This piece originally appeared in Plant Healer Magazine. Forgive its length; the subject focuses on spirit sickness and how, often by using herbal medicine techniques, we can begin to recognize how to fill some of the voids we feel as we travel through our modern lives.
Culture has
powerful, and often unseen, consequences. We are all steeped in our cultures:
we make assumptions, engage in behavior, and even form opinions on ethics and
beauty based on the culture we inhabit. It might be tempting to think that we
retain individual control over every aspect of our lives, but this is not the
case: where we are born, the halls in which we walk our daily lives, shape us
almost as much as any conscious choice we make. Our choices are, in fact,
constrained by our cultures: think of something as simple as clothing or food
to get a sense of this.
In Western
culture we’ve been seeing some interesting threads over the last few decades.
There are obvious pieces, like the dietary choices and approaches to food
processing, which have become pervasive and are spreading globally. But there
are also more subtle pieces, linked to mood, mental health, and spirit, that
are less discussed but nevertheless important pieces of our culture. Prescriptions
for mood-altering medications have been increasing for some time. Opioids –
prescribed for pain, but abused for other reasons – are pervasive. Overall, a
combination of escapism (through media, chronic alteration of mental states, or
a literal reframing of reality) and an obsession with material gain seem to be
important drivers of Western culture today. Our appetite seems, at times,
insatiable.
At the same
time, there are other threads too. Through popular fantasy, and reflected in an
increasing interest in what is magical, wild, or more generally “green”, people
seem to be drawn towards that which is unknown, powerful, and somehow linked to
nature. This is a good thing! But in many cases, this non-specific desire isn’t
clearly articulated, nor are the reasons for it explored with any clarity:
we’re all so busy, so tired at the end of the day, expected to be constantly
“on call” and plugged in to endless streams of information, that the idea of
spending time nurturing an unknown, hidden side of life seems like a luxury at
best.
Many think
we may have this backwards. Nurturing the creative soul, digging into the soil
to find the well of inspiration for our lives, may be our most important task –
not an afterthought to be observed, far removed, in movies or literature. The
lack of emphasis on this basic need may be at the root of what we see as
“spirit-sickness” in our culture – and while the raw uncertainty and shifting
truth of the postmodern world may have precipitated it, we are doing ourselves
no favors de-emphasizing the rituals, ceremony, and attention to dreamtime so
valued by all traditional cultures.
MarionWoodman, a Jungian researcher and therapist, puts a fine point on this issue by
contrasting this attention to “stuff” (entertainment, cars, homes, etc…) with
the root of true nourishment in human life, which crops up as a veiled desire
for magic, a longing for the green world. Interestingly, she frames it in terms
of the difference between “matter” (stuff) and “mater” (literally “mother” in
Latin): we’ve replaced the nourishing all-mother with a lot of material
possessions, in the hopes that we’ll get the nourishment we need. Of course
this will never happen: this nourishment comes from something much deeper and
mysterious – something you can’t buy! – and the lack of this matrix, this yin,
leaves us feeling untethered and permanently homeless. We’ve built ourselves up
and surrounded ourselves with all sorts of neat things, and many of them are so
useful, but the practices that truly feed us have been left behind.
She goes
further, to discuss how the archetypal masculine – the yang that strives for
clarity and seeks to explore new spaces and horizons – has been shackled into a
dominating, oppressive force that – of course – serves to suppress the
archetypal feminine and pervert its essence to a drive for material substance
(matter vs. mater). Couple this with an unrealistic expectation for perfection,
and you have a recipe for the forces that shape Western culture. Nature, on the
other hand, favors imperfection: but this argument rarely gets traction in the
boardroom or halls of government.
Fortunately,
culture is not static: it grows and evolves, much as a living being does, and
we have the opportunity and privilege to participate in its remodeling. But as
we herbalists move into the twenty-first century, we may need to think of our
role as cultural stewards as a responsibility instead: more and more, we are
seeing that the threads of Western culture do not always come together into
sustainable patterns. From the medicalization of spirit-sickness, to our
relationship to resource extraction and capital markets, can anyone see this
trajectory continuing for the next fifty, not to mention two hundred, years? So
the question becomes: in what ways should we work towards cultural remodeling?
