So you think you're human

[soaring crane]

You are a walking bacterial colony.

 

This talk touches on some of my view of life on Earth, and presumably everywhere else in the universe. I'm sure the truth is much, much larger, and more profound:

 

[Ell]

Interesting you should post this....a few months back, someone that I trust deeply recommended me this book, specifically raving about how gut microbes affect our mental well-being: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/brain-maker-david-perlmutter/1120058384

 

I just finally went through with ordering a copy yesterday....I was hesitant a) because I don't fully "get it" and I'm kind of scared of some doctor scaring me out of soda or the occasional trip to Popeyes Chicken. But, as further evidenced by you posting, the topic keeps popping up in my life....time to move towards what scares me....  

Edited October 31, 2015 by Ell

[soaring crane]

well, if you're drawn to something, there's a reason for it.

 

I can sum up my own ideas on the subject by saying that the micro world is responsible for human notions of God(s). That's how big I think it is.

[Taomeow]

Interesting topic.

 

I like the taoist definition of what it means to be human:

to be human, you have to walk like a human, stand like a human, sit like a human, and lie down like a human.

 

Notice this leaves out the minor distinctions like "feel" or "think" or "believe."  It is enough to meet the four requirements above to be human -- and not meeting them means you're not, regardless of what you feel, think or believe.

 

I think (while sitting like a human I hope) that the whole is neither equal to the parts nor necessarily greater.  The whole can be smaller than the parts it is made out of -- consider mob mentality and behavior compared to the mentality and behavior of one normal human.  The latter is definitely "bigger" -- not in physical size but in the size of her humanity.

 

Even if we are put together out of trillions of bacteria, this does not mean that we are a sum total of their mentality -- we can be something else, something new.  This is another taoist law (contracted by Feuerbach via taoism-aware Leibniz and, for some reason, by Marx and Lenin enamored with Feuerbach) -- the transmutation of quantity into quality.  A human is not the same as a bunch of trillion of microbes randomly scattered over a random surface.  The organizing principle, the pattern, is what emerges as a new quality that may have little or nothing to do with the quantity that has produced it.  A diamond is not a piece of coal, even though, technically speaking, it is.  A pearl is not a band-aid applied around a grain of sand that bothered the oyster, even though, technically speaking, it is.   

 

What I suspect is NOT human is the force that peddles sterilization of this world by all means at its disposal.  From dozens of different antibiotics fed to livestock and sprayed on the fields, and then "disinfectants" that sterilize every bit of food we eat and much of the indoor air we breathe, and then irradiation of food (and of us on every convenient occasion -- e.g. at the airport) to kill whatever wasn't killed with "disinfectants," to spraying whole countries with Malathion that kills astronomical (no, bigger than that) numbers of live-creating little ones, to Corexit and so on doing this to the oceans, to doctors prescribing antibiotics in such amounts and with such frequency that we get therapeutically significant doses of them from our municipal water when we take a shower, to chlorinated everything that moves till it's perfectly dead (and stinky and carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic), to a film of murderous goo on every apple and every carrot you buy, to -- 

well I better stop or the coincidence theorists will rush in to call me a conspiracy theorist.  Who needs to be slapped with this shitty meme.  Pure shit, and yet so popular.  Like nearly everything else that is pure shit. 

 

What I worry about is not that we're put together out of a symbiotic bunch of climate zones -- this is normal.  I worry about internal deforestation that closely matches external one.  THIS is what strips us of humanity.  A climate disaster inside the body -- and billions of bodies that are seldom seen walking, sitting, standing or lying down as human anymore.  I notice all the time...  

[Geof Nanto]

Conventional notions of us humans as a unified autonomous individuals are illusions. From the perspective of systems theory, we, and all life, consist of a hyper-complex web of system-environment processes. 

Edited October 31, 2015 by Yueya

[Taomeow]

Conventional notions of us humans as a unified autonomous individuals are illusions. From the perspective of systems theory, we, and all life, consist of a hyper-complex web of system-environment processes. 

 

Methinks the illusion is to reduce to one or the other something that is both simultaneously. 

 

The cognitive process that allows one to grasp how it can be both, and not reducible to either, can be experienced in some "non-ordinary" states, but can't be explained with any sequential language, nor grasped with sequential step by step logical analysis.  However, it's available to some people under some circumstances.  We are both, and reduction to either is a grave mistake under all normal and most "non-ordinary" circumstances.

