The tension in the country, the tension in the world is palpable. Now that might be due to the media bias, which distorts our perception of how often things happen. Like how more people die each year from coconuts falling on their head than from shark attaaccks. And yet we fear Jaws and love ourselves some stiff pina coladas. Actually, fun fact is that Shark Tornados kill more people than actual sharks because 16 people died in that movie.

It is tough to sort out what is real and what is not with media and social media distorting our perception of how often things happen. We know that the perception of bad things happening will bring more bad things because we understand how the filters of the brain work. You basically build the habit of finding the negative in any situation Focusing on good things will also train our brain to find more of the positive aspects in these events as well. But at some point you realize you are using positive focus to avoid the negative and that's no bueno either.

We are more divided than ever. More people are awakening to how fucked up things are and at the same time people are becoming more and more unconscious. It's like we are all watching this powder keg waiting to go off, except that keg now potentially has nuclear weapons.

I am a believer that in order to experience one thing you must know its opposite. There is no light without dark. There is no pleasure without pain. There is no acceptance without hate. Spiritual texts even indicate that suffering can be the quickest path to awakening. Whether or not that is true, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to make that call but I do know most of my happiness has come of the heels of what seemed at the time to be disaster. We do know that conflict and disorder always breeds order, history has shown this again and again. Now that doesn't make disorder any easier to swallow. Perhaps we are moving towards a better system but first have to go thru all the nastiness of tearing the old one down. But maybe the disorder doesn't have to be as painful.

What do you want to do the very most in this world and what is preventing you from doing it? - Teal Swan

I've been thinking about this question a lot. There's no reality where you keep doing the same things and your world just gets better. One thing that is often said about our generation is that we are spoiled. That we don't know how good we have it. This is 100% true, but nobody realizes how good they have it because everyone's experience is subjective. Every generation is spoiled compared to its predecessor. Humans stand on the shoulders of the previous generation for improvement of the species. It is our nature to spoil the next generation, but the deep down evolutionary drives are what are still running our lives today and creating all this conflict.

It's hard to notice but evolution is still happening today and it still runs everything we do.

Now even if you don't believe in evolution, the idea and the psychology behind it can be very useful in helping to understand people and how and why they do what they do. The most humbling thing you notice when you study evolution is how unnatural your current world is to what you were designed for and just how selfish a creature you really are given the right circumstances. If I take away your food, your shelter, your mate, and scare you a little... you will get very very nasty.

Evolution is mean. Evolution is nasty. Evolution don't give a fuck.

Evolution is survival of the most able to adapt. In our early stages that meant being very selfish. It wasn't until we developed agriculture that we grew the ability to function in large groups - and we're still working on it. Aspects of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religion are deeply routed in our psyche because the people who weren't those things back in the day all died off. It once served us to be those things or else the behavior would not be wired in our brains.

Now that is not to say those traits still serve us but its important to understand where they come from. Much like how our desire for more and more sugar is killing us, these ego based traits no longer serve us even though they evolved for a reason. These traits are still there in our brain. And that's what none of us want to admit. If you are already stressed about life, and I starve you by feeding you low nutrient food, and I threaten your job, how you provide for your family you will be in fight or flight mode. Your logical brain will no longer be getting supplied with energy - you enter panic mode with the amygdala running the show. You will revert back to those nasty traits that used to help us survive back in the day when we did not know where our next meal was. I think that is what we are seeing come to the surface. We are all scared. Fear is driving those traits to the surface.

Conflict is necessary. Its not going anywhere. It's foolish to think we can avoid it. Without pain and discomfort we are not motivated to adapt. Think about our own lives. Most of us are too comfortable to adapt. We avoiding looking at that pain and uncomfortable areas of our lives by distracting ourselves with food, political dramas, and world conflict. And that's the crazy part about what we've down to evolution. We no longer die if we don't adapt. We built systems to make sure we are all comfortable enough and these are what we are trying to change now.

I'd be the first to say that I can't stand the whole school system. I think most of our food is poisoning us and causing most of our modern illnesses. Yet I do very little about it. Write a blog here or there that only my closest friends read (fuckin love you guys :)).But the truth is that right now I'm too comfortable for big change. Evolution tells us there needs to be pain to force change and we've built a system that makes us too damn comfortable. This is why I think there will be a whole lot more escalation and world discomfort necessary for real change.

What happens when we dive into the pain on purpose?

When we do this we realize that our resistance to pain and discomfort that is the problem, not the pain itself. So ask yourself what parts of your life are you avoiding? Is it your diet, your relationships, you financial situation/career, or maybe you are you just miserable and don't know why? If you actually want change you have to find a painful reason for why not changing will destroy you. The cool thing is that when we make a practice at looking at the unsavory parts of our lives where we lie to ourselves we can numb ourselves to it. That way when the harsh hammer of evolutionary conflict comes we are unattached enough to adapt.

What do you want to do the very most in this world and what is preventing you from doing it? - Teal Swan