How can we, who are drawn together by the experiences we’ve had working with
plants, begin to build the case for a mindful, nature-based, cultural
remodeling program?
I believe
the answer lies in observing nature – the matrix in which we are inextricably
embedded. But this is not a straightforward task, even if we can see and hear
the signals she offers us. Part of the difficulty lies, again, in the paradigm
we’ve created for ourselves in the Western world, so different from the
paradigm that underlies almost all other traditional cultures. If we are to
restore a collective mythology that can create cohesion and meaning in our
daily lives, we will quickly run into resistance, a sort of paradox: for a
collective, nurturing matrix stands in opposition to the cult of individual
power, it implies that the good of the community should come before our own
personal interests, and this is a difficult idea to embrace in the western
world at the threshold of the twenty-first century.
If you take
the time to observe traditional cultural systems, still intact in many areas of
the world, you uncover a very different perspective: the apparent paradox of
living a life that simultaneously values self and community melts away. The key
is recognizing that we are shaped and directed by our culture, and that no will
is truly ever completely free: the community in which we live has as much to do
with our behavior, health, and happiness as do our individual choices. My
friend Mangoye, part of an extended Maasai family, makes daily choices related
to his children, cattle, hunting, drinking and foraging, along with longer-term
plans that help trace the arc of his individual life. But as we were talking
about his plans, and I was wondering why he unquestioningly followed his
father’s recommendation on whom to marry, how to trade cattle, and what
priorities to focus on, I came to realize that Mangoye feels deeply that, in
order to be happy and successful, he must follow the cultural and familial
practices that his community has followed for generations. “We will fragment
and die”, he told me, “if the wedding ceremonies are not followed, if the
architecture of the engang is
changed, if the morani stop hunting
the lion.” And while arranged weddings, the health hazards of living in a
cramped, smoky mud hut, and the death of warriors during a lion hunt may be
difficult for us to accept, they form the underpinning of a collective
mythology that has allowed the Maasai to thrive in a hostile environment that
might otherwise swallow them whole. But this mythology, this context, Woodman’s
“mater”, does more than just cohere the community: it acts as a source of
stories and creativity, and both generates and constrains the forward-moving
impetus of the culture. All native traditions seem to have something like this.
Maybe,
proceeding from the idea that life is self-similar at multiple different levels
(from bacteria to biospheres), we can learn not only from traditional cultures,
but from the behavior of nature itself. Being an herbalist, I look to plants.
And some fascinating research over the last decade is pointing to the idea that
plants don’t see a conflict between individual health and the health of their
communities, either. First off, Richard Karban and others at the University of
California, Davis have documented in detail how plants are able to communicate
with each other by secreting volatile compounds into the air. These compounds
are monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes, along with some phenolics, usually found
on trichomes studding the exposed surfaces of leaves and stems. The minty
quality of mint, the pungency of rosemary, the brightness of eucalyptus and the
tea tree, the dry camphorous quality of sagebrush – all are examples of these
volatiles, usually released when we rub a leaf and damage it, and often
referred to as the “essential oil” of a plant. Karban and his team have found
that, in response to the presence of these molecules in the air, neighboring
plants will initiate defensive processes, including the up-regulation of
immune-like molecules known as phytoalexins, to prepare for damage or invasion.
One plant raises the alarm, and its neighbors hunker down. As a result, the
plant community stands a better chance at surviving and reproducing: but, part
and parcel, the individual may be damaged or destroyed. Interestingly, Karban
has gone further to show that plants can behave selfishly, too, at least to
some extent: for while I may not be willing to get injured or killed to save a
community of strangers, I’m willing to endure a lot to safeguard my close
friends and family. And wouldn’t you know that the sagebrush plants Karban
monitored do the same thing: they are able to recognize volatile signals from
genetically-similar individuals (aka their “family”), responding with greater
urgency and almost ignoring the signals that come from unrelated Artemisias transplanted from far away.
Have you noticed how mugwort and sagebrush plants can often smell incredibly
different, even within the same garden or field? These cocktails of volatile
molecules are not only signals for danger, but ways to recognize kin. Protect
and cohere. Channel collective behavior.