[Geof Nanto]

Methinks the illusion is to reduce to one or the other something that is both simultaneously. 

 

The cognitive process that allows one to grasp how it can be both, and not reducible to either, can be experienced in some "non-ordinary" states, but can't be explained with any sequential language, nor grasped with sequential step by step logical analysis.  However, it's available to some people under some circumstances.  We are both, and reduction to either is a grave mistake under all normal and most "non-ordinary" circumstances.

 

Yes, you have considerably widened the scope of what was already a broad topic.

[Brian]

 

Yes, you have considerably widened the scope of what was already a broad topic.

Yes, and I think the principle should be applied almost universally -- almost anything we "think we know" reveals itself, under closer examination, to be far more complex and intricately entangled with other "stuff." We knowingly build highly simplified models to help us wrap our intellects around concepts and then we tend to wrap those same models around us as security blankets. Recognizing this behavior in others is a first step towards removing one's self from this cycle because it might lead to recognizing this behavior in one's self.

[Geof Nanto]

Yes, and I think the principle should be applied almost universally -- almost anything we "think we know" reveals itself, under closer examination, to be far more complex and intricately entangled with other "stuff." We knowingly build highly simplified models to help us wrap our intellects around concepts and then we tend to wrap those same models around us as security blankets. Recognizing this behavior in others is a first step towards removing one's self from this cycle because it might lead to recognizing this behavior in one's self.

 

According to Seigen Ishin (Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin):

 

"Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters."

 

(from D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism)

 

 

Discussion here most often centres around the realisation the "mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters". And for me that's an important and ongoing part of my cultivation. 

 

 

The water-drinking sea turtle passes unnoticed,

The mountain talisman burner is disliked by the demons.

One grain of millet contains the whole world,

In a one-quart alchemical vessel boils rivers and mountains.

 

Lü Dongbin 

Edited October 31, 2015 by Yueya

[Brian]

Indeed, first there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is.

 

Not too many years ago, I thought this was a silly saying. Now I understand it applies pretty universally.

[AussieTrees]

Thankyou soaring crane,

This is an interesting topic.

 

So we have different bacteria living within borders within our bodies.

Colonies of every discription,some symbiotic others invasive,and we are outnumbered.

 

Now theories suggest they may well have a influence on ideas and thought processes.

Religions become endemic to region due to the localised micro fauna?

 

Seems we still have much to learn,all life forms seem more prescious.

Should we stop at once all manner of insecticide,herbicide,anti-biotic use?

 

The rainforests being stripped and sterilised by fire,to plant cash crops,again we are all the lesser for it.

How many organisms are to be annihilated?

 

Some thoughts from this unit collective of organism,we are not I.

[Taomeow]

Thankyou soaring crane,

This is an interesting topic.

 

So we have different bacteria living within borders within our bodies.

Colonies of every discription,some symbiotic others invasive,and we are outnumbered.

 

Now theories suggest they may well have a influence on ideas and thought processes.

Religions become endemic to region due to the localised micro fauna?

 

Seems we still have much to learn,all life forms seem more prescious.

Should we stop at once all manner of insecticide,herbicide,anti-biotic use?

 

The rainforests being stripped and sterilised by fire,to plant cash crops,again we are all the lesser for it.

How many organisms are to be annihilated?

 

Some thoughts from this unit collective of organism,we are not I.

 

We are not I, they are not we, and what I think we should do is stop using them interchangeably.  This would be the beginning of some clarity in at least some of those sore excuses for collective minds. 

 

I, me, don't have to stop using insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other mass murder weapons because I, me, never use them, never did and never will.  Antibiotics -- I, me, don't get multimillion dollar grants or I would have offered something much better, our their antibiotics are an obsolete drug, expired, Fleming is dead and the efficiency of antibiotics is a small percentage of what it used to be circa his time.  They kill far more than heal but still spectacularly drain all funding and all the brightest minds (that are powerless in this-here social set-up unless funded) away from what heals but is not patentable -- e.g. macrofagi, which don't go out of style and you don't build up a global ecosystem of drug-resistant microorganisms...  no one is funding the research.  Focused rather than broad-spectrum weapons of selective destruction can be obtained from plants -- the Under-Destruction rain forest contains remedies for everything, only less than 1% of its medicinal plants used by the locals were ever studied pharmaceutically and even that tiny drop yielded such heavyweights as quinine and general anesthesia, to name a couple. 

