As infants we live in our experience – we trust it. When a toddler is hungry he does not doubt his hunger, or whether he should make every effort to get food. And then things start to change. At some point his parents say to him “no, you’ve had enough food”. “Stop being so greedy.” “You can’t be hungry – you’ve just eaten.” And so the infant starts to feel what he should feel, not what he does feel.
There is a disconnect between the infant’s world of actual experience – the sensations and feelings of being hungry – and the world the infant is expected to experience – “I cannot and/or must not be hungry; so, I am not hungry.” This is the world of intellect and reasoning – and it sits at odds with our instinct. We often make this distinction when we say we are acting from our head, or acting from our heart.
This disconnect between head and heart is the single biggest cause of human anxiety, self-doubt, and dissatisfaction with life. It sits inside each of us like a raging battle of “black versus white”, “right versus wrong”, “yes versus no”. This is our inner world of opposites, contradiction, and conflict.
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