In a recent piece, I went a bit out of my comfort zone to inquire if readers had any experience with seeing aura: the light emitted from the body, supposedly full of information—to those who can perceive and read it, and that is not me.
The piece had, because it was outside of my experience and a bit woo-woo, been sitting in my laptop for a little while, but for no good reason, it felt time to push it out.
I had a book on my wish list to which my daughter had declared: “Antonio Damasio! I love Damasio.” Thus, for my birthday, there was a Damasio book. Not the one from my wish list as it was not available where she shopped, but The Strange Order of Things – Life, Feeling, and the Making of Culture. Feelings and culture – that must be just the book for mom, a.k.a. me.
And now I got around to reading it. What would be the random chance that it might answer my question?
in this book Damasio discusses the difference between what all living creatures seem to possess of sensing apparatus – a sensitivity to outside stimuli transmitted via the cell surfaces – and the nervous system, our internal USPS, sending signals throughout our bodies with HQ behind the eyebrows (pun not intended, yet illustrative of how dear this body part is to us.)
Our wonderful wide world of odd creatures contains many single-cell organisms that don’t have a nervous system at all. They still know how to take in nutrients and get rid of what they no longer need. At one point in time, three-four to four billion years ago, give or take, some such creatures got so closely involved with each other that they were no longer single-celled. Some combinations turned out to be beneficial for their survival and procreation – and life became ever more complex. So here we are.
It would not be a farfetched idea that we, as descendants of these simple creatures, still have a sensing system at the cellular level that doesn’t rely on the brain or the specialized apparatus connected through the modern nervous system.
One might also assume that light would be one of the types of stimuli such a cell would be receptive to. Swimming around in the primordial soup, getting too close to the surface would probably not be healthy for a cell that primarily consists of water and hence can dry out.
Would light necessarily mean the light spectrum we can see in a rainbow? No – light exists independent of our ability to see it – as we know well from X-rays and UV light. Light in frequencies that the eye normally doesn’t register could well be felt by a cell.
Actually, vibrations at a totally different level than what our eyes can see are already registered by our nervous system. We call them sounds. And like with the eyes, these vibrations exist independently of our ability to hear them. You probably know from dogs’ behaviors that, although you can’t hear them even as you blow in them, dogs do hear dog whistles. And should you have a radio antenna, a mobile phone, wifi, a microwave oven, electricity…, you know that there are plenty of other vibrations around you, communication among technological gadgets, to which you are normally not attuned.
Light and sound are all vibrations. The universe is full of vibrations that are neither light nor sound as we humans normally think of it.
In my previous piece, I asked if aura-seeing people might suffer from synesthesia – although one can argue whether suffering is the best description.
Synesthesia is a condition where stimuli that normally are only registered by one sense are picked up somewhere else in the brain, usually connected to another sense. Examples are people who hear music in colors. For some people, words are connected to colors. When they read, they not only relate to the text but to the barrage of input coming at them in the form of other visuals. (It would be interesting to know how toxic social media posts show up compared to a love letter, e.g.? Does our vibration when writing get transferred to the medium?) For some people, numbers have their own colors. This is interesting because words and numbers are purely manmade concepts that the brain uses to make sense of the complexity around us. 5 only has the meaning we have given to it. If brains can do this coloration, wouldn’t they also, in some instances, translate a sense from a vibration into seeing a color? And might that show up as seeing aura if you have the “right” kind of synesthesia?
This whole discussion would be moot without the question of why we would still register these vibrations in the first place and what we would use it for, if that is indeed what we register? We are not single-celled organisms floating around in soup, and we have a perfectly good “modern” nervous system.
According to the emotion-vibration theory, fear is at the one end of the vibration chart, and love is at the other end. If you are watching a herd of deer, the emotional contagion of fear or love is evident. You, with eyes in the front of your face, are registered as a predator, the deer get skittish – fear – but if you focus solely on how beautiful they are – love – they will shake their pelt and continue grazing. Immediate contagion of fear seems a reasonable survival mechanism for a herd, and sensing good intent may likewise be the only way a male and a female of many species would ever get into contact.