 

And there's no need to study in such a manner as though we are playing make-believe -- let's pretend thousands of years of human experience that went before were all clueless, primitive, "unscientific" endeavors, and let's start by doubting everything they ever did and testing something from scratch, and if it works, let's create a synthetic version of it -- 'cause we can't patent the straight-up medicine, we have to alter it so it is less efficient but someone, some we (what kind of we?..) can own it.

 

For humans -- if humans were the ones calling the shots -- there's no need to do this.   Instead there's a need to preserve and learn, and trust millennia-reviewed rather than ulterior-motivated-peer-reviewed "evidence based medicine."  You want evidence, you have to know who to ask.  If you designate who to ask as "primitives," you will never know what they knew, and when they are gone and their "evidence" is gone together with the plants that contained it, you're stuck with mediocre drugs that do more harm than good and progressively so -- in my native tongue there's a saying, "a cannon used against sparrows," that's our their medicine.  And most sparrows just fly away while the whole building they were "infesting" collapses.  But we can't get rid of these because we they aren't offering anything else.  You have to have something, right?  We just don't feel we have to have an opinion, an incentive, a voice -- it's all taken care of by them.   

 

I do believe an average microbe is smarter than an average consumer.  Even as an individual.

[Apech]

Thanks SC fascinating (but rather too short) video in OP.

 

I have been thinking recently about the physical body as a community but was just thinking of the community of cells but if you add in commensal bacteria it becomes even more fascinating. I suppose partly because we tend to take our bodies for granted and also more importantly act as if we know what they are.  Familiarity breeds contempt as they say.  So often we might even spend more time thinking about our energetic subtle bodies or our minds and so on ... forgetting that our physical bodies are a ) miraculous and b  ) a mystery.

 

I completely avoid antibiotics and have not taken any since a child.  I guess I've been lucky not to be in a situation where it was 'necessary' ... so I guess I would in extremis if it was life or death.  But I have a friend with a three year old child who became infected during labour and both mother and baby had antibiotics repeatedly since then.  I have tried to encourage the mother to go for TCM but I don't think she believes.

 

The idea of a gut as a second brain is also of course familiar and a few years ago I found the book 'Unwinding the Belly' to be quite inspiring.

[AussieTrees]

Thanks SC fascinating (but rather too short) video in OP.

 

I have been thinking recently about the physical body as a community but was just thinking of the community of cells but if you add in commensal bacteria it becomes even more fascinating. I suppose partly because we tend to take our bodies for granted and also more importantly act as if we know what they are.  Familiarity breeds contempt as they say.  So often we might even spend more time thinking about our energetic subtle bodies or our minds and so on ... forgetting that our physical bodies are a ) miraculous and b  ) a mystery.

 

I completely avoid antibiotics and have not taken any since a child.  I guess I've been lucky not to be in a situation where it was 'necessary' ... so I guess I would in extremis if it was life or death.  But I have a friend with a three year old child who became infected during labour and both mother and baby had antibiotics repeatedly since then.  I have tried to encourage the mother to go for TCM but I don't think she believes.

 

The idea of a gut as a second brain is also of course familiar and a few years ago I found the book 'Unwinding the Belly' to be quite inspiring.

 

There it is,a gut feeling?

[soaring crane]

I'm very humbly impressed by the responses my post got here. Many of you articulate my own intuitive thoughts far more clearly than I can. 

 

Here, a cross post from the science section thread:

 

 

MooniNite: Many famous scientists talk about a consciousness behind the existence of matter, even Stephen Hawking. 

 

Me: yes, many famous spiritualists, too. But I've not yet read where one identified the source of that consciousness as the organic information flowing through the microbial sea that permeates all life on the planet, is, in fact, 90% of all life on the planet.

 

Addendum: It's the organic nature of this that is fascinating to me. Spiritualists, great and small, recent and ancient, have tapped into this matrix (I generally avoid that word but can't think of a better one atm) in their meditations, glimpsed the awesomeness of the one organic, sentient intelligence that has basically been in existence on this planet since the primordial stew started bubbling, about four billion years ago. 