Ted Farmer and
his team from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland traced exactly what
happens in a plant when the first whiff of volatile chemistry is detected.
Plants are able to relay this information to distant tissues using a series of
ion gates, which open in response to the presence of volatiles and then cause
an electrical shift to occur across the plasma membrane of the plant’s cell.
Like a series of dominos, these ion gates then open, one by one, carrying an
electrical wave along with them and thereby transmitting the initial signal
down the leaf, through the petiole, and into the stem. This is a remarkable
finding: human neurons work in almost the same way, albeit with more complex
and diverse ion gates. And the initial stimuli for our nerves, the neurotransmitters,
often show striking structural similarities with the volatile molecules found
in plants. Plants’ essential oils are neurotransmitter cocktails – quite
literally, for the botanical world, but maybe also for us, which may be part of
the reason why they can have such powerful effects on our minds and spirits.
The mechanisms plants use to hold their families and communities together, to
communicate danger and plan their responses, are the same mechanisms we use to
think, to move, and to unite our internal ecologies. Once again we see the idea
of individual health – in this case, individual plants or individual human
neurons – as being important both for its own sake, but also as a part of a
greater whole. Human neurons are often trimmed, or even eliminated, in order to
help cement useful patterns of thought and behavior. Should we mourn this? Or
celebrate it? Or, perhaps, both?
What about
mechanisms of communication between humans and their environments? If this
pattern of caring for individual health by simultaneously advancing community
and ecological health is visible at all levels of life, then we should be able
to find some evidence of it in the dance between humans and fields, people and
forests. I’d argue that the act of smelling the camphor, thujone and pine in a sagebrush
desert is already evidence enough – we’ve got structures cued to detecting
these smells, after all – but is there anything more? Stafford Lightman,
professor of medicine at the University of Bristol, UK has spent years studying
the effects of stress on the human system, and recently discovered that a
common species of bacteria, found in most living soils, is able to modulate the
serotonin system in our brain. Bacteria that live inside our guts seem to have
this ability, too – but Mycobacterium
vaccae, the species studied by Lightman and his team, lives outside of our
bodies. When we get bare hands into garden soil (which, crucially, must be
living soil teeming with organic material to support healthy bacterial
colonies), M. vaccae speaks to us
using our own signal molecules, and impacts our mood. We’ve known about the
benefits of gardening on mental health for a long time now: recently, Masashi
Soga from the University of Tokyo and Kevin Gaston from the University of
Exeter conducted a comprehensive review of over 30 years of research and found
substantial benefits from even short stints of gardening, including “reductions
in depression, anxiety, and body mass index, as well as increases in life
satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community.” As our mood lifts and
we become healthier, our sense of community increases, too. Could bacterial
(and perhaps fungal) signals be a part of this? Channeling behavior, but also
building resilience and nurturing creativity. Soil – and its thriving ecology –
is the yin-like matrix, perhaps the most literal embodiment of Woodman’s
“mater”.
Maya
Shetreat-Klein, a pediatrician living in New York and author of The Dirt Cure,
has researched this effect and applied it in her private practice. Her focus is
on childhood development, and particularly on the attention and mood challenges
some kids experience in today’s world. Now, it should come as no surprise that
our kids are living in a different world than they might have even fifty years
ago: as Richard Louv documents in his work, you can’t help but see “nature
deficit disorder” when you hear a third grader questioning the value of playing
outside because “there are no outlets there!”
But what Dr. Shetreat-Klein discovered is that, when you move away from
the obsession with antibacterial soaps, “microban” plastics, and
“helicopter”-style parental handwashing and bathing of children, you start to
see a change in mood and attention even if the child spends a lot of time in an
urban environment. Exposure to soil, and the microbes found everywhere, might
be a crucial part of growing up well-adjusted. Again, we might not feel
comfortable with baths just once a week, or with eating snacks with grubby
hands. But isolating the individual from the surrounding microbial riot may, in
the long run, do more harm than good. The microbes shape our moods, they set
the stage for our spirits to run free, to course creative through clear
channels. Without them we become untethered. Paradoxically, exposing our kids to
more potential for illness and contamination makes them healthier and happier.
Maybe, as we’re starting to see, this isn’t a paradox at all.
