Tuesday 22 May 2018

What to do when our instincts are corrupt

People often talk as if 'doing what comes naturally', would be the answer, the way ahead... Sometimes William Blake is interpreted as-if he said this, and other later Romantics did indeed say it - for example it used to be the way that DH Lawrence wrote; and was a kind of mantra among the 'beats' of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s and 70s.

But what if our instincts were not merely insufficient (as ought to be obvious) but also corrupt? What if our 'gut feeling's' had become corrupted so that they did not lead us towards survival, power, sex, life, fertility; but in the opposite direction?

Such is the argument of my current post at the Notions blog...

And I suggest what we might do instead:

We need to go as deep as our primary (metaphysical) assumptions, to know them; discern and decide - decide not not by common sense, nor by instinct - which is gut feeling; but by intuition which is the discernment of fully conscious, primary thinking of the real and divine self.

Indeed, before we can even attempt this, we each need to have decided that it is coherent and possible; that there is a part of ourself which is divine and which can know - know directly and without mediation - the truth of things.

We must - that is - be able to distinguish between instinct - which is thing of the animal in us; and intuition, which is a thing of the divine in us.

Instinct cannot save us - but will, on the contrary, direct and drive us into damnation and death; but divine intuition can save us; and it is the only thing that can save us.


 

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