Q: I know it may not seem like it from our actions, but humans really do want to survive. That’s why we're crying for help. Most humans say that “survival” is the basic instinct.
A: Actually, survival is not your basic instinct. If you all followed your basic instinct, the survival of your species would not be in question. It would be guaranteed.
At the highest level, at the instant when the most urgent decision must be made, most people don’t stand there weighing the odds of their survival while the baby is crying. They do what it is in their True Nature to do.
In moments such as this you understand that there is no way you can cease to exist. The spirit of you, the essence of Who You Are, will live forever and ever—and at the deepest place within, you are clear about this. Survival, therefore, ceases to be the issue. It is not a question of whether you will live, but how you will live—whether it’s for another twenty years or another twenty minutes.
Now it’s true that you may have a strong desire to continue living in your present physical form for more than twenty more minutes, but your basic instinct to express Divinity by becoming the personification of unconditional love outweighs and overrides this desire.
It is easy to get lost in the labyrinth of life. It’s only at the most critical times, when “the chips are down,”★ that most humans act as if they are “out of their mind”—because they are, quite literally. They are following, instead, the impulse of their soul.