And it’s not
confined just to soil and dirt: Andrea Taylor, a professor of natural resources
and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has
been researching the connection between time spent in unstructured outdoor
environments (even city parks) and the frequency and severity of
attention-deficit-like symptoms. In one dramatic study, she found that a
one-hour walk in a park was as effective as a single dose of Ritalin in
managing symptoms. And while this is a great result, it also highlights the
conflict between individual health and community health: sure, if we all
embraced the idea that walks in parks were good for everyone and an important
part of our shared cultural mythology, and we looked with concern on folks who
hadn’t been for a walk outdoors for a day or two, we might see a whole lot less
Ritalin prescribed. But who has the time for this? Who has the political will
to set aside green islands across our urban environments? Isn’t it easier, more
targeted, more “individual” to just administer a treatment on an as-needed
basis? We might have to pay taxes for parks, take time out of our mornings, put
down our phones and let our kids guide us through mucky cattails and get
distracted from our task list. And while I say this tongue-in-cheek, it
nevertheless requires personal sacrifice: subsuming the individual for the
health of the family, the health of the community.
But in the
long run, what might seem like a personal sacrifice could actually become a
gain in happiness, productivity, and health. Traditional cultures have always
known this, though to be fair it has historically been difficult to evade time
outdoors (until now). We’ve been hearing a lot about the traditional Japanese
practice of “forest bathing” (shinrin-yoku) lately, and how being in a forest
environment, rich in sounds, sights, smells and chemical traces, can affect us
in many positive ways. It seems that, particularly when it comes to stress (as
Lightman found), forest-bathing can help reduce the symptoms of being alive in
the twenty-first century: lowered blood pressure, lowered cortisol levels, and lowered
neurological stress indicators all follow. Bum-Jin Park, from Chiba University
in Japan, recently reviewed trials from over 20 different forests in Japan and
confirmed a substantial, repeatable effect from this practice. Maybe with
enough evidence we can begin to say that setting aside unstructured forest
time, though it seems to not immediately advance our careers and contribute to
individual success, might be a crucial medicine for modern life. What’s most
important to me is that the creative impetus, that feeling of inspiration and
flow that we are attempting to find with all our “matter”, springs effortlessly
from the “mater”, the mother, who lives in the woods (and other more wild
places in your neighborhood, even if it’s just a park).
We have
wildness, or the potential for wildness, within us as well: for if the ecology
around us is alive, we also contain multitudes of life – fungal, bacterial,
even vegetal – all over and inside us. We’ve lived in symbiosis with our
internal fauna and flora since well before we were humans, and there are
innumerable lock-and-key systems that have evolved over our history that are
reliant on a teeming internal microbiome. For example, there is an argument
that our bitter taste receptors, which are found not only in our guts but also
throughout the upper and lower airway, are looking for molecules (known as
“quorum-sensing” molecules) secreted by potentially hostile bacteria when they
start to get an upper hand. Our immune system kicks into gear, secreting stored
defensins and immediately getting a handle on the population shifts. But what
is most fascinating is that the quorum-sensing molecules that pathogens
produce, known as acyl homoserine
lactones, are virtually analogous in structure to lactones produced by
plants like the common dandelion. If we consume these plants, we get a similar
immune-enhancing reaction – and stay healthier. Could it be that plants are
conspiring to keep us happy and well? Do they see us as their kin, as part of
the web of life that sustains them, too?
Eva Selhub,
from Harvard Medical School, has documented extensively how the state of our
internal ecology affects our mood – a counterpoint to Stafford Lightman and
Andrea Taylor’s work on the connections between external ecology and human
moods. In an excellent two-part review, she documents how, at the turn of the
twentieth century, the idea of “autotoxicity” (articulated by Nobel-winning
microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff) was held forth as one of the major drivers of
mental illness: essentially, an overgrowth of harmful intestinal bacteria was,
at that time, seen as the root cause of the problem. Over the course of the
twentieth century, that hypothesis was rejected in favor of a top-down approach
that put the origin in the brain and neural tissue. Now we are realizing both
ideas are part of the picture, but it is interesting to note that, with its
reliance on the myth of the “self-made man” and the cult of unfettered,
individual free will, the twentieth century chose to say that the brain itself
is the source of all mental illness. Again, it’s hard to admit that our
thoughts and feelings might not be under “our” control, and therefore we might
want to reject the idea that bacteria are “controlling” us – but this is
because we have such a limited definition of what “our” means, of who we are.
