making sense of anything is understanding causality. Any condition or behavior you experience is a product of the circumstances that shaped it. Rational, logical and blameless. 

This applies to anything in the universe. Just a fact. It applies to the body, the behavior and psyche. It applies to our unconscious bias, our affections and our intolerances. It applies to more complex organisms such as whole societies, cultures and sub-cultures, religions, nations and governments. And it applies, of course, to everyone else in your life, as well.

All living things have one, single mandate: to survive. All creatures, all cohesive patterns are designed for the sole purpose to continue living. From the tiniest single celled organism to the most complex mind, once a thing is alive it will do anything in its power to keep it that way.

Even a hurricane or a forest fire will exploit the environment to continue its consumption and therefore sustain its existence as long as it can. I say this not to condone the results, but to understand that the motivation itself is innocent. 

My body, my physical pattern, is a product of hard work, random traumas, incomplete recoveries and compensatory habits. Though I may have one hip that gets stiff and the other doesn't want to hold me up, one is not bad. The other is not to “blame”. My body didn't do anything “wrong”. My body did and is still doing its level best to honor the mandate of survival: avoid pain, conserve energy, keep moving, keep safe. 

At the same time, my behavior pattern is a product of learning what has worked and not worked to keep me alive this long. My behavior pattern forms by the same survival mandate as my body: avoid pain, conserve energy, keep moving, keep safe.

Unfortunately, sometimes what feels safe now may not be what keeps me safe in the long run.

This is where our big brain comes in. Our capacity to grasp context. To understand the interaction among players and the concept of long-term outcome. 

My body may innocently avoid the pain of a stubbed toe and shift my weight to the outside of the foot and limit the rotation in the hip. Demands increase on the rest of the system. Compensations mount, habits set in. 

Without my big brain intervention, I might just live like that and let the body slowly (or quickly) deteriorate under the wear and tear of a poorly tuned system. OR!! I could invoke the wonderful gifts of being an enlightened human and take charge of the adaptation!

My body is only responding to the basics: pain, load, gravity, oxygen. If I change the parameters, I can change the response!!

Moving up a level: if I was taught that every time I skinned my knee my guardian asked what I did to deserve it, I may internalize that. As an adult, I may take every bad thing that happens in life as somehow my fault. I learned and then internalized that mistakes are not cues for learning, but cause for punishment. This can be crippling! I may end up depressed, or hopeless, or afraid to take any risk at all. My whole understanding of the order of the universe, my whole life experience may be diminished by that one idea. 

OR!! My depression, dissatisfaction and pain may drive me to find someone who can explain that a simple emotional splinter that I picked up as a kid festered and eventually grew into my entire adult worldview. 

Armed with perspective I can now begin to change how I view the world. I have changed the parameters. I can change the response.

Here's the really important bit: it's not just you that is responding to these basics of survival. So is everyone else around you!!

As we begin to understand our own behavioral patterns, we begin to understand the motivations behind other people's actions. The details of the specific behavior choices and how they treat us may be a forensic mystery but understanding that the motivations are basic, if uneducated, survival strategies can start the process of forgiveness. 

If understanding causality is the key to making sense of the world, yourself, your body, your relationships, forgiveness is the key to surviving it!