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It was wonderful to fall into this chapter last week, as I was finally able to read it during our long ride home from the National Aquarium. Most especially so because Buhner uses the metaphors of listening to a weak radio signal in a car that's speeding away from the city (which we were), and he talks a lot about fish (which we'd just seen) to illustrate his points.
First a word about the annoyingly weak radio signal... he goes in to quite a lot of detail about what electrical signals are and how they are detected, eventually ending with a mental image of a woman attaching a multitude of antennae all over her car just so that she can pick up the far-off radio station that's playing her favorite song. We live in a world of electric signal noise, or stochastic resonance; and while linear, Newtonian science prefers to think that such weak signals cannot be detected because of the distractions of all this other noise, Buhner illustrates, through the lives of sharks and fishes, just how they can be by actually using the noise.
Just like the lady with all the extra radio antennae on hand, the body responds to the mud of too much electrical information by coupling cells to create a type of "net" that has a way of mimicking the waves it wants to distinguish out of the "noise", oscillating with them, and thus amplifying them so that the signal becomes stronger and clearer. He uses the lives of ocean fish to illustrate how this is so-- one fish seeking the other as prey doesn't just "sniff it out" by tasting the water around it; rather, salt water is a fine conductor of electrical waves, and the predator can interpret the signals it receives to the fine point of knowing what fish, how many, their size, age, health, and exact location. It's as much of an internal, automatic system as it is with how we breathe or see or hear-- and because of the interplay of the electrical waves and the response of the cells and eventually, the response of what is sending the signal, it's a communication that's happening.
Buhner points out that it's much the same with magnetic fields, pointing to the presence of magnetite, an ore that is sensitive to magnetic fields in living things such as bees, salmon and birds that rely on fluxes in the field to orient themselves for navigation. Humans, it turns out, also have magnetite present in the hippocampus, the part of the brain where all sensory information converges, meaning is extracted, memory is stored and spatial relationships understood. So as a bird uses information from the magnetic field to orient itself in space, humans, through the function of the hippocampus, also use it to orient themselves in meaning.
And just how do we understand these electromagnetic communications? It is through the hippocampus' close relationship to the heart, "one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators and receivers known". Far more than a "pump", Buhner calls the human heart "a highly evolved organ of perception and communication". (On to the next chapter!)
And so that brings me to the day where I found myself behaving very rudely to a sunflower.
There are lots of ways one might look at these types of things. I like Seren's word for it-- "speshul"-- to describe the negative end of the description. But I do have a knack for it, and for a long time I've been afraid of it, simply because I don't really understand it and I don't really want to be "speshul". After reading this first bit of Buhner, and so understanding it more in terms of its banal normalcy, and thus seeing it more as a birthright in the way that breathing is a birthright, I'm tending these days to be much more curious about doing it more and doing it better.
I can see now, that day, my heart was open. It was late October, and I had just left my husband (the first one, the one I don't talk about much), and in my own place and finally feeling free-at-last, I'd invited over some friends for an annual Samhain celebration. It was a women's spirituality group that I'd somehow managed to fall into, and the year previous we'd had a lovely dinner party together, where we pot-lucked the food our dead loved ones loved, and told stories and laughed and cried amid lighted candles, fresh flowers, and tender ritual.
It was much the same in this particular year, when I was finally free and eager to host this fine group of women. And after we'd eaten and the last candle extinguished on the altar and everyone had left, I sat down in a chair next to some of said fresh flowers, and I was flying with happiness.
That's when it called to me. And I sat there looking into it, and soon not just with my eyes, but my whole self; and, it struck me it was looking back at me. And after a long period of grooving with each other, it spoke. It was small and it was subtle, but inwardly it was huge and it knocked me back in my chair. What did it say, and how did it say it? It's hard to describe-- it was sort of like my whole body had become an ear, and my heart was the center of that ear. It wasn't English but I could decipher it as such. It was asking me a question. A joyous question. And it was precisely in the middle of that question that I realized, Oh my god, I am talking to a flower, that I jumped up and ran out of the room, outside where the air was cool and I could collect myself a little.
By the time I realized what an opportunity I'd passed up, it was too late. I ran back in and sat down, "OK, ya caught me off guard-- sorry-- could you repeat that again?" But it was no use. It was "just a sunflower" and I just a fool again. Mirthfully, I went to cleaning up the kitchen.
And I suppose I have been holding that half-question in my heart for nearly 10 years now, hopeful for the opportunity to find the question again so I might answer it...
And so there is the other reason for engaging in a study of herbalism. Conversation!