If we look at things through a more traditional lens, we might find that our
edges are not clearly defined, that we overlap chemically and physically with a
range of internal and external ecologies, and that nurturing all of them, while
it might not seem to be self-care, is a big part of our long-term wellbeing. Internal
flora, though genetically distinct, might be part of “us”. Flora and fauna in
our immediate environment might, at least in part, be “us” too (beyond the fact
that we’re all made up of the same recycled stardust). By the same token our
neurons, with their ability to recognize plant volatiles as neurotransmitters
due to a conserved mechanism of action between the plant and animal kingdoms,
might not be fully “us”. Recently, scientists are exploring the benefits of
bathing less (or sometimes not all) on productivity, mood, sleep, and more. As
you can imagine, this is yet another case of personal sacrifices and
culture-shifting leading to improved health outcomes – all through growing
gardens on our skin, in our hair, in our armpits.
Exploring
our edges can have interesting consequences, but I believe it is essential we
do so. First of all, it helps better explain what some have called the “bond”
human beings have with nature: if we are willing to accept that the boundary
lines of “self” and “non-self” are more like a great wetland at the estuary of
a broad river, where fresh water and salt water mix and blend and create unique
ecological niches, instead of stark dividing lines, then the “bond” becomes
more of an “overlap”, and the mutual interdependence becomes more intuitive.
Michael McCarthy, who writes articles on ecology, the environment, and nature
for The Times of London and The
Independent, attempts to convince us that this bond is an essential part of
being human, and that we recognize its importance when we experience the sheer
joy of being in nature. This joy, as he articulates it, is a combination of
peace, happiness, transcendence, and creative inspiration: in short, it is that
place traditional cultures attempt to engender through ritual, ceremony, and
spiritual practice, for it is the source of our fullest life, it is the
“mater”. But, upon reflection, I do not think that wild, human-free spaces are
the only way to build this feeling. I have felt it many times from music, art,
writing, even buildings – all quintessentially human constructs. Which leads me
to the second consideration brought up in the exploration of our edges: is
there something in nature, in the whole of nature of which we and all our
creations are an inextricable part, that can help build and nurture this
feeling of transcendent, inspired joy?
We will come
back to this point in a moment. But first, consider this when exploring were “we”,
as individuals, have edges: philosophers searching for the nature of our
consciousness have been turning over this idea forever in a search to pinpoint
consciousness, self-awareness, and what exactly thoughts are made of. One camp
posits that, in a sufficiently complex system, “emergent” properties such as
consciousness (or even life itself) come to be as part of the synergy of the
system’s components. The whole, in this sense, becomes way more than the sum of
its parts: it becomes self-aware. From this perspective, our thoughts and
feelings (and everything else we associate with being conscious) is a
by-product of our complex physiologies, and particularly the neural networks in
the central nervous system. Another camp (whose position is well-articulated by
philosopher Alva Nöe) subscribes to the idea of non-local consciousness:
meaning that what we consider self-awareness isn’t limited to what’s in our
heads, it overlaps with many other pieces of the world around us. Note that,
though it may not appear so at first blush, these two ways of looking at
consciousness aren’t necessarily incompatible – though I do think it is
important to think of consciousness as non-local, not contained simply in our
skulls.
There are a
few reasons why this seems like a plausible viewpoint to me. First, we’ve
already seen how our thoughts and feelings are affected by a range of factors
from the world around us and also from the world inside us. Additionally, we’ve
known for some time that somatic processes (like cold hands and feet, or
gassiness from a difficult meal) send feedback to the brain that affects
perception of stress and tolerance to it. But second, the idea of non-local
consciousness helps explain how, every so often, we seem to share thoughts with
those who are close to us: blurting out the same thing at the same time,
thinking about a new topic right before a friend starts talking about it,
sensing that a loved one is in trouble even on the opposite side of the world.
