Animal Consciousness

I read an article about how a whole bunch of scientists have got together to sign a Cambridge Declaration on the Consciousness of Animals.  How after all this time of living with them, eating them, torturing them, testing on them, and using them as laboratory experiments, they’ve finally noticed from their often cruel focus, that the other animals seem to be more conscious than we’ve collectively allowed for them to be.  They have strong family bonds, and friendship bonds, and they use tools to perform tasks, and they’re aware of the world around them (how the hell could they not notice us?), and have communities, and co-operate with each other, and are aware of themselves in relation to the world around them.  Apparently, we’ve been so caught up in trying to find similarities between animal brains and ours, that we’ve neglected to notice that the brain type doesn’t really matter or make a difference to the behaviours that are displayed, and that are surprisingly similar to human behaviour in many ways. 

A bit like how they only discovered in the year 2000 what a clitoris actually was, and how big it was, even though surgeons had been cutting through it for years.  Do you know how big a clitoris is?  Did you know that the organ inside is attached to our little nubs of desire just like a giant iceberg is under the tip?  And that it’s actual size inside us is about as big as a cow’s liver?  With nerve endings  that reach from our belly buttons to our anus, and down our thighs almost to our knees??  And do you know why they only found out in the year 2000?  Because in the dawn of medicine, when they were practicing on cadavers, women were hard to find and work on, due to the general distaste for women at the time.  And they were only interested in womens genitalia to see if it was true that women had an inny, while men had an outy.  When they discovered this wasn’t the case, they didn’t really bother to explore much more. 

What’s that got to do with animals having consciousness??  It’s just another example of how modern science can often not see the wood for the trees.  Can get so caught up in experimenting on ‘the rest of the world’, that it misses some really big points.  Like the clitoris.  And the fact that animals are conscious and always have been, along with the entire plant kingdom (have you ever seen ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ with the soundtrack by Stevie Wonder full of all those amazing experiments that showed the consciousness of plants??), and I’d argue for the mineral kingdom too.  In fact…….I’d very strongly argue that EVERYTHING in our entire universe has consciousness………

EXCEPT US!!

The sheer human-centric arrogance of us declaring who has consciousness or not just blows me away.  But let me explain myself a bit more.  I don’t think us humans have always been unconscious – I believe the indigenous folk of every land are and have been as conscious as the rest of the cosmos, and a lot of Eastern philosophies draw close to consciousness too, but us white people, with our monotheistic religions of Gods sending us to domesticate and use the planet as we like……..are about as far from consciousness as you could possibly get. 

When I think of consciousness, I think of all the miraculous interdependent relationships that are manifest in the natural world.  The plants that make flowers that look like female insects, to encourage pollination.  The deals made between trees and ants to provide protection and food for each other.  The cicadas that spend 17 years underground, and come up to provide a feast for all the animals that eat insects, procreate, and then die, to give the forest itself a huge growth boon.  The tribe of elephants that are consciously evolving into being tuskless after poachers decimated 95% of their population.  The fungus that has developed in the Amazon that eats plastic.  The planets that cycle in exactly the right places to give pull to our earth and the sun to keep it all revolving and make it possible to have such incredibly diverse life on our planet.  The awareness of all the other conscious beings (apart from us) of their place within the ecosystems, of what they eat, how they eat, and all the ways that plant and animal waste and bodies get cleaned up and transformed into life.  And most fundamentally, their awareness of their place in the wheel of creation, to ensure the survival of themselves and everything else.   Their unquestioned acceptance of who and what they are as being completely perfect in the great scheme of things.  You just have to watch a David Attenborough documentary to witness the great interdependence and consciousness of every living thing.  Apart from us. 

Whereas we with our opposable thumbs and off planet gods, the greatest despoilers and destroyers the planet has ever known, building structures all over the earth that create extinctions, who have poised even our own species on the brink of destruction, consider ourselves conscious???  We grow and eat toxic food and flush it down toilets with drinking water, to be cleaned by chemicals and benefit nothing.  We take from our bountiful earth mother without a thought of exchange.  We treat our fellow animals with total disregard for their inherent natures.  And when we die we lock our bodies away in trees that we’ve killed, selfishly hoarding our decaying bodies so even in death we don’t give anything back.  Yet we have set ourselves up as judge and ruler of the planet, and consider ourselves qualified to prescribe who and what has consciousness??