First a word about the annoyingly weak radio signal... he goes in to quite a lot of detail about what electrical signals are and how they are detected, eventually ending with a mental image of a woman attaching a multitude of antennae all over her car just so that she can pick up the far-off radio station that's playing her favorite song. We live in a world of electric signal noise, or stochastic resonance; and while linear, Newtonian science prefers to think that such weak signals cannot be detected because of the distractions of all this other noise, Buhner illustrates, through the lives of sharks and fishes, just how they can be by actually using the noise.
Just like the lady with all the extra radio antennae on hand, the body responds to the mud of too much electrical information by coupling cells to create a type of "net" that has a way of mimicking the waves it wants to distinguish out of the "noise", oscillating with them, and thus amplifying them so that the signal becomes stronger and clearer. He uses the lives of ocean fish to illustrate how this is so-- one fish seeking the other as prey doesn't just "sniff it out" by tasting the water around it; rather, salt water is a fine conductor of electrical waves, and the predator can interpret the signals it receives to the fine point of knowing what fish, how many, their size, age, health, and exact location. It's as much of an internal, automatic system as it is with how we breathe or see or hear-- and because of the interplay of the electrical waves and the response of the cells and eventually, the response of what is sending the signal, it's a communication that's happening.
Buhner points out that it's much the same with magnetic fields, pointing to the presence of magnetite, an ore that is sensitive to magnetic fields in living things such as bees, salmon and birds that rely on fluxes in the field to orient themselves for navigation. Humans, it turns out, also have magnetite present in the hippocampus, the part of the brain where all sensory information converges, meaning is extracted, memory is stored and spatial relationships understood. So as a bird uses information from the magnetic field to orient itself in space, humans, through the function of the hippocampus, also use it to orient themselves in meaning.
And living organisms have learned to do more than simply use these fluctuating fields as a part of their physiological functioning for tracking prey. They also use them to communicate with each other. They pick up electrical and magnetic field communications from one another, alter their functioning in response, and send back responses encoded in the fields they themselves give off. In response, the other organisms alter their functioning and respond in turn. There is an extremely sophisticated electric and magnetic communication that is going on all the time among trillions and trillions of organisms. A web of communications that is so complex and detailed that there is no way to understand it with the linear, analytical mind....
We, as human beings, are also of this Earth and possess, as all living organisms do, the ability, however atrophied, to understand these communications and respond in turn. What so many New Age practitioners call the "energy" of a thing turns out to be, in fact, the energy of a thing. It is the electric and magnetic signaling that all living organisms give off, not only as part of their physiological functioning, but as part of a complex signaling network among all life forms on Earth.
We, as human beings, are also of this Earth and possess, as all living organisms do, the ability, however atrophied, to understand these communications and respond in turn. What so many New Age practitioners call the "energy" of a thing turns out to be, in fact, the energy of a thing. It is the electric and magnetic signaling that all living organisms give off, not only as part of their physiological functioning, but as part of a complex signaling network among all life forms on Earth.
And just how do we understand these electromagnetic communications? It is through the hippocampus' close relationship to the heart, "one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators and receivers known". Far more than a "pump", Buhner calls the human heart "a highly evolved organ of perception and communication". (On to the next chapter!)
And so that brings me to the day where I found myself behaving very rudely to a sunflower.
There are lots of ways one might look at these types of things. I like Seren's word for it-- "speshul"-- to describe the negative end of the description. But I do have a knack for it, and for a long time I've been afraid of it, simply because I don't really understand it and I don't really want to be "speshul". After reading this first bit of Buhner, and so understanding it more in terms of its banal normalcy, and thus seeing it more as a birthright in the way that breathing is a birthright, I'm tending these days to be much more curious about doing it more and doing it better.
I can see now, that day, my heart was open. It was late October, and I had just left my husband (the first one, the one I don't talk about much), and in my own place and finally feeling free-at-last, I'd invited over some friends for an annual Samhain celebration. It was a women's spirituality group that I'd somehow managed to fall into, and the year previous we'd had a lovely dinner party together, where we pot-lucked the food our dead loved ones loved, and told stories and laughed and cried amid lighted candles, fresh flowers, and tender ritual.
It was much the same in this particular year, when I was finally free and eager to host this fine group of women. And after we'd eaten and the last candle extinguished on the altar and everyone had left, I sat down in a chair next to some of said fresh flowers, and I was flying with happiness.
That's when it called to me. And I sat there looking into it, and soon not just with my eyes, but my whole self; and, it struck me it was looking back at me. And after a long period of grooving with each other, it spoke. It was small and it was subtle, but inwardly it was huge and it knocked me back in my chair. What did it say, and how did it say it? It's hard to describe-- it was sort of like my whole body had become an ear, and my heart was the center of that ear. It wasn't English but I could decipher it as such. It was asking me a question. A joyous question. And it was precisely in the middle of that question that I realized, Oh my god, I am talking to a flower, that I jumped up and ran out of the room, outside where the air was cool and I could collect myself a little.
