Use It or Lose It

Over the past 24 posts I’ve been talking about the mechanism and the neurology of what a human individual is and what same said individual perceives itself to be.

We’ve looked at time in fractions of a second. We’ve looked at space as the medium in which our existence resides, defined not by the limits of its volume but rather the distance between objects we perceive occupying said space. The word infinity implies a quality of “is” without limits. WOW, without limits. Sounds God like to me. Without limits. Cool.

As long as the human condition in continuum is our focus, we can never leave neurology far behind. The function the neurons perform throughout our being. They are cool and important; however, they do not and cannot stand alone. They have a quality of movement, but they do not have the capacity or capability to open a can of soup. Have you seen a neuron? Here is one our neurons all by itself, under an electron microscope. Cool yes, nimble no.

Nerve Cell

One of the common definitions of life is the ability to independently move by your own devices. To articulate intentional movement involves an unbelievably complex dance of neural activity. The neurons provide the chemical signal that pulls the strings of the puppet. As my dear friend and mentor Dr. Mike Malkin (Master Puppeteer) taught me years ago; puppets can be very effective communicators.

The act of movement is initiated by neurons, but is performed by muscle cells. As there are several kinds of movement required to sustain life, there are several kinds of muscle cells throughout ones body. The study of muscle tissue is called “Kinesiology.”

kinesiology |kəˌnēsēˈäləjē, -zē-|

noun

The study of the mechanics of body movements.

DERIVATIVES

kinesiological |-sēəˈläjikəl, -zēə-|adjective,

kinesiologist |-jist|noun

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Greek kinēsis ‘movement’ (from kinein ‘to move’) + -logy.

From Wikipedia:

 “Kinesiology, also known as human kinetics is the scientific study of human movement. Kinesiology addresses physiological, mechanical, and psychological mechanisms. Applications of kinesiology to human health include: biomechanics and orthopedics, rehabilitation, such as physical and occupational therapy, as well as sport and exercise.”

Muscle cells and systems prove working together is far more effective than  working alone.

This blogger feels the needs to state the fact of our static “Now” existence, but also hopes to explore the flow of human expression in time through space. This requires a hard look at movement. I have always  sought to consciously understand the artful manipulation of the relationship between my bones; that is to say, dance.  

Dance is the highly expressive language of movement, as articulate as words in expressing the human condition. The student and practitioner of dance would be well served by an understanding of movement variables; structural, loading, rigging, mechanical advantage, applied power, control systems, physics and that’s before you start moving.

You might note here that, though we may think of dance as very different from speech, dance is a form of speech as well.

For the dance artist, it is as important to know the specific timing of neuron function, as it is to know the specific timing of muscle function. The illusion of movement works in a specific way for a specific reason. If you know the reason... you know the drill... the illusion becomes a tool. YAAAA!

This is the story of the little engine that could.

The above cartoon shows the structures in skeletal muscles all built from living human cells. I want to tell the story of a singular impulse, traveling along a  specific path that targets a specific volume of muscle tissue; hence, movement. Note the Motor Neuron Axon. This is the synaptic terminal of this last neuron in the chain which delivers the message to the muscle bundle. This signal is called “Action Potential”. (See Post 10/31/2011) 

The message of an “Action Potential” is a chemical signal emitted from the axon of the neuron into the environment of the muscle cell. When this chemical signal becomes present, a cascade of events takes place. 

Remember epigenetics, where the environment governs. It is fascinating what else needs to be in the environment of muscle tissue, for it to function properly.

This is a very concise little machine engine. The progression of events goes: action potential delivered to the muscle bundle environment — muscle bundle prepares for contraction — sarcomeres contract — expression completed. A bit simplified I know; however, you don’t need to know how the nuclear power plant works to use a light switch. If you throw the switch and the light comes on, the “Now” problem is solved. Quite a neat trick, light.

You see, muscles can only do one trick as well; contract, that’s it.  Muscles cannot open back up again by themselves. Skeletal muscles cross joints. Muscles contract and effect change in the relationship between the bones.

Muscles are a simple binary system. The two choices are not open and close. It is zero or one, off or on. This make a huge difference to things when you add all those single bundles together into a whole being expression of emotion. Dance.