[Taomeow]

It's the DNA...  and it's not limited to this planet.  It acts as a receiver-transmitter of organized (i.e. "conscious," i.e. capable of establishing "meaningful" relationships between phenomena) thought-matter-spirit-memory with unlimited range in space and time. 

 

By the way, this is why the I Ching works, and this is how it works. 

[AussieTrees]

Bugs,micro fauna,living symbiotically within the human body.

Possibly having an influence on the thought processes.

 

What influence are these bugs having when their host is manifesting evil?

Is there a'dark side'evil bugs,still symbiotic but evil?

 

Is there a anti-biotic treating evil bugs,a cure for their host?

[Taomeow]

Bugs,micro fauna,living symbiotically within the human body.

Possibly having an influence on the thought processes.

 

What influence are these bugs having when their host is manifesting evil?

Is there a'dark side'evil bugs,still symbiotic but evil?

 

Is there a anti-biotic treating evil bugs,a cure for their host?

 

There's vast branches of occult expertise known as demonology.  Of all the traditions I've familiarized myself with, Islam has the most extensive catalog of demonic entities and procedures for handling them.  Some of these entities do behave like bacterial or viral colonies, but others, like patterns put together out of psychological trauma, they somehow self-organize inside the host and occasionally gain a measure of autonomy in the outside world too.  I read a very fascinating book at one point, by a Pakistani, Western educated psychiatrist, who took a plunge into the world of demonology when he encountered cases (many of them) that were impenetrable to Western scientific approach but responded nicely to the procedures employed by exorcists -- so he traveled to study what they know and met many of them, and tried to build some bridges between their expertise and skill and the Western scientific paradigm.  I have it somewhere, I might refresh my memory if it's somewhere handy, don't remember all the details, just that it made a lot of sense.    

[soaring crane]

Bugs,micro fauna,living symbiotically within the human body.

Possibly having an influence on the thought processes.

 

What influence are these bugs having when their host is manifesting evil?

Is there a'dark side'evil bugs,still symbiotic but evil?

 

Is there a anti-biotic treating evil bugs,a cure for their host?

 

I don't think that's an accurate description of the relationship, and I don't think there's any "possibly" about their influence on thought processes. 

 

The few human cells that we have are simply there to provide locomotion for the overwhelming majority of microorganisms that are always evolving, always developing new ways to get where they want to go. The thoughts we have are simply a vague interpretation of the vast intelligence that has ruled all life on Earth for as long as there's been life here.

 

We all know what phemomones are, right? Sex hormones, the olfactory signal that we want to fuck and are looking for a partner to make babies with. The microorganisms on our skin (and on the skin of all vertebrates) trigger the production of pheromones. No microorganisms, no pheromones, no fucking, no children, no you, no me, no human race ... Who's really procreating here? You? Me? Our parents? Nope. It's those "bugs" that we can't see, but we know they're there. We do sense their power over us, however, and interpret as a supreme being, an omnipotent, omniscient presence in our lives.

 

And there is no evil on that plane. Our death is merely a way of enabling them to leave their temporary home and move on, mingling with the others, mixing and matching and evolving. Pollution is great stuff, it provides an optimal breeding ground for them. That's why we produce it in the first place. What could be more counter-intuitive than shitting in your own bed? There has to be a profound reason behind pollution.

 

Regarding DNA -- every cell that has a nucleus can store something like thirty megabytes of data. Every single cell on the planet, networked. That's a lot of storage space. Nothing ever gets lost (in the same way that "the internet never forgets", this organic harddrive hasn't forgotten anything for the past four billion years, it's all still there, and we can tune into it -- Yijing, yesssss).

 

And the DNA angle puts viruses in the leadership role, the masters of life on Earth. 

[Taomeow]

Since my credo for all purposes, macro to micro, is co-creation, I believe the whole has a say in it too once it's been co-created by whatever did the job -- it becomes a party to the further process of co-creation.  So, "human" is real and distinct enough despite all our origins and functions that seem to point toward our illusory nature.  Inasmuch as it is a meaningful pattern in a meaningful relationship with other patterns, a complete product of a co-creation event is quite a force/being to reckon with. 

 

Nothing is completely independent, this world (or any other) does not work like that, and creations occasionally cooperate with the creator and occasionally rebel against him or her -- Frankenstein's monster?  Archons, Gaya's disastrous creative failure?..  