I don’t pretend to know what the mechanism of consciousness is (the so-called
“hard problem” of translating structures made of matter, like the brain, into
the processes of consciousness), but it does seem that we can have definite overlaps
with other consciousnesses in our life.
But is it
truly just an overlap? I would posit that what we may be experiencing is a
larger consciousness, one in which our own is “embedded”, or nested, sort of
like our microbiome’s bacterial organisms are nested inside of us. And just as
our microbiome can affect our mood and thoughts, perhaps we can affect the mood
and thoughts of this larger consciousness: so the “telepathic” experience with
a friend isn’t actually mind-reading, it’s just the you-and-your-friend
relationship (the larger consciousness) having a thought that each of its
nested consciousnesses is experiencing simultaneously. If you look at things
this way, a family becomes a living, breathing being. Your garden, a
neighborhood, a city, the local bioregion – all are alive and conscious, all
teem with nested consciousnesses that have their own lives, thoughts, hopes and
feelings. This of course proceeds both inward and outward, through the
microbiome and the solar system, in a recursive, self-similar fashion: as above,
so below. But it’s always important to remember that, at each level, no fate is
completely fixed, and no will completely free: we belong to the bioregion,
transients though we may be, the same way our microbiomes belong to us. And a
final, interesting corollary is that, at a galactic or universal level, there
must exist a consciousness too, of which we are all a part: perhaps this is
what so many have known as “god”. But just as we are, sometimes, at the mercy
of bacteria that live in our GI tract, so also any “god” is tied inextricably
to all its nested consciousnesses. We affect each other. We think through each
other.
With all
this context, it becomes clear to me that our inextricable bond with everything
around us, the experiences and emotions that flow through us when we perceive,
with our limited minds, what the super-organisms we’re nested in are thinking,
are the source and sink, the beginning and end, of life for us. They truly are
Woodman’s “mater”. But when delving into the quality of these experiences and
thoughts, the “language” that life uses as it expresses itself, we do start to
notice some consistency. This might serve us well in our quest to become more
mindful and aware of all the different threads of consciousness moving through
us at any given time: after all, as all students of divination know, the trick
isn’t having prescience: it’s recognizing when you’re having it! So is there
something universal, expressed in nature, that we can hold as an anchor and
touchstone? Does it have to be non-human, or do humans possess it too? Why do
we feel it more when we’re out in the forest, or on the open savanna, than when
we’re in an enclosed classroom?
It turns out
that there very well might be. When we look at an acacia tree on a vast plain, for
example, and feel a sense of joy, transcendence, and creative inspiration,
we’re recognizing a pattern that has deep resonance for us. The resonance may
be in part for survival reasons: recognizing natural patterns successfully
helps us survive. But it also feels very much like coming home: there’s
something familiar to it, and even in wild spaces that might seem daunting and
scary, we feel held, embedded, connected. Look at mountains, river deltas, the
rippling of waves on a lake or ocean, tree branching, veins branching, spirals
in seeds, in clouds, in galaxies: the examples are endless, and they all feel
familiar somehow. The examples extend into the human realm, too: we see it
mostly in art, where buildings, paintings, sculptures – even if abstract –
evoke peace, comfort, belonging, and inspiration when we perceive them. Perhaps
the most stark example of this – because it’s clearly not attempting to mimic
nature, which might be one argument as to why art feels good to us – is the
work of Jackson Pollock, the abstract American painter who worked during the
1940s and 1950s. When we look at his paintings, which appear to be random
streaks and splatters on huge canvases, we feel something similar to what we
feel when we look out onto a wild landscape, or into the eyes of the person we
love. What’s going on?
Richard
Taylor, from the University of Oregon, presents a compelling hypothesis. To
grasp its full import, we will have to take a short digression into mathematics
and art: the first will give us a semi-objective context to understand the
hypothesis, and the second a compelling example of how human creation, when
driven by a connection to Woodman’s “mater”, can produce paintings like
Pollock’s that evoke the same rich, vivid, transcendent experience we get from
being in wild nature.