Muscle has a finite work potential. It is a limited resource. Muscle works in a given way for a given reason. If you know the reason, the illusion becomes a tool. I’ve heard that somewhere before. 

Nevertheless, here’s why it’s finite. Before a movement commences, there is a non-conscious guestimation of how many sarcomeres are needed to accomplish the task. Once the guess is made the action potential expresses itself by sarcomere contraction. Too many sarcomeres contracting and the object goes flying. Too few sarcomeres contracting and the object won’t be lifted.  

The motor neuron axon connects into a specific muscle bundle, only serving that muscle bundle. There is an axon for every working bundle. Each bundle can fire off independently, like LEDs in a flat screen LED television. Once that bundle expresses the action potential in the form of action, that’s it. That bundle cannot perform that trick again until it is forcibly opened back up.

The variable strength illusion comes from the number of muscle bundles you  contract, not any variance in the behavior of an individual sarcomere. At the sarcomere level it does the same thing every time. The number of soldiers sent to the battle can have a profound effect on the outcome.

For muscles to open and be refreshed after being spent, two needs must be fulfilled for this to occur. 

First: the environment must be flushed and restocked. The process of this side of the equation is all over the market place, from GatorAid to RedBull. I’ve alway liked regular bits of cool clear water and the occasional nice paleo snack. This part is all about how the river flows and that bio-chemistry stuff. You can learn how this nuclear power plant works if you want to; however, the light switch here, is being used all the time. Knowing how it works is better. If we know better, we do better.

Second: those contracted sarcomeres stuck in a closed expression, must be opened. As our skeletal muscles are arranged in opposing muscle groups across a joint. One choice to open closed sarcomeres, is to contract the muscle groups on the other side of the shared joint. The second solution is gravity. Arrange your posture so as to expand the range of motion of the closed muscle without pulling on it from the other side. There are many forms and disciplines for stretch that accomplish opening sarcomeres. The last way I know to accomplish sarcomere release is exterior intervention by means of physically, chemically or energetically manipulating the variable. 

When a muscle system is worked to the point of failure, parts of the system actually physically break. Since muscles have that happy quality called life, it repairs its own damage. When muscle experiences these repairs, more sarcomere structures are added to the muscle bundle than were there before the failure. Vigorous exercise tends to build muscle mass. Inactivity leads to atrophy. This loss of muscle mass proves the point, “ Use it or loose it.”

Fast twitch, slow twitch. This fellow has done a lot of twitching to get here. Break the muscle down by work, and in this case lots of work and you will rebuild. Faster and stronger than before, ready to meet the demands of environment anticipated to come. Is this a wise allocation of resources? Is this required to secure continued survival? I think not. 

The environment his muscle cells experience is massive repetitive load. More load than the system was manifested to endure so it builds more to reflect the needs of the environment.

Ask each of the systems in your being the same question. What is the environment that manifests each of the cells and system of the being you are? I wonder what kind of mental lifting this fellow could do if he spent as much effort on the muscles between his ears?  

What good are the advanced skills of contraction, when the needs of “Now” are requiring expansion?

If We Know Better, We Do Better.

That’s what Oprah said so it must be true! 

So, I ask you: Why would anyone come to the conclusion that “Standardized Testing” would provide useful applicable information to the child or the system? Really, “No Child Left Behind” guarantees only the “standardized child” will succeed at standardized tests. All others may or may not succeed,if they are not quite ready to receive what society and when society offers your one chance to officially recieve it.

The solution to resolving our educational conundrum is as simple as knowing your customers. if we know better, we do better. Our children are not “protean” human  automatons. Serving our children as the whole individual beings they are, must be our goal. Not a dream, a goal. A dream has no pathway to become real; it passes, like the cloud in the sky. To have a goal requires: 1. a calendar 2. a plan 3. accountability. Let’s call this a goal. 

Standardized tests serve a “protean” race. We, here in this country, in this day and age are not our fullest “protean” potential.

If every child was the “macrostate child” shown in the chart from earlier posts, then one test would reflect the progress of each production unit microchip and direct pathways for acceptance, correction or rejection. US Schools; right, huh? (See post 11/20/2011)

A child’s body engages the presence of a flower according to its own developmental gifts, in the continuums of its environment. 