 

  So, humans are not "just" puppets on microbial or viral strings -- a functionally complete pattern cuts the strings on occasion and learns to do its own dance.  Or, on occasion, someone/something else cuts them and attaches its own, new strings.  That's what I think happened to us.  A secondary creation -- archonic, a force opposing DNA-based life -- managed to turn us into its puppets. 

 

Where the hope lies, in micro-intervention (which is occasionally heavy-handed -- they might just throw a dead-end project into a waste basket instead of fixing it if the fixing process becomes too energy-inefficient and not worth it), or in our own regained memory of co-creation, of autonomy playing nicely with dependency, free will, with natural limits imposed on it by the free will of others and by that part of existence that is predetermined and immune to anyone's free will -- that I couldn't tell.  All I know is, archonic techno-pseudo-patterning, transhumanism, is a death sentence to humanity -- but I don't know how we might backpedal from that short and damning road we're on.  My hopes of microbial saviors are not terribly high, to tell you the truth...  but stranger things have happened. 

[Nungali]

Thankyou soaring crane,

This is an interesting topic.

 

So we have different bacteria living within borders within our bodies.

Colonies of every discription,some symbiotic others invasive,and we are outnumbered.

 

Now theories suggest they may well have a influence on ideas and thought processes.

Religions become endemic to region due to the localised micro fauna?

 

Seems we still have much to learn,all life forms seem more prescious.

Should we stop at once all manner of insecticide,herbicide,anti-biotic use?

 

The rainforests being stripped and sterilised by fire,to plant cash crops,again we are all the lesser for it.

How many organisms are to be annihilated?

 

Some thoughts from this unit collective of organism,we are not I.

 

 

Its all interconnected.  LIke the Blushwood  rain forest tree in Queensland with the cancer cure  !   We are loosing stuff like that , and the indigenous knowledge about such things.

 

" “In preclinical trials we injected it into our models and within five minutes, you see a purpling of the area that looks like a bruise,” Boyle, from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute said.

 

“About 24 hours later, the tumour area goes black, a couple of days later you see a scab, and at around the 1.5 week mark, the scab falls off, leaving clean skin with no tumour there. The speed certainly surprised me.”

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/08/cancer-tumours-destroyed-by-berry-queensland-rainforest

 

Saw a tragic but great doco  a few nights back, from the  NW tip of Sth America .  Environmental scientists are getting knowledge off indigenous re, sacred sites ( or specifically, as known here 'increase sites' ) and the complex totemic knowledge associated with it and related to it via other sites. 

 

The scientists have realized , to paraphrase ;  These people have been around long enough to realize their are specific places that need protection and to be treated differently as these places are somehow intrinsic in the long term species survival of many animals. He went on to explain that what  can be done in one area ( re 'development'), and taking ecological precautions, and it seems to work , has not applied for certain special areas.  These scientists now acknowledge  the complex interconnection , and that it is to a level they do not understand, but they think the indigenous do,

 

To me , this is a great breakthrough.  

Edited November 3, 2015 by Nungali

[Nungali]

Bugs,micro fauna,living symbiotically within the human body.

Possibly having an influence on the thought processes.

 

What influence are these bugs having when their host is manifesting evil?

Is there a'dark side'evil bugs,still symbiotic but evil?

 

I dont know if they are bugs or not .... I tend to define them as 'forces' .  I do think there are numerous forces inside of us, some  are like sleeping crocodiles .... when awoken ( when their host is manifesting 'evil ' ? )  they, like a crocodile, will clean up the weak, injured and lame , the sick. This isnt just in an individual, but it can break out into a culture. 

 

I did a paper on it in Cultural Anthropology at Uni.  Both can run concurrently ( an individual and a society ) and are identifiable in both indicators and  results, in quiet clear stages ... eg, in the individual , self harm is at a specific stage ( indicators and results need to be separated from 'normal cultural specifics ... life long time practice of scarification, subincision, tattooing, etc )  

 

(some more info on this, I will link to in a post below. 

 

 

 

 

Is there a anti-biotic treating evil bugs,a cure for their host?

 

 

Well .... silver bullets and daggers kill vampires and werewolves ... and silver kills bugs   

 

They used to use silver before antibiotics were used  ... and now ? 