We’ve removed ourselves so far from the natural matrix that we send our young off from early ages, and encourage them to attach to other emotionally underdeveloped young, rather than attach to their families and communities, which was the strategy employed by conscious evolution, to ensure our survival and pleasure in life.  From the moment they are conceived, our babies are taught everything……..but how to love and accept themselves, exactly as they are.  In fact, if you were to attribute a sense of being exactly what you were as being perfect in the scheme of things to consciousness, it would be easy to argue that just about everything we do as a ‘civilised’ and supposedly conscious society, is actually leading us as far from consciousness as you could get.  We constantly get the message that we have to pass tests and achieve benchmarks and do less of this and more of that from our schools, religions, spiritualities, therapies, and everything else in our worlds.  In fact.  I would say that we’re collectively as unconscious as the human race has ever been.

Which interestingly reflects our position in our galaxy, and here’s where the good news begins.  If you’re going through similar experiences to those that I and the people I talk to have walked, you may have felt very disconnected and alone in recent months.  On a roller coaster of complete highs and lows.  Like all the solid elements in your life, the things you KNOW to be true, are all of a sudden not so solid.  Very mortal and ageing, while also experiencing moments of pure clarity and connection.  Like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet, and even though the unimaginable has happened……..you’re still breathing and alive.  Stingingly aware of the great atrocities being perpetuated on the planet, yet full of a floating sense of optimism.  Like every structure in your life has been completely broken down to all its constituent parts, and then reformed.  Being forced to look death in the eye, whether it’s happened in your family, or to a loved friend, or your car, or your beloved pet, or a group or belief system you held close.   Maybe feeling for the first time in your life that you actually know nothing.  Feeling all the experiences and hurts that you’ve hidden deep down come surging to the surface against your will.  Forcing you to look at them, deal with them, and make some kind of peace.  A re-examination of patterns and mind sets to work out if they still represent you and serve you. 

And if you subscribe like me, to the belief that everything is connected and interdependent and ultimately all one, it might warm you to know that we’re reflecting a great cosmic dance and procession of ages, and are literally reflecting our place in our galaxy and our distance from the centre and ourselves.  There’s an amazing article written by a dear friend who explains this whole concept in great and interesting depth, but suffice to say, according to her and the numerous sources she cites and my own personal research for years……….our human civilization has been progressing through the ages in alignment with the progression of our planet through our galaxy, and has gone through great ages or equinoxes, that also add up to a great cycle like a year.  And we’re coming to the end and beginning of a 26,000 year reflection of a year, which through it’s journey has taken us to the very farthest point from the centre of the galaxy, and also ourselves.  We’re as unconscious, and separate, and alone, and disconnected as we’ve ever been. 

This is as bad as it’s going to get.

And we’re turning the corner, at the far reaches of our galaxy, and starting the journey back in. 

We as a species have removed ourselves from our lifeblood and source to the point that we have to unlearn the guff that’s made us feel separate, and teach ourselves how to relearn what every other element of creation knows instinctively from birth.  How to be conscious, and part of the great wheels and cycles from which we are born.  Simply by being exactly who and what we are.   

The journey back to our centres, and our connection and our interdependence has begun.

And interestingly, I read an article that I’ve never been able to find again, about how they found another tablet mentioning 2012 from the Mayan times.  There was only one mention of the year before, and it was all fairly nebulous, which left a lot of room for doomsayers and apocalists to speculate about what the date might mean.  And the tablet they found this year was written by a king at the time of the last end and beginning of an age, which lasts approximately 5,125 years, and the king was basically saying “I was the king when this great age ended and a new one began, and all the political and personal turmoil wasn’t because I was a crap leader, but because of the turning over of ages, and the next one will be on December 21, 2012, so whoever is king WATCH OUT!”

Now the writing of this has all taken far longer than I anticipated at the beginning, which also correlated with the beginning of our trip back to SA to register Flo the Coaster, and seems to be ending just as we’ve got back and resettled into our home.  And over this whole journey I’ve been contemplating consciousness, and talking with dear and loved friends back at our old home about it, and adding bits to it, and trying out aspects and theories on some well used heads. 

And I do believe that everything that is happening, is perfect, and a perfect reflection shining out of countless mirrors of potentials, and we’re all evolving nicely towards where we’re all meant to be going.  And that evolution has led our human race a merry dance through total interconnection to total seperation, and is now leading us right back to where we began…….but with more wisdom.  And the way to true consciousness is nowhere near as complex and complicated as many would like you to believe, so they can make money from you as they sell you their dvds and workshops and books and all the other products that are created through our search for connection, fulfillment, love, peace and freedom. 

It’s simply and most complicatedly just being yourself.  You.  Who you were born to be.  Pursuing the thing that makes you burn with passion.  Following your whims and desires and inner fashion guru.  Making all those mistakes that you really can’t avoid making if you’re to really do what you want to do.  Blowing big kisses to all the cautionary tales and skeptical relatives as you leap off the bluff of all the shit you’ve been told you have to do all your life, into a free forming and spontaneous future where anything is possible in love.