A child’s mind sees a flower in a very simple way. Each two children see the same flower through the complexity of different filters unique to each child. 

A child doesn’t need terms. Terms don’t fit into “now” time. The quality of experience being had by a child needs no interpretation within the child; that is, until he or she has to explain themselves to the rest of us. If your goal is to educate a child, make them feel safe enough to engage your curriculum the way their innocent non-conscious self engaged that flower so long ago.  

The difficulty comes in the ability to express their experience in any terms, to anyone, including themselves. Communication trees and forests. (See post 01/06/2012) At first small, if viable and successful, grow forth and multiply into great forests of understanding.

My first child was a son. His first word was light. Oh, not angelic airy new age light you might think from me, circa 1984. I would turn the light switch on and off again and again. Every time I turned the light on, I would say light. We spent a lot of time at this game and he loved it. He soon began to turn the light on and say light all by himself. The first seedling of his first communication tree. The appearance of light in his environment had an associated group of symbols representing his experience. He’d switch it on and utter the word light. In the early days of his language formation he would always look back to me for acceptance, correction or rejection. He has long since stopped checking with me.

It’s not the length of time from conception to any given point in time, that determines capability or capacity. That totally depends on how each child itself, with all its vast array of variables, blooms to its full potential. 

“Each according to their gifts, Captain.” is the actual quote. I got that from Spock in one of the “Star Trek” movies. Impeccable source, I must say. That’s the neat thing about truth; it  has “is” going for it. “Isness,” is a powerful argument.

Trouble starts when the story telling begins. With mutual respect, trust worthiness and sufficient common language; stories can be a powerful tool. Non-truthiness in a story is like corrupt script in computer code; a virus, if you will. A virus will consume its prey until the prey is gone, and then the virus with no more human cells to harvest, passes as well. Healthy human cells resist entropy. The healthy composition of now also resists entropy (See post 12/25/2011).

Each child is a member of the audience. Witness to the performance of a script written by the child him or her self. Each in their own time, each in their own way for they are the ones writing their stories, not you.  The place to have the most influence is at the place and time the stories are written within the individual. This is where changes in our approach to education can fundamentally effect the success of the individual.  

Age cannot remain the constant by which each child must fulfill some qualitative or quantitative benchmark or be found deficient. Each blooms in their own time, in accordance with how the opportunities provided by the environment intersect with the opportunities provided by each individual present self. There are other determining factors that are far more important than age to the successful development of the individual. 

A regimented hoop jumping test serves no one.  If hoop jumping is the task in question, gather a benchmark query and retest based on the benchmark for the individual and serve the needs of your curriculum by serving the needs of the child first. The curriculum will follow in its own time.  It’s hard to get a wheelchair through a hoop. Have you tried?

A system that is sensitive to the needs of the individual and serves those needs at a rate the individual can successfully assimilate, is a stark contrast to a standardized test serving a standardized child. No one can go faster than they can go. Not even you. I dare you to try it.

Take a look at the path of the “protean” child in the "macrostate chart" (See post of 11/20/2011). It is quite an illuminating graphic; however, it represents few real children. All of our developmental traits come in their own time and space; not Cartesian time or Newtonian space. 

We place right and wrong where there is no such thing possible. This planet earth human existence is a creative process, start to finish. In a creative process there is no right or wrong. There is only what doesn't work, what works and what works better. Oprah says, "If we know better, we do better."

Media, internet, technology has a place. Internet classes have subjects they may serve; however, some areas of human understanding are not well served by flash cards, slide shows and bubble tests. The bandwidth is just too narrow to convey our higher knowing, unless one already knows it. Words represent experience, not the experience itself. If you do not have the experience of love, all the symbols, words or pictures in the world will not teach you the experience of love. 

Socrates would be in tears.

Solution: Know your customers better, then serve your customers better.

When Do You Know its a Tool?

Answer: When whatever it is, is part of a solution to a "Now" problem. When you become conscious, that during your non-conscious time said lesson was useful. Then it is a tool.

One of the magical abilities that life has in continuum, is the power of transduction. You may have heard of this in electronic devices.Those electronics design guys didn’t invent it, they stole it. Maybe that’s a bit harsh. They took the idea from life. 

