Playing Dead

When an opossum is threatened it goes into a state of high activation, with a seemingly lifeless or "frozen" body, hence the term "playing dead". This usually is enough to cause a predator to lose interest in chasing and possibly eating them. When the threat passes and the opossum has saved its ass, it jumps up and resumes its opossum activities. When I studied trauma renegotiation with Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), this was the classic example of a temporary state in an animal that can become a more permanent state in a human being. This "frozen" activation state is the hallmark of unresolved trauma.

Most of us constantly operate in this state of "playing dead". It is the culturally accepted "trance" state and considered normal. This is a flat screen version of life! Trying not to get too "activated" or too "low" we start living in a narrow bandwidth of life energy and then look for ways to escape the constraint. There is a lot of talk these days about not getting too "activated". But what if we were to get completely activated, totally dissolve into activation, in a fluid way.  Now that would be transformative! This is what happens in nature. The opossum is a rare example of trying to save itself by freezing instead of fleeing (running like hell!). I think we humans don't have too many examples of high activation with fluidity, maybe great tantric sex, wild dancing, or peak performance activities, which are mostly considered to be at the fringe of a normal life.

What I notice is that when I let myself completely activate in a fluid way, my being can then deeply relax. This was the idea behind the Osho technique of "dynamic meditation". It is high activation through wild dancing and movement followed by sitting meditation. It is interesting to note that our drugs of choice reflect this desire to bring back dynamism to a life of quiet desperation. We use caffeine to get us going and alcohol to slow us down. But it seems like these substances are just attempting to replace the natural dynamism of an energetic flux that dissolves and recreates our being every single moment, if we have the courage to truly dissolve and not just "play dead".