By the time I realized what an opportunity I'd passed up, it was too late. I ran back in and sat down, "OK, ya caught me off guard-- sorry-- could you repeat that again?" But it was no use. It was "just a sunflower" and I just a fool again. Mirthfully, I went to cleaning up the kitchen.
And I suppose I have been holding that half-question in my heart for nearly 10 years now, hopeful for the opportunity to find the question again so I might answer it...
And so there is the other reason for engaging in a study of herbalism. Conversation!
- Mood:
cheerful
Comments
I often perceive plants (mostly trees but sometimes other plants) as singing.
My favourite courting story of myself and my husband is when we were walking the dogs in the woods and I said. "Listen! Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"The trees are singing!"
He laughed so hard that he had to sit down (which was actually delightful because he's a kind of dour person generally) and then said,
"No, I don't hear the trees singing but I completely believe that you do."
I dunno-- I really believe we see and hear with more than just eyes and ears. I'm really eager to develop that further, and it's nice to see that there's a science to being speshul :)
This really just made me so giddy to read, and I cannot wait to read about the next time you do make contact, and don't get freaked out. :) I bet Beltane would be a fabulous opportunity to "dial up" your sunflower friend again...
OH, shit. I was totally "called" by a bouquet of sunflowers & roses at the grocery store today. But I wasn't even thinking of the story...more like my pocketbook, and justifying the purchase to my Man. Ah now I'll have to go back and get them, and tell him it's all in the name of science ;)
As for Buhner, I really love the way he writes! I think you'll enjoy it; I really like how he ties things together, and makes "speshul" feel like the most normal thing in the world.
It may help to remember that at one time the use of these perceptions was a life-skill used on an everyday basis (for some people I know it still is). Some were (and are) better at it than others, to the point of specialization even, but still.
Just like if I needed especially good arrows, I might have sought ought someone with that skill, or if I wanted to improve my fishing abilities I might befriend and help someone who was noted for their success in that area, or if I needed healing I might seek out someone who had a particular affinity (and training) with plants. But most everyone in a given community had some level of competency with all those things.
So on the one hand these perceptions are normal (even if their use and development are no longer the norm), on the other, some people are better than others at hearing from plants and...other orders of life. But that's normal too.
I have a love/hate relationship with Buhner. He's brilliant when it comes to plants, and everything he writes about them is *very* worthwhile. But he wrote a book a few years back arguing that all non-Indians are entitled to all NDN traditions and ceremonies. And he compared NDNs who want to keep these things private to Nazis (no, I am not exaggerating). As a Potawatomi (and yes I'm Irish too,in case my screen name is confusing) that makes me mad enough to spit nails and when I think about it I don't have enough cuss words to describe Buhner.
But yeah, on plants he's awesome. And I applaud your explorations in this area.
It's so funny -- as in odd, not ha-ha-- to find a person who is otherwise SO right-on about, essentially, the world not being black-and-white to then have a behavior that is SO black-and-white. But that's our human error, I guess. I'm glad to know of his; it balances my view of him. So thanks.
As for "speshul", I think the trick comes from being brought up in an environment that over-mystifies those senses, and so "owning" them becomes something of an anomaly, where it's the person, not the sense, that is "speshul". So first it's a matter of getting over ourselves, and then developing the senses that are otherwise normal... Because those attitudes and views are so deeply ingrained. I think I takes a lot of work to get over "speshul".
For me, having a bit of "science" to roll around in my mind puts my ego firmly in check. And it gives me a language to share with folks who might otherwise feel such things are utterly impossible. It's less flaky than other ways of talking about it might seem.
(Potawatomi... I'm misplacing it... north-eastern?)
The irony is, he seems as capable as anyone of finding his way. He has been given considerable insight. Which makes the racist remarks all the more unfortunate. I realize we all have blind spots, but that one seems to be particularly well-entrenched with alot of people. He can't see his own colonialism. Desiring a people's ways and hating those people at the same time is really sad.
Being perceptive, insightful and gifted (which he definately is in regard to plants) certainly doesn't mean being right about everything, it would seem. But that's to be expected, as frustrating as that particular position is to me.
"As for "speshul", I think the trick comes from being brought up in an environment that over-mystifies those senses, and so "owning" them becomes something of an anomaly, where it's the person, not the sense, that is "speshul". So first it's a matter of getting over ourselves, and then developing the senses that are otherwise normal... Because those attitudes and views are so deeply ingrained. I think I takes a lot of work to get over "speshul"."
Very true, and well-put.
"(Potawatomi... I'm misplacing it... north-eastern?)"
Hehe, that's okay, alot of people haven't heard of us. We're from the Great Lakes. Along with the Ojibwe and Odawa we make up the Anishinaabe (or as we say in Potawatomi, Neshnabé). We have a shared culture, and our languages are dialects of each other.