Last post’s video was from Dr. Rita Carter’s book, “The Human Brain.” The book is a wonderfully laid out resource for an old dyslexic brain, wanting to refresh his understanding of the current state of neuroscience (published in 2011).

Here’s a definition: 

Transduction: Definition (Myers): conversion of one of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies into neural impulses.

“Patrick?” you may ask, “Why would anyone but your Doctor want to know that?”

More tools. Yea!! With chocolate on top. 

No,no, no. With a nice paleo snack on top, after a brisk Cross “Work Out of the Day” and proper hydration. 

Get out there and transduce some energy!

There are lists of different kinds of transductive processes in our human system. Some energies turn from electrical energy into chemical signals. Light energy, sound energy, sensitivity and more; all, turn from their own unique resonance, into neural impulses. Your neural impulses also  stimulate movement of muscle tissue, turning neural into kinetic energy. Movement on the whole being scale

changes the organisms shape.

If the science behind this blog holds, this occurs non-consciously in response to contextual conditions in the  environment.

More tools. Yea!! 

When one knows in ones non-conscious self, better, one will choose better. Is knowing better a responsibility you need to fulfill or will its fulfillment happen naturally, by the knowing? Once better choices are available to recurring problems change comes naturally, at least in my study and experience. 

The right educational or theatrical environments offer or elicit new pathways and solutions to life’s problems that occur now. Problems with your checkbook are real enough and the bank teller loves to listen to your stories; however, a car accident happens too fast for stories to be of much use. If the appropriate action is not programed in, the response will be random. Good luck with that. I know my path is littered with hits and misses. 

It's in the assumptions from within and between us, that the nuances of truth are lost. For the environment, those around you and most importantly for you yourself,... don’t do that.

Transduction

Be still and listen.

From Dr. Rita Carter's "The Human Brain"

Holy Trinity of Now Writing

I know, some of this is like, “Oh look, Patrick discovered water!”

Building a common language requires visiting our common places, so that together we can discover uncommon places. Yes, water is water.... It gets interesting when we have enough common language to say, “Well, if that is true and passes the ‘isness’ test, then what about (_____): you fill in the blank.” Thats what growth and creativity is all about, filling in the blank. If we learn to do this well, we grow our communication forests of ideas in our mind that resist entropy in a way we did not have before. 


Sounds a lot like evolution, but it isn’t. Riding the "now" wave may result in making changes to the blue prints to better resists entropy. These changes are made based on our perception of our environment. What if our perceptions are not valid? thats for another post, another day.

Now, where was I. Oh, yea; water.

Be now. No, thats only two.

Be here now. That’s three!


Be (as in, you are or you are not. Be is the “you are” part of that.)


Here (as in, where ever in the now you happen to be.) 

Now (as in, the indivisible split instance of is.)

This post wants to bring into focus the character I’ve been hinting at for the past 19 posts. It's a character that comprises all the part of you; except that part that is greater than the sum of the parts. Once we establish this character, we will be able to visit along a timeline that flows from conception (which is a fixed point) and death (which is yet to be determined.)

BE-NESS: There is you, right? Your “isness” is, isn’t it? If you are, you know it, right? Just the you of you. This doesn’t require faith, it just is. Like the stars in the sky and the ground under your feet, there you are. No complications with this one. It has the truthyness of “is” going for it.

HERE-NESS: Next, consider the idea; to manifest as a human suggests there is a potential “you,” when you get started with that first whole human cell. After all, you’re sitting there reading this as a human, right? The gifts your parents gave in that first cell is the “protean” you, that is that cell’s potential. 

The “Protean” me didn’t have that football injury in high school resulting in knee replacement at 58. “Protean” me is the absolute optimum expression of my parents gift at any given age. This fictitious being is based in fact. This character’s roots in reality make it a unique tool. This is not a matter of faith either. The hands you have are based on the cards you’re dealt and how you play them. That seems straight forward.  No complication with this one, either.

NOW-NESS: Then there is the systematic visual illusion of life; consciously perceived as now; however, the instance of that perception no less than 1/2 second after now. This is the part that requirers infinite faith. What you perceive as now, is a composite, best guess with feeling, of what 1/2 second ago was like; but, a simulation none the less. Make believe, with suspension of disbelief.

This is a stage on which the curtain goes up at the onset of consciousness. When consciousness comes on and you are in the now with it, if the programing you need to respond to now’s environment is not in place, its just too late. 