 

[Nungali]

There's vast branches of occult expertise known as demonology.  Of all the traditions I've familiarized myself with, Islam has the most extensive catalog of demonic entities and procedures for handling them.  Some of these entities do behave like bacterial or viral colonies, but others, like patterns put together out of psychological trauma, they somehow self-organize inside the host and occasionally gain a measure of autonomy in the outside world too. 

 

One of the main things with this, 'magically' and psychologically, is of the 'split' ... the 'energy'  attempts, or the person thinks, there is a separation, and part of them (that was a well working 'colony' - of whatever description )  now seems to be, or claiming to be, 'independent' , have its own existence , be a 'spirit' , personality, etc.  Funny thing is, when this is the case, they usually cant give a name. If they do, analysis can reveal a con. They also claim independent knowledge apart from the person, but again, under examination, its usually something the person did know.

 

On the other hand , the 'good' spirits, want us to join in with them, as it where.  they are respectful of our levels of acceptance and fear and will depart if asked. they usually operate under a title, not a name, and this too can be analysed .

 

There is more of this in the link below. 

 

But the thing here is , they seem to seek, or maybe are being forced into an autonomous role. 

 

Reintegration and re connection is the key ... after the initial stages.  ..... sometimes the initial stage can be struggle.

 

 

 

I read a very fascinating book at one point, by a Pakistani, Western educated psychiatrist, who took a plunge into the world of demonology when he encountered cases (many of them) that were impenetrable to Western scientific approach but responded nicely to the procedures employed by exorcists -- so he traveled to study what they know and met many of them, and tried to build some bridges between their expertise and skill and the Western scientific paradigm.  I have it somewhere, I might refresh my memory if it's somewhere handy, don't remember all the details, just that it made a lot of sense.    

 

Then you might like this (if you haven't already seen it, I have posted on it a few times ) .

 

Its a very similar study, from a westerner, medical doctor, that used the ideas of the spiritualist Swedenborg, in the areas of 'demonic possession' to treat  severe mental patients (as other things were not working, they were classified as 'incurable'. 

 

The Presence Of Spirits In Madness A Confirmation of Swedenborg in Recent Empirical Findings by Wilson Van Dusen 

 . 

 

http://www.searchwithin.org/download/presence_spirits.pdf

 

 

 

I would love to look at the work you mentioned, if you can find it or remember the title

[redcairo]

I am going to skip a whole bunch here because I don't want to write a novel and nobody would want to read it. But to come pretty near the present few years and start there, I was once horrified at the insight-epiphany that I could not possibly exist. I could not be real. I had spent a great deal of time coming to better understand my body, and my energy body, and my Aeons, and then one day realized there was nothing left. If they were all-that, then what was I? There is no part of me that is not a ton of other intelligences also. Where was the place for something to be "me" and not someone- something- else? 

 

In response, I was shown (internally) that my nature (as a human) simply wasn't what I expected. At all. And that wasn't new, nothing had changed, I'd just been oblivious. That "I" was an "emergent property" of all the intelligence that made up the body (dominantly the Aeons and Chakras as they are the main of it in terms of its next-largest-identities, but of course they have their own composition and so on).

 

I existed solely for the 'executive decision' role and as part of my job, whatever energy of the conglomerate I chose to have "in focus" was "my experience" -- the idea being that I would be getting feedback from perceived-reality and could adjust as needed. One of my jobs is to find ways to include all the energy that needs outlet and development and help bring harmony to the many components of self. I saw that I have been chronically biased in favoring some energy over or under others, not for good reason, just for my own limitations and habits, and it has affected all of us. If I think I am bad at something (or good at it), afraid of something (or not), all those are over-attachment, over-identification with the energies inside -- I am merely experiencing what I choose to identify with. The opposite and other variants probably exist inside me too if I just choose them.

 

In short, I only have ONE JOB  - to make good decisions. Everything else is technically someone else's job, it's merely that I am sharing their experience of it.

 

But it's very distressing to realize there is no 'me.' 

 

And the more these sorts of realizations come about, the more some of them are along the lines of, "Everything is energy. Everything is symbol." Which is to say, everything is equal in that regard. "Identity is an arbitrary collection of consciousness assigned a title." Awareness is omnipresent. Everything beyond that is basically an emergent property of some kind. (Although unlike the English meaning of that term, there -is- actually continued interaction between what emerges and from what it emerges).