Along with a host of others, I did watch ‘The Secret’ all those years ago, and I did really dive into it and live it and breathe it for as long as I could, yet there were some things that never really worked for me.  Like.  “How does that bad shit still happen when I’m being so positive?”  And over the years I’ve come to notice that it’s not only the good things that I can take credit for, but the bad things too.  Or rather what I do with those things, and how I deal with them.  They actually then become really good things too.  And I wouldn’t choose for a lot of them to happen, but I’m glad to learn from them when they do.  And those bad things aren’t a sign that my positive shield was too weak, or I was being afraid of success or all the other bolshy things we tell ourselves when life doesn’t go the way we want.  They happened for many reasons, not all of which are to do with me (surprise, surprise), and bring as many gifts as they bring tears.  And are usually taking me on paths that I might never suspect I’d take.  And you know what?  I’ve found when I get really caught up with trying to ‘craft’ and manifest my future, for a start I can be limiting myself because I don’t have any experience of how great and wonderful some things I haven’t met yet may be, and I can also take the whole journey far too seriously.  Like taking things personally when they go ‘wrong’.  And it’s not all to do with me.  Sometimes it’s about how I can be in the right place to help someone else, cause that’s the story of the moment.  And sometimes it’s about recognizing the Law of Repulsion – the shadow of the Law of Attraction, and getting the hell out.  And sometimes it’s just destiny.  And takes you completely by surprise. 

On our drive across the country, to get our Coaster Flo registered, and meet again with family, and old friends, and old patterns, and the energetic guff we left behind us and were met with when we got back again……..I kinda just gave up all hope for or need to try and craft what was going to happen, and what we were going to do, and put into practice a skill learnt from birthing and young babies that helps a lot…..

Surrender. 

And I reckon that’s about as close to consciousness as I can get.  Being who I am.  Wearing the clothes that I feel comfortable in.  Eating the foods I feel comfortable eating.  Talking about the themes that inspire me.  Trying at all times to be me no matter where I am or who I’m with.  Trusting that I’m here to weave a particular thread into the great tapestry of life, and that I’ll know exactly what to do if I just follow that thread. 

And I’ve had experiences, big deep experiences, for prolonged periods of my life, where I’ve been a part of consciousness, or complete chaos or anarchy that forms into beautiful harmony, through the simple art of letting everyone and everything be what they are, and loving all while loving unique selves.  Being part of a hierarchy free market for 5 years, and all my babies and birthing experiences, and being part of the conscious community of Nimbin and it’s surrounds……I KNOW that if we just all dropped all the extraneous bullshit and followed and pursued what we all collectively loved, that we’d all instantly reach enlightenment or consciousness, and we’d all sink back into the miraculous order that the natural world displays for us ceaselessly. 

There ARE people who will want to clean up the rubbish (I’ve met them!), and there ARE people who want to do all the onerous tasks that you don’t want to, and there ARE people who will fill all the holes and gaps in the things we need and feed on, and we can all just get about being conscious with the rest of creation.

And I felt like this trip was one of my first fully conscious trips ever.  Cause I just relaxed, and knew that it was gonna work out, regardless of whether I worried or not, and surrendered to the whole thing.  And it was like we’d had a travel consultant who booked every minute of our days and nights, and where we could stay to get our needs met, and who could help us to do what.  On the way down, we punctured a wheel, and the breaker bar was back at our home after being played with by the boys, and Currawong had a bit of a tant, and while he was over the road ringing road services, Lilly was saying “I don’t know what he’s worried about, things ALWAYS work out for us, and we’ll look back on it and say how if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t have met someone or something…..” just as a truck parked behind us and Dimitri stepped into our lives.  And changed our wheel.  Whilst being utterly charming.  And the whole trip was kinda like that.  Didn’t take any pictures, cause we were too busy living it.  Every time we felt stymied, someone would visit, or someone would ring, and the most elaborate ways were found around every obstacle, and it all happened easy in the end. 

All we need to do towards consciousness is be who we really are.

I look forward to witnessing and being part of the return by the human species into the consciousness that we’ve removed ourselves from, and a return to ourselves and each other.  I eagerly anticipate the beauty, art, alive foods, creativity, and smart and sustainable technology that will flourish. 

And all the other animals, and plants, and minerals and conscious energies will be surprised to realize that us humans have the capacity for consciousness afterall.  I bet they’ll get a real kick out of that……