This is why education is required, if we want to live together as a culture. In the end, everyone has to learn everything. No matter when you choose to learn a thing, it happens in a balance of internal and external variables. In that holistic context, the nexus of perception that is you, learns. 

Education is the antidote to ignorance. It may not necessarily cure a bad case of ignorance. Those individuals are actually quite rare.

One puts oneself in the environment and it happens to you. You go and sit in the seat and theatre happens to you. You go and sit in the seat and education happens to you. 

It's what you do with what happens to YOU that makes the continuum of your experience. It's what you do with what happens to you,  that writes your continuums. 

No fear.

The educational environment is indeed a form of theatre, where the Gods of Comedy and Tragedy are served up everyday, to every age in every way. 

This is a real physical place humans have, built of imaginary things. This is a place to witness and do, all the things grown-ups do in real life and be safe while doing so. Such environments provide a safe place and time to witness and respond to new stimulus. This is the process by which we install new solutions to life’s challenges. In earlier posts I referred to this as programs being entered into the non-conscious self, in which you may never be  conscious.

Consciousness should be a silent partner in the affairs of now, using the considerable power of its veto with conservative  reserve. Conscious processor is 50 bits per sec and non-conscious processor is no less than 50,000,000 bits per sec. Which one would you trust?

In a “General Systems” evaluation of the human instrument, we find the appearance of vast variety and complexity. Almost too complex to understand. Well, how many living cells are you? If you're fully grown, that is about 50 to 75 trillion (with a “T") human cells. Add to that the sum 625 TRILLION single celled organism along for the ride and dinner. That is how complex you are. 

So, here’s a BIG clue. Don’t think of it like that. Leave that to your Doctor, for now. Think of yourself as one thing. This really works. 

Each of your individual cells, human or otherwise, are the smallest independent living unit in your body volume. Everything else is communities of cells working together to perform a function. That is until your perception expands to the scale of whole being. Whole implies oneness, our whole being like a single living cell being. Different in scale, but not in kind. 

More tools. Yea!

The Field Governs the Particle, Still

Uncle Al (God Bless him) proved to his own standards that the effect of epigenetic control is the same at every scale of the material universe. Different in scale, but not in kind is the way I read it. Particles, cells, communities, stars, galaxies and beyond: all are governed by self-organizing forces and influences in the field, the context, the environment. That is to say, not by any mechanism of the particle itself. It was the environment of the particle's own creation that brought it kicking and screaming into existence. From that point on, existence only has decay into chaos and then settling into equilibrium to which it can look forward. 

The force of life resists this decay by its very nature. Life has learned to repair and replace physical elements that fail to perform their function. Epigenetics shows that the molecules that perform these repairs are lifeless mechanisms, getting their instructions from outside the living cell itself. 


This post wants to look at that dance with the universe. And I can just hear Ruby say, "What in hell does theoretical physics have to do with acting?" How about this Ruby?

It seems that our “whole body’s” relationship to our environment, field, context; is very similar to that of the individual living cell.(See post of 10/24/2011 " The Field, Context or Environment.")

One of my favorite meditations is “Enoch’s Prayer.” The poem begins with these four words, “Be still and listen.”

Listen to what? To the voice in my head? Not really. That voice is not necessarily your friend. It will not necessarily tell you the truth. Anyway, words take time in continuum to convey a meaningful message. One can only do one thing at a time and if you’re talking to yourself, you’re not listening. 

Here is a link to research being done by the Heart Math Institute. The article that follows comes from research posted on its web site. 

http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/introduction.html

The Heart Brain

“The intrinsic cardiac nervous system, or heart brain, is made up of complex ganglia, containing afferent (receiving) local circuit (interneurons) and efferent (transmitting) sympathetic and parasympathetic neurons. Multifunctional sensory neurites, which are distributed throughout the heart, are sensitive to many types of sensory input originating from within the heart itself. The intrinsic cardiac ganglia integrate messages from the brain and 

other processing centers throughout the body with information received from the cardiac sensory neurites. Once information has been processed by the heart’s intrinsic neurons, the appropriate signals are sent to the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes as well as the muscles in the heart. Thus, under normal physiological conditions, the heart’s intrinsic nervous system plays an important role in much of the routine control of cardiac function, independent of the central nervous system. Dr. Armour and his colleagues have shown that the heart’s intrinsic nervous system is vital for the maintenance of cardiovascular stability and efficiency, and that without it, the heart cannot operate properly.