 

As for demons... or 'daemons' as 'messengers'... from Hebrew and Greek and Plato and what meaning that seemed to end up with I guess (I am no expert on anything written, but wiki told me that once)... I give the example that once upon a time when people were sick, it was thought they had teeny tiny demons in the blood. Later science dismissed that and eventually evolved to the point of discovering that there were virii in the blood. This eventually evolved to realizing that basically all such things are "information." Messages carried by certain kinds of cells which often contained all kinds of things, even shreds of dna. So, daemons! So it turns out when people are sick, they have teeny tiny little daemons in their blood. We've come a long way. :-)

 

I consider everything manifest to be manifested-awareness. Things like self-awareness, let alone autonomy, are far down the line of emergent property from that, but I don't really know how far or why. I've had an experience with an entire 'world' of people that when I was done, my awareness-perspective shifted, and it turned out they were a collection of dehydrating cells in my lower side of torso and I was the "god" they were praying to for help, for rain. (That was 21 years ago and to this day I am kinda blown away by the impact of that experience. I was wide awake and sitting at my computer when the vision happened.)

 

And I've had some debates with my Aeons such as about what white blood cells might be "doing" if they weren't busy falling on their swords to clean up after my lousy eating for example... because from my perspective that's why they exist but apparently there's more to it. (Also I've found that when your perspective shifts to that size and situation, they are like rescue soldiers. Once they were saving me, carrying these things out flying past and I was waving and saying "thank you!" when I realized they were all going to DIE as they took them out for me. Then I started crying because they were my heroes and I didn't want them to die. LOL -- really, perspective is everything!)

 

Anyway my point is that the body itself is divine by design and AMAZING in so many ways, so many layers of amazing we are oblivious to, and this covers a heck of a lot more than merely the digestive colonies' bacteria. I've no idea what degree of identity those have individually but as a system, basic food and drug addictions make it obvious that the body can be 'triggered' -- whether that in the brain or the gut or, more likely, the entire nervous system "is" the brain by extension so it doesn't matter -- into a sudden craving for certain things.

 

I was once in a lucid dream with part of my groupsoul and got ensnared by "the taste of strawberry" (like jam-preserves) and my mate had to literally drag me out, I was so weak to it -- there are some layers of perception where everything is equally real even things like tastes. Boy coffee and chocolate must be monsters lol.

 

With gut bacteria though I definitely think it becomes like that native american saying about the wolf you choose to feed.

 

If I don't feed my gut anything with gluten/glutin for some time, I have zero urge to eat anything with them. In fact once I got all this stuff that was normally gluten stuff -- pizza crust, cookies, cakes, pancakes, everything, that was GF -- and consciously I cannot taste the diff, they taste just fine -- and it sat on the far edge of the counter for 2 years until I tossed it because I had no interest in eating it the moment I'd had one iteration and my body realized it had no gluten. My whole life was driven by the drive to ingest gluten and I never knew it. I could barely make myself eat at all once I got rid of that driver. I had to be hungry and couldn't even remember when I truly had been last, my hunger signals were trashed by decades of low-level addiction that drove everything (which I think most our culture has and is oblivious to. And it's in nearly everything now, so pervasive and difficult to avoid).

 

I can eat one thing with wheat -- sometimes I don't even know it contains it -- and very shortly I know because my entire body is craving it. There's even a predictable cycle of response it'll go through for days, with the various foods that it will crave, and if I won't eat them, eventually cycling in to other foods that merely have "some" gluten, and so on. It will try and fool me, like make me think I really want pesto, when it knows I am unlikely to eat it without pasta for example. I am not fooled anymore.  I know that most my body is horribly injured by my response to those proteins (though this didn't happen until my mid-late 30s. I never had allergies, asthma, odd rashes, mild arthritis, acid reflux, or other issues from G until then. Of course docs told me it was just the trees and these things fall out of the sky on you for no reason. Leaky gut had finally just hit critical mass point with me, is all). When I stopped eating ALL G entirely for a few weeks (for a totally unrelated just-by-chance reason - I had no idea!) it was like a medical miracle. Which for reasons not clear to me made my specialist angry, not happy. You'd think I'd told him the tooth fairy cured me or something. Anyway...

 

So I know that the gut definitely is manifesting enough intelligence to be predictable even, but I don't know on what level it's doing this. I suspect that every major part of the body has this, though, and normally it's seamless. We think it's all "us." When really none of it's us because there is no me.

 

So to speak.