Sentience

Its strange, (if we practice “being present in the moment”), how sometimes the most common of events can cause a huge shift in the way we see things…….. and can cause a domino effect through our awareness…… (This required no drugs, alcohol or other mind altering substances…… just practicing attention and presence of mind….. )

It all started, with an ant falling in the water……. ………. ………….. …………. and as i was watching it struggle to get out, i thought “if i save this ant, (looking from its perspective), it is kind of like a “savior” reaching down and helping it out of its life and death dilemma….. (which we all have had the opportunity to beg for many times in our lives!) This thought and act elicited a realization……

This ant has a form of sentience, and it is frightened, and likely to die……. so….. switching places with it, in my mind…. it made me realize just how completely all things co-exist, and how we need to live our lives in respect, treating all things as sacred.

This brought me to the second shift……. because the thought popped out…… This is just the tip of the iceberg…..

seeing all things as sacred, fits totally in with the way life has been presenting itself to me…….

This way fits in totally with the original North American indigenous peoples way of “living in the world”.

Then, this started a domino effect of thoughts ……

I watched a plant video yesterday, where the person was asking the question “are PLANTS a form of sentient life?”This might seem to be a bit of a “yikes, Gerry has finally lost it! moment….. but no….. it follows the same line as the ant in the water……

It made me realize that those who espouse the philosophies, belief systems, and scientific research, which have arisen from European thinking, tend to separate “things” into groups of living and non-living….. we separate “things” into groups of sentient and non-sentient….. and we treat them with those varying levels of respect….

But it is becoming more and more evident that the root of everything is sentience, and that this sentience root is a part of ALL things.

Some more advanced “things” have the ability to “show” their sentience, but we see it in so many forms that is just seems to begin popping up all over the place……

We used to think that Earth was the only planet where “life” has evolved, but more and more of these assumptions are now being challenged by what we are finding in the universe……

If sentience is at the root of everything, that is a true game changer, ain’t it??!!……. that is a complete change over in our way of seeing the physical universe.

For example, how IS it, that plants “know” to look and turn towards the light?
How IS it that “intuition” and “instinct” are a part of all biological “things”?

Why do all biological things, as they develop the ability, reach out to “sense” the physical world, evolve rudimentary forms of sensing, then “eyes”, “ears”, “nose”, “tongue”, “skin”, “mind”…… it seems that all of nature is reaching out to sense the world it lives in…

There are actually quite a few systems in this physical universe that we admit to have some form of “sentience”.

But it gets even more involved…..

Thinking this way also tosses out the “I don’t eat animals because it is doing harm to another living being” concept……. because how do i now define “living being”?

What if the whole universe is varying forms of sentience?…. then we are pretty much screwed right? How can we as humans survive, when we depend on KILLING things in order for us to live? (But that IS the case, isn’t it!)

“If this physical reality is an ocean and all things and beings are a inseparable part of it (of COURSE it is like that!) then as we walk in our daily life, we should be respectful of ALL things, and say a true prayer of THANKS as we eat, live and breath”

Will this bud a conversation?