I have described in an earlier piece what happened when my young son looked at a wild animal with pure adoration. There is some “interspecies” language going on here.
If we can communicate this way across species, surely we can do it even better with members of our own? Perhaps not. We don’t try to convince our dog whom to vote for or scold our cat for not keeping curfew. We intuitively know that we can’t really communicate with words but mainly with tone of voice when the recipient is not one of us. And we are probably a tad more extreme in our affect than we are with each other – a little like when we talk to babies. It also seems that our propensity for attachment to outcomes could get in the way of adult humans.
When this whole thing swirled around in my head, as a cosmic dump in the wee hours of the morning, the words contempt and disdain kept coming up. The Gottman Institute has identified contempt as the emotion that most poisons relationships. It is more poisonous to the relationship than hate. Too often, I see/hear social media posts and news comments that seem to have these feelings attached to them. Are we picking up all these negative vibrations – dissipated on steroids through various media – but unlike the deer, we don’t know how to shake and move on? Just writing these words, I felt my whole body tense up and needed to do some deep breathing. Is the anger and increased hate speech a reaction to this pent-up energy working as a self-reinforcing bad loop?
What can we do for ourselves and each other to turn the loop in the opposite direction – apart from shaking ourselves?
(Don’t underestimate the shaking; by the way, all cultures have dancing rituals.)
Timely, Traci Ruble wrote:
“Deep ‘withness’, the kind that meets loneliness where it actually lives, is what’s needed.”
And
“Find something to fall in love with in every person that sits across from you… I wish we could listen to each other for our amazingness.”
Isn’t “withness” a wonderful word?
To soothe yourself, listen to peaceful music. Baroque or the like is good because the beat is timed to the heartbeat. Give and get hugs; they lower blood pressure and give boosts of oxytocin. Show love. Get off social media – or find a different cohort if yours is disdainful. Go low on your own snark – do you really need it, and if so, why is that? Meet with friends in person. Pick up a Calvin and Hobbes album, and get in some laughs. Sweep the sidewalk or the patio. Look at a baby. Pet a dog. Hug a tree. Slow down. Allow yourself to be in awe. Breeeathe.
Or find a body of water and say thank you. There may be some single celled organisms listening for your vibration. Perhaps they will send some love in return and get you back to “factory settings” where disdain and contempt are unheard of.
Because feelings are contagious, no matter how they are transmitted.
And by the way, though I have not seen auras, I have seen when a person is full of light.
I have to thank you for further expanding this. I did not realize that the words and feelings that are thrust upon us in the daily news were vibrations and it was those vibrations responsible for my reactions. I will go out on a limb here, as not everyone thinks or reacts the same way I do. But here’s what I do when I am drowning in those vibrations:
Other than shaking (which is a good one!), I begin by closing eyes, breathing deeply and putting my attention on my breath–everything about it. It is steady, it will continue until it is time to stop. Until that time, I can count on it. (Some illnesses to the contrary notwithstanding). The air is there, the fact that it is breathable is a gift of creation or the Creator. It keeps cleansing itself. (Not that clearing out the pollution wouldn’t help!) I don’t have to think about it, obsess about it, it is just there. Without it, I would not be. Just rest in the existence of air and autonomous breathing. If it feels too fast, slow it down. Then I become aware that I am alive, and everything else alive is breathing along with me. I feel the living world breathing with me. I let that awareness deep into me.
I am part of this world, breathing along with fields and mountains, oceans and tides, vertebrates and invertebrates. We are one world–I cannot exist without it, including gravity. I become aware of this connection to all of earth. I look out around me and send out appreciation (vibrations, right, Victor?) to all of it. I personally sense an overarching kindness, watchfulness and care above and in it all. I allow myself to feel love and appreciation for my life and send that appreciation out to whatever it was that upset my equilibrium or sparked my judgment (including contempt or hatred). As Dame Julian of Norwich once declared, “Sin” [hamartia, or missing the mark] “is inevitable but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
When my equilibrium is upset, I can hum. Just hum anything, with a tune or not. Then I listen to and feel the resonance of it in my body. That is soothing in a way I can’t explain.
