Old EA Message Board

Hi Rad,

It is inherent to the human nature at the moments we live in, and specifically for daemon souls and people who love and try to respect nature but live in developed countries, that is, privileged so far relative to all the destruction of nature (and our own natural natures) and actual to an extent agents of that destruction, to emphatically feel a state of sadness and guilt even when our lives are full of joy or simply have enjoyable daily moments.
What do you feel is the "antidote" if you can share an advise?

I'll share a story that happened to me and made me think about it in that I was driving just after sunset and a bird flew into my windshield and collided with it. I felt devastated, couldn't help it, went searching for the bird but didn't find it. For nature always has messages for us I know I have to find the deeper meaning underlying it, but on the other hand and in general the world has evolved in way that unless we are hermits in a cave our actions would always have a greater impact on others and nature and feel there is a inner work to be done for emphats, daemon souls and people who feel this things in order to live in the world in a more guilt free way. Specially if we