31 Aug 2024 6 min read consciousness

Nature's Way

You can sympathize with a spider if you want to, and more on consciousness

This month, August 2024, I have written primarily about consciousness through the lens of nature and humanity. I wanted to take this month ending to bring together my ideas and share some of the science that has influenced them.

There is no doubt that the planet we live on plays an essential role in the development of our own consciousness. Generations of evolution bring us to the present moment, where humanity is an extension of earth. In many ways, the existence of intelligent species on this planet, is a representation of what the planet is capable of. Taking billions of years, something can come from nothing. Congruently, the development of such intelligence, shows just how essential nature’s ingredients are. Expressing gratitude for nature’s way expands this relationship. Food is provided by the planet and nourishes the body. Give gratitude to the planet and thank the food. For centuries, humankind made do with what was supplied. Building shelter from wood, learning what could and could not be consumed, and most important for our advancement, creating community.

Humans are social animals and it has been crucial for our survival. Overtime, geographically idyllic societies would develop, creating the framework for social dynamics that would fade and evolve. Nonetheless, the world as our ancestors knew it to be then, and how we know it to be now, wouldn’t have been possible without the helping hand nature has always extended. Our consciousness is not separate from Earth’s, it’s shared. This that flows through all of us, connecting us all to the present, is done so through the ways in which nature unfailingly communicates. While intelligent life forms have a broad spectrum of understanding the present, nature inhabits it. Being the catalyst for life, it must be ever-present. It’s dedication to life offers healing, and gifts our consciousness with intelligence.

Speaking Nature’s Language

Sounding like pseudoscience, frequency and vibration remains to be the way in which the natural world operates. The natural frequency of Earth, termed the Schumann resonance, pulsates at a rate of 7.83 Hertz. This resonance provides a brain frequency range that supplies the synchronization needed for intelligence. Since the human brain is so plastic, it is necessary to have a stabilizing system. We often like to consider intelligence as special to humankind. However, having the ability to communicate, hold information, and respond to our environment, is not unique to the human experience. Sharing in the context of the earthly experience gives all of the consciousness an innate ability to sense a change in the environment. At the bottom of the food chain, our photosynthetic counterparts communicate in their own idiosyncratic way.

Plants have been shown to respond to stressful stimuli, “The propagation of distant electrical signals in plants occurs due to the actions of different stressors, including changes in temperature or light irradiation, mechanical stimuli, attack by pathogens, etc,” (Mudrilov, et al., 2021).

The human experience, typically viewed perceptually through the senses, does not stray far from this operation. Explicably so, as we evolved with the innate traits of the shared consciousness just as anything has. Nature’s language is unspoken communication, that arranges everything that’s materialized, to work together in harmony. There are few things that are real about the portrayed experiences of life. Our human brain works tirelessly to organize, distribute, understand, and internalize the experience. Each of the senses carries their own pathways, often overlapping, working to create the reality we accept. There are three senses to highlight as playing a pivotal role in this acceptance: sight, sound, and smell. Each abiding to the criterion of obeying nature’s language to generate an experience.

Perceptual Experience

Sight is one of the most fascinating ways we perceive our world. How will we ever agree upon the color blue? Light is the factual portrayed experience; color is the illusion that follows. How we see color is through a perceptual experience unique to the viewer. What makes the visual system increasingly more interesting, is that the eyes are the only part of the brain that we can see. The bare bones way to describe how the visual system works, is that light enters the eye hitting the retina, this then triggers light receptors (photoreceptors) to send electrical signals through the optic nerve to the back of the brain. As an extension of the inner organ, the retina is transmitting about 10 million bits per second. With such a high transmission rate, you would think we’d all be walking around in a constant nauseated state. Luckily for us, the brain is a time keeping machine. Instead of sending itself into overdrive with a constant intake of information, it chooses to be a statistician, working with the past to predict the present. Everything we see is on a 15 second delay.

Now, it is not my intention to give a neuroscience lecture. Rather, it is to convey that we speak nature’s language too. Our perception of color is owed to the differing wavelengths along the light spectrum. If you think back to elementary school, you may remember the old pneumonic device, ROY G. BIV. The colors of the rainbow are wavelengths, where violet is the shortest, and red, is the longest. However, wavelength does not work alone. Light vibrates at different frequencies, giving us the colors we see. Where violet is the highest frequency and red is the lowest. Our perception of color is dependent on frequency and vibration.

Sound continues our journey through the senses, as our verbal communication is a frequency. While the human audible spectrum is between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, dogs can hear much higher pitched sounds registering between 47,000 Hz and 65,000 Hz. This inevitably changes things between the experience of a human and a dog. We roam the same terrain experiencing two different realities. Both will be true.

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Smell

“Different odorants have distinctive vibration patterns and different vibration frequencies would be detected by different receptors,” (Rinaldi., 2007).

Continuing our tour-de-face, our sense of smell does more than just indulge our pleasure in taste. With only 400 scent receptors, the human nose can detect a trillion smells. It serves to warn us of dangers, travel us through time, and cement memories. Vibrations of an odor can transcend the existing reality, as the outputs of the olfactory system are the hypothalamus and the amygdala. The hypothalamus helps to produce hormones, regulate our circadian rhythm, and regulate heart rate, while, the amygdala is our emotional processing center. Emotions play a heavy role in memory formation, as emotions are often tied to our experiences. Therefore, smell generates an experience of both the present and the past.

Each of the senses work hand in hand to produce the perpetual present. Tuning in to the senses surrenders the individual to the here and now. Allocating attention to the perceptual experience adheres to the language of nature. Learning to operate on a level digestible for all energy encountered, will ultimately supply the individual with an innate knowledge of existence. A sense will come and go. The present is a constant end and beginning with no boundary assigned.

Earth-Kind

As each one of us traverses through the rigid flow of a complex, painted experience. It’s best to proceed with the understanding that a true state cannot be agreed upon between any two parties. We share in the same context, laughter as the finest unification. Yet, two people will never walk through the same door in a duplicate state. Moreover, the same person will never walk through the same door in a duplicate state. Almost always, there will have been new information gained by walking through the door. Settings of life are made so elaborate, that our own efforts to agree upon a true state with ourself, is made to be a challenge. Flexibility in the understanding of both the outer existing state and the inner state, proposes an ability to be molded by experience. Resistance to molding is a resistance to furthering the development of the shared consciousness.

State of existence is a customized communal endeavor. While each individual provides context for those that one shares spaces with, the takeaways from the space, will be reflected dependent on the individual’s state. This can be true of nearly every encounter one has. All of which will be undeniably true and outwardly wrong. The only truth’s we can come to declare as right, are those of the shared human experience. Nonetheless, our conscious experience is even more widely shared amongst the planet. Thirst and hunger, basic needs for survival, can be understood across all life forms. Needs of one form do not supersede those of another. Instead, life continues on in a cycle, where the amount of energy does not vary. You can sympathize with a spider if you want to. For they seek the satisfaction of their hunger all the same. Aware or unaware, searching for the fuel to do their part in advancing Earth’s consciousness. Purpose is the presence driving the present.

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