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!

A House of Mirrors

“Mirror, mirror in my head, do you honestly reflect my brother’s stead?” by Patrick B. Chew January 3, 2012.

There are many different kinds of neurons specializing in various tasks in our being; however, when I learned of mirror neurons, it really helped answer some tough questions. Questions that hitherto were explained with hocus pokus and metaphysics. 

Mirror neurons were first discovered in the premotor area of the macaque monkeys and later a similar mirror neuron system was discovered in humans. The human version is a  much more sophisticated system than in our monkey cousins. 


The human system also reflects other’s actions; but beyond that, reaches into frontal lobe areas that associate with touch, sight, intention, emotion and potentially more.


How Mirror Neurons Work: 
Article from Society for Neuroscience "Brain Brief" 
September Issue 2008

"You see a stranger stub her toe and you immediately flinch in sympathy. You watch a baseball outfielder run to catch a long fly ball and feel your heart racing and your leg muscles pumping along with him. You notice a friend wrinkle up his face in disgust while tasting some food and suddenly your own stomach recoils at the thought of eating. This ability to instinctively and immediately understand what other people are experiencing has long baffled neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers alike. Recent research now suggests a fascinating explanation: brain cells called mirror neurons.

In the early 1990s, Italian researchers made an astonishing and quite unexpected discovery. They had implanted electrodes in the brains of several macaque monkeys to study the animals’ brain activity during different motor actions, including the clutching of food. One day, as a researcher reached for his own food, he noticed neurons begin to fire in the monkeys’ premotor cortex—the same area that showed activity when the animals made a similar hand movement. How could this be happening when the monkeys were sitting still and merely watching him?

During the ensuing two decades, this serendipitous discovery of mirror neurons—a special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else make the same movement—has radically altered the way we think about our brains and ourselves, particularly our social selves."

This is not make-believe. These specialized cells are a real part of almost all of us. Some have it bad and they can almost climb inside you and some not so much. 

Intuition is real. To realize this gift as a tool, one must be able to keep conscious self from vetoing the intuitive feelings. If you can master this, a whole other level of communication opens to you. An articulate level of communication that goes both ways, in and out. Like any form of communication, intuition is a skill that must be practiced to be good at it. 

Something else to remember, this information is part of the conscious play being constructed during the 1/2 second delay in our perceived now. This is an example of epigenetics working at the whole human level, rather than just the cellular scale.

Just like in the cell, the whole being is responding to a perception of the environment. Based on that perception, the whole self allocates resources, defenses and prerecorded strategies to survive.

OK. SO, where is the real action? Remember, this all happens on a non-conscious self level. This is the level where mutual respect training serves so very well. The timing of this sensory system is very interesting considering earlier posts about the timing of now. You begin to respond to others around you before the others have completely initiated the action potential to which you are about to respond. The nature of this response is predicated on the programing of the non-conscious self, about to act. Experience is not what happens to you, but rather what you do with what happens to you.

What do you do, when you don’t know what to do? Flight, fight or freeze. None of which are healthy choices. It is at points like this that one’s transitive state of being is so very important. The transitive state of fear avails one of limited choices. The transitive state of mutual respect, with its pantheon of virtues offers action plans that, by their nature, facilitate well being in the face of life's challenges. 

Warning: objects in the mirror may not be what they appear to be. This is a skill that must be consciously practiced to be confident that the reflections witnessed are truthful. As Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” Like I said earlier, some folks are real good at this and some not so much. Do you know which one you are?

And as the officer said, ”This is how accidents happen.”