Or, I simply ask the infinite intelligence in charge of creation, “Help.” Then go about my usual life. I know the help will come, I don’t know the form, so I watch for it (“more than watchmen wait for the morning.”)
I am so happy you shared you view from out on the limb, Susanne. (Have you read Shirley Maclaine’s book Out on a Limb?)
This early morning I wondered if the healing properties of going into nature is not as much about adding nature as about taking away the polluting vibrations we humans have added? (Yet, if just having pictures and screen savers showing nature calms our nervous system, and helps patients heal faster, seeing nature must have it’s own balm.)
Thank you for sharing you.
Many psychologists recommend the shaking as a stress-buster. It does diminish the adrenalin
I wonder if advocating for shaking is so specialized that people actually do it vs going out for a run or doing some pushups when they feel aroused? The latter could be poking a “don’t you give me exercise advice” bear.
Thanks for drawing our attention to this interesting subject so inspiring and deserving the utmost consideration
Thank you for reading, Aldo. Never taken for granted.
This is a wonderful exploration of energetic interactions in the context of sensory and perceptual awareness. You touch upon our normal sensory awareness and it’s limitations. It’s worth mentioning that we actually see and hear many things that are in the spectrum of our conscious awareness but filter out these inputs (intentional blindness is one example of this). Thus, conscious awareness of sensory inputs is a subset of sensory awareness.
Perceptual awareness is another matter. My skin cells perceive UV light and react by changing the amount of melanin pigment they produce. This is outside of conscious awareness but is a clear example of perceiving this spectrum of light energy. We are exposed to many different energetic stimuli that we can perceive. DNA both responds to and emits photons and phonons. The pineal gland has cells that respond to light. The energies we are exposed to are affecting us, even though we may not be aware of how we are being affected.
We exist in a field of energies/vibrations/frequencies and we produce a local field that is in dynamic energy exchange with the greater field and with other people’s local fields. Some are able to perceive this with their conscious awareness. At times this awareness is visual as in seeing an aura, at times it’s emotional as with an empath feeling another person’s pain.
Words convey energy, feelings convey energy and we collectively contribute to create the field. Our energetic interactions can be synchronous or asynchronous with the field, concordant or discordant, harmonious or disharmonious. We resonate with the field around us when our own energetic frequency aligns closely the field. Energetically, there are many types of interactions that are happening within and around us at the quantum, micro, and macro levels. These all involve energetic exchanges.
The entire topic is worth more comment and discussion, but these are just a few thoughts in response to what you have written.
Your pointing to how the deluge of input hitting us every second is brought down to more manageable amounts of data is succinct, Victor, because what is tossed by the wayside by the filters is often what we have been conditioned to not pay attention to.
My favorite non-ability is knowing how Australian Aboriginals brought up traditionally are attuned to the four corners of the world. If we are all born with the sense of knowing where North and South are but are never engaged with this sensation early on, chance is that those sensations will be part of what is filtered out.
Can you imagine if we never asked toddlers about colors?
So true, Charlotte! The conditioned mind often confines us in ways we do not even realize.
This was delicious, Charlotte. What a wonderful piece that sparked so many tangential and interconnectednees, from Lucifer’s maligned story to experiences in the liminal space and sensory experiences across planes of consciousness. Our multi-sensory array allows us to peer into sensory worlds that a rapid-paced world often doesn’t support. To breathe in and out in awe, to slow and feel the heartbeat, to see self in another in the embrace of energy; the love experienced. It is in these moments we discover each other, our bodies of water flowing in the sound and light. Share water.
I can’t help wondering why sensing has gotten such a low priority, Zen.
‘It is difficult to get a man to sense something, when his salary depends on his not sensing it.’ ???