Beyond Horizons of Perception

Beyond the horizons of our perceptions we discover what we can not see or touch but know only by its behavior.

 

We exist in a web of information flowing through  and around us. Our individual ability to know and understand the many levels of information shaping our existence depends on molecular and structural adaptations for perceiving changes in the flow of information. 

Our individual perceptions are unable to detect events and beings existing beyond the horizons of our perceptions; events and beings too distant in space, too distant in time, too large or small, too fast or too slow.

The horizons of perception in change.

Each individual perceives the world at a specific interval of change. Some events happen so slowly we are unable to perceive them or so quickly our eyes can not detect them. To us the tide is high, the tide is low, but unless conditions are just right we cannot see the tide ebbing and flowing. Nor can we perceive the gravitational interaction of Earth and Moon creating the tide.

The multitude of small intertidal creatures can never penetrate their horizon of perception to see the vista of the sea shore they inhabit. But many somehow perceive the gravitational interaction of Earth and Moon and know the tides directly, following the rhythm even when removed from the sea shore.

Science provides a vicarious perception, allowing us to see, in the behavior of certain ophiuroids and lamellibranches, the turning of the tide. 

In understanding their behavior, we lift beyond the horizon of our own perceptions.

The horizons most difficult to reach are where perception requires movement against a background.

Constancy is invisible.

There are horizons of perception where the carrier of perception is, itself, invisible. 

Sea water is invisible to the sonar pulse of a dolphin or whale . Perhaps, to many creatures of the oceans, sea water is beyond the horizons of perception. 

Maybe, if they ever do think of Sea, it is a mystery of confusion, as air was to humans in the millennia before science.

The awareness challenge

The great challenge for awareness is to detect its own web of controls and reveal the invisible threads weaving the flow of atoms and energy into pathways of becoming, changing their relationships using the lever of awareness with the force of desire.  

We know awareness only by its behavior, because the mirror of mind cannot reflect its own image. 

We detect threads of awareness in cycles of becoming, and in threads of communications weaving the fundamental control systems of life.

Each discovery is a glimpse  beyond our horizon of understanding; an awakening that shifts the winds of survival, driving us towards new discoveries.

Curiosity is the need to learn new patterns of behavior, enrich our memories, adjust to those unseen forces impacting our survival.

We approach new perceptions slowly, by population evolution, or quickly, by individual discovery.

We are drawn closer and closer to our horizons of perception until meaning becomes clear or until, like a mirage, the perception wavers and vanishes again from our existence, lost in the stormy passage of our lives.