We remember
dimensionality from geometry class: a point has dimension zero, a line
dimension 1 (length), a square or plane dimension 2 (length and breadth), and a
cube or space has dimension 3 (length, breadth and height). But take for a
moment a line with a kink in it: this figure is more than just a straight line,
it expands somewhat into two dimensions, but not enough to actually span a
surface, to have two full dimensions. It is arbitrary and abstract to do this,
but one might assign a “dimension” to that kinked line of 1.05 – somewhat more
than just 1, which is a straight line. Now, if you make a more and more kinked
line, one with kinks within kinks, you begin to get closer and closer to two
dimensions the more complex and intricate the line becomes. Because of the
amount of twists within twists, the line starts to define a surface – though it
never quite reaches dimension 2. Mathematicians call this state a “fractal
dimension”, somewhere between 1 and 2, and this is of course the origin of the
term “fractal”, that mathematical construction that is self-similar at any
level, exhibits repeating motifs, and straddles the line between perfect, rigid
order and total, wild unpredictability.
Richard
Taylor set out to mathematically analyze Jackson Pollock’s work by looking for
patterns of self-similarity hidden in the apparent random paint splashes: was
it indeed self-similar? Did a big splash over here have a smaller echo over
there, and yet another one about half again as far away? Did all the different
colors of splashes follow similar patterns and, if so, did they exhibit any
kind of fractal dimensionality? The results are fascinating: during the early
years, Pollock’s paintings had a little self-similarity, with fractal dimensionality
close to 1.1. But as his work matured, the fractal dimension increased, and the
paintings showed more and more recursive self-similarity, until reaching 1.4,
when all of a sudden art critics began to really like his work. Taylor’s
hypothesis is that Pollock hit upon a universal fractal dimensionality, one
that you see as the dominant resonant fractal dimensionality in nature. That’s
why the critics came to love the later paintings.
It turns out
that if you map out the branching patterns of a river delta, or of that acacia
tree on the savanna, they have a fractal dimension very close to 1.4 – just
like Pollock’s work. In fact, almost any system found in nature has this same
quality. What’s more, you see fractal
dimensionality close to 1.4 in some of our most beloved pieces of classical
music – in Bach, for example – that encode the right level of complexity, just
as natural systems do. Many pieces of literature do this as well. What’s going
on here? Were Bach and Pollock doing complex math before sitting down to be
creative? Or were they somehow tapping into a very basic, underlying process?
Taylor and
others decided to investigate. They conducted an experiment that mapped the
rapid, subtle eye motions (known as “microsaccades”) that we unconsciously make
when looking at anything. We don’t actually just “look” at stuff – our eyes
scan the visual field, taking in details that our brain then uses to assemble a
composite image. What Taylor found was that the pattern we use to scan is a
fractal pattern: a big swipe first, then a series of successively smaller
swipes across smaller and smaller pieces of the visual field, in recursively
self-similar fashion. The fractal dimensionality of this scanning pattern is
close to 1.4. So perhaps part of the reason we find Pollock’s later work
appealing is that it is “in sync” with the way our eyes look at the world: we
find splashes where we expect to find splashes. Unconsciously, we recognize it.
It makes sense.
Researchers
have found similar patterns in the neural network firing of our brain and in
the heart rate variability patterns of our pulse – two of our most basic
physiological processes. Ary Goldberger from Harvard Medical School, who
documented much of this, describes this fractal organization with dimensionality
1.4 as a happy medium between rigid order and complete chaos – a system wild
enough to adapt, grow, and create but not so wild as to become unstable. Taylor
and Goldberger both speculate that our conscious process, just like the act of
looking, has this same quality. And interestingly, Taylor goes further: when we
connect with a painting, or a natural scene, that exhibits fractal
dimensionality of 1.4, he found that our levels of stress decrease by up to
60%. We feel in synch. Friction drops off. We resonate.
Perhaps this
is what we’re recognizing when we feel an overarching consciousness thinking
through us – perhaps this is why we feel alive, unburdened, joyful and
inspired. Our internal processes are synching up with the basic fractal
dimensionality of the world all around us. Like allowing ourselves to get lost
in an incredible piece of music, we can transcend the limits of our own
individual consciousness, leave behind the rigidity of individual self, and
resonate with a larger community: be it a relationship, a neighborhood, a
planet, or the whole field of stars. We add our own note to the symphony – and
the whole symphony is richer for it.