The heart’s intrinsic nervous system consists of ganglia, which contain local circuit neurons of several types, and sensory neurites, which are distributed throughout the heart. The intrinsic ganglia process and integrate inflowing information from the extrinsic nervous system and from the sensory neurites within the heart. The extrinsic cardiac ganglia, located in the thoracic cavity, have direct connections to organs such as the lungs and esophagus and are also indirectly connected via the spinal cord to many other organs, including the skin and arteries. The "afferent" (flowing to the brain) parasympathetic information travels from the heart to the brain through the vagus nerve to the medulla, after passing through the nodose ganglion. The sympathetic afferent nerves first connect to the extrinsic cardiac ganglia (also a processing center), then to the dorsal root ganglion and the spinal cord. Once afferent signals reach the medulla, they travel to the subcortical areas (thalamus, amygdala, etc.) and then to the cortical areas.”

What the good Doctor is trying to say in his clumsy way, is that there is a whole neurological “brain” system in the heart that processes information in time that is separate from the brain in the head. This system processes and only then “reports” to the head brain. There seems to be a primus subordinate relationship between all the independent “brain” systems in our body and when and how and under what circumstances these systems report to the “Head Brain.”

In all of these posts, I am intending to apply observation and measurements of behavior relative to changes in the temperature, blood flow and electrical field of the neurons in question. In the pictures of the MRIs you can see the areas of the brain effected light up when they fire. Just like the brain, the whole body performs an ever changing dance of measurable changes when viewed in continuum.

Above is a graphic representation of the measurable electromagnetic field around the heart; however, the heart is not the only system that produces an electromagnetic field. Each neuron does. Each separate “brain” center does. All together, our oneness is projected as an ever changing orb of interacting, focused, dynamic energy dancing with the greater environment.

Every aspect of qualitative discernment can be applied to this whole human field. At now time, there is no separation; however, at +1/2 second we can close one eye, hold our breath and pretend the rest of the universe isn’t there. From this fictitious perspective, one can imagine an internal environment that is defined by the outer boundaries of our skin, contained in air. Lets say that this human volume of space contains 50 to 75 trillion human cells. Someone must have counted. 

News Flash! Within the boundaries defined above as human, only about 10% of the living cells are actually human. The rest are other life forms along for the ride. Here is a path you can follow to prove this to yourself. 


Here is the first paragraph of an article in Scientific American on the subject from March 2010. 

"Genetics in the Gut: Intestinal Microbes Could Drive Obesity and Other Health Issues"

The diversity of germs in the human gut suggests microbiota play a greater role in health than previously thought, even driving obesity and other metabolic conditions

By Katherine Harmon  | March 5, 2010 | 12

"Outnumbering our human cells by about 10 to one, the many minuscule microbes that live in and on our bodies are a big part of crucial everyday functions. The lion's share live in the intestinal tract, where they help fend off bad bacteria and aid in digesting our dinners. But as scientists use genetics to uncover what microbes are actually present and what they're doing in there, they are discovering that the bugs play an even larger role in human health than previously suspected—and perhaps at times exerting more influence than human genes themselves."

Below is the first couple paragraphs from an article from ScienceDaily that explains this phenomenon.

“Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health?"

(June 3, 2008,) — "The number of bacteria living within the body of the average healthy adult human are estimated to outnumber human cells 10 to 1. Changes in these microbial communities may be responsible for digestive disorders, skin diseases, gum disease and even obesity. Despite their vital imporance in human health and disease, these communities residing within us remain largely unstudied and a concerted research effort needs to be made to better understand them, say researchers June 3 at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston.

"This could be the basis of a whole new way of looking at disease. In order to understand how changes in normal bacterial populations affect or are affected by disease we first have to establish what normal is or if normal even exists," says Margaret McFall Ngai of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Researchers have long suspected and researched the role that beneficial microbial communities within humans, known collectively as the human microbiome, play in health and disease but only recently has molecular technology reached the point where they can truly begin to identify and characterize all the species that make up an individual's microbiome.”

