How, then, is the central nervous system responsive to emotional safety? The reason has to do with our psychological conditioning that determines what we find safe, secure, or trustworthy. What I am saying, then, is that the nervous system and brain are reacting to what it has been fed in the way of thoughts — experiences, ideas, teachings, knowledge, memories, and so on. Is it possible to separate the physical, biological mechanism from the psychological impulses? I feel that it is. A few examples of a purely physical reaction would be standing on the edge of a cliff and getting butterflies in the stomach, an eye flinching at an object coming its way, the arm going up to the face to protect itself from a strike, and so on. We can then overlay this with thought, which is the action of the sense of self. For example, to use the same concept, an arm may quickly rise to protect the face because a person has been abused and therefore reacts to the abuse itself, or a person has a fear of heights due to some early-life trauma.

You wrote, "We are more alert and activated in unfamiliar situations as we try to assess an environment's safety and the people in it. So it would seem the more exposed we are to differences of any kind, cultures, belief systems and register safety, the less anxiety-inducing over time." Yes, it seems that this is true. My point is that, while this is a "good" thing and something that lessens anxiety, it does not change the self at its essence; it is merely reconditioning an already conditioned self. So, to be clear, I am not advocating that a better self is bad, merely that the self does not change what it is fundamentally.