What does
this mean in practice for us, as we live and move through our daily lives? Though
I can’t pretend to have a universal answer, I do think we can draw a number of
lessons from the balance of the evidence before us, and the consequences of
putting these lessons into practice might have profound implications for our
individual well-being and beyond. First, we have to remember than any answer
will include a daily practice: this is Marion Woodman’s “mater”. We can’t focus
on the microbe, the plant, the thing, Gaia: this is just “matter”. The answer
probably isn’t in a particular herbal formula, or probiotic cocktail. It’s more
about the daily renewal and the processes we use to identify and connect with
the nested consciousnesses in which we are embedded. Similarly, sticking to
rituals for their own sake (“taking the finger for the moon”, as the Zen priests
might say) won’t work either: life is ever-changing, and our driving goal
should be to enhance connection within and without, so that the super-organism
can be nurtured and nurture us in turn. We may have to become comfortable
subsuming our individual free will in this case – but all evidence seems to
point to the fact that this is worth it in the end, and make us happier and
healthier.
Specifically,
pieces of this practice might include connecting to soil, dirt, and microbes
wherever we go (mindful, naturally, of the obviously risky bugs). Every day,
touch some wild water. Touch dirt and tree bark. When you travel, get dirty.
Put things in your mouth. Allow your internal and external ecologies to connect
by simply bringing them into contact. The evidence from Elie Metchnikoff,
through Stafford Lightman, Andrea Taylor, and Maya Shetreat-Klein all points in
this direction.
Consider
fermentation as a source of interesting internal denizens, but also consider
adding to your ferment mothers from other people, places, and starter cultures.
Think about wild yeast in your brewing – maybe even collect strains from places
you’ve lived.
Engage in
the practice of tonic herbalism: the daily use of plants and mushrooms, ideally
from really close by though also from far-flung places with which you’ve had
the pleasure of overlapping consciousness, renews both the internal and
external ecologies (after all, you’re going to have to find those herbs outside
somewhere). This seems to me a more important, foundational discipline than
using plants as remedies for disease and complaints. It speaks to forging and
maintaining important friendships, to building alignments with other
consciousnesses.
And speaking
of building alignments, consider rituals and ceremonies that use those special
plants and mushrooms we know as entheogens, the ones that change our brain wave
patterns in ways similar to those Ary Goldberger saw when we resonate with the
fractional dimensionality of the universe. But do it mindfully, intentionally:
when building an alignment with a spirit of place, plant, animal, or whatever
broader consciousness you choose to align yourself with, we’re making a
long-term, sacred commitment that feeds us deeply but also demands to be fed
(don’t make this commitment lightly).
As we build cities, let’s look to the patterns and systems nature exhibits and
move away from rigid, dimension-1 construction style. As we teach and learn,
let’s allow for elements of chaos to inject creative diversity into the
curriculum. As we relate to each other, let’s avoid either/or, male/female,
us/them ideas and try to embrace the creative fullness of the “imperfect”
in-between. It really comes down to paying attention and being willing to flex!
In the end,
this becomes true tonification: like a tonic note that is echoed fractally
through a musical piece, our living becomes a self-similar pattern that echoes
the same self-similarity found across all of reality. The process will feed the
individual soul, to be sure, but only because it feeds the collective soul,
too. It is the road to healing spirit sickness, rediscovering our shared
mythology, and remodeling our culture so that it, as a super-organism, can move
forward in resonance with its own internal and external ecologies. But there is
a note of warning here, too: as humans, we have spent our collective childhood
playing with our special abilities, our drive for progress, for innovation, for
boundary-breaking. We’ve achieved remarkable things, but have remained firmly
planted in our species’ own individual self-interest. Now, at this moment in
time, we know better. It is time for us to grow up, to join our ancestors, to
move forward as a species through a ritual of initiation that will align us
with what the microbes, mushrooms and plants already know. It will be
transformative, and not without struggle – but how much more incredible will be
the application of our human gifts if we just allow ourselves to listen with
respect. We will take the power of life and amplify it to the stars.
May you look into the vessel,
into dream, into wind
And may you not find them empty.
May you see the light of the dark
sun
The tangents, the off-tracks, the
fantasy
The gravid emptiness of liminal
space
Interstice of inspiration.