We are neck deep in our microbiome, a garden we live in and by must needs, cultivate. As this becomes further understood to the greater medical community, whole new fields of health, nutrition, pharmacology, etc., will come into being. Damn, only 1 out of 10 cells! Good thing our body is a republic and not a democracy. 

Before I go on, I just want to do the math. 50 trillion human cells in the average human. For every single human cell there are 10 bacteria cells. That make a population of 500 trillion bacteria within our human boundaries. Some help, some hurt and some don’t make much trouble at all. A population of bacteria that finds itself in the right environment can double in 9.5 seconds. That hurts if it happens in the wrong place, I'm here to tell ya. 

I wonder if they talk and work together or if they are all into it for themselves. The cell bellow is an e-coli cell. Cool, huh?

There is a vast amount of information to which we can be sensitive, if we would only “be still and listen.”

OK, Wake Up! Set the clock from +1/2 second back to "Now" time. Open up your one eye that was closed and breathe deeply in your nose and out your mouth. Look, there is an external environment out there. 


Wait a second, wake up some more. That was all an illusion. The "out there" and the "in here" are not separate after all, they are one. Who knew? This boundary is no more real than the boundary between Oregon and California.

I leave you with this. When we become compressed into the singularity of now, separate doesn't work anymore. Now doesn't posses the capacity or capability to express itself in any way but oneness. This is where we are all the time, anyway. 


This compressing of which I speak, only exists in the systematic visual illusions of our own creation; all of which happened no less than 1/2 second ago. In fact, most of what we perceive as now comes from long held successful assumptions about that environment we are one with. 


Does this make us an inseparable aspect of all that is, in the here and now we all share as one, together? Are we that fluid inseparable oneness, always, anyway? I guess we can only pretend not to be one. I wonder what that means? Enough to make you want to say, Hummmmm........

Can’t See the Forest Through the Trees.

I can't see the forest through the trees; communication trees, that is. In a twist to this saying one might say, I can't see the meaning through the words. 

This post, I want to use the analogy of the life cycle of a tree to illuminate a common understanding of how we communicate in and through time and space. This blog seems to be telling a cumulative story, in its best form. The big idea this post wants to share is that we grow forests of communication trees.

Above is the “Childhood - Macrostate” chart (See Post 11/20/11). The chart doesn’t show the developmental progression of communication capacity or capability.

From the seed comes stem and root. Reaching down into the earth and up into the sky. 

The magic begins when the seed explodes into being a tree. For the sake of not starting an argument, lets say that in humans, this point is birth.

Non-conscious self is in full record mode from well before birth. Other than fulfilling basic needs, non-conscious self doesn’t playback much until the post birth gestation is fulfilled out about 6 to 9 months of age. 

Remember last post? Mirror neurons? Little people have mirror neurons as well; however, they have nothing to associate with what they are sensing. This is true of all of the other sensory pathways. Those we are aware of and those of which we well may not be conscious. We learn to see and hear and touch.

Words are symbols of experience and not the experience itself. 

First we learn to witness. Then we learn to experience. Then we learn to make symbols representing our experience. Then we learn to form our symbols into more and more complex meaning. After a little practice, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” was born.

Each idea, each word is like a seedling tree. Every time a word or idea is reinforced by experience, it grows. It expands in virtual mass growing an expanding network of branches and then leaves.

An inner city child’s concept of a tree would be very different from John Muir’s idea of trees as an old man.

A healthy forest of communication trees in the fertile soil of healthy neurons will grow tall, full and interlock to create higher and higher levels of communication capacity.

If the environment that nurtures the tree is parched and toxic, the tree will not grow to its potential. The tree living in that environment will not have the capacity, much less the capability to manifest, remember and understand complex meaning. If the environment of a healthy tree becomes biocidic, the healthy tree will fall ill and die. 

The skeletal remains of these communication trees have lost their capacity to create a word, much less higher meaning. Meth heads must have communication forests that resemble the above gathering of trees.

How have you cultivated the communication forest in your mind? How have you maintained the soil of your being? What seeds have been planted in the soil of your neurons?

The neurology is the hardware. The mind is the software. The rest of the body is your peripheral array. All tools. All toys.


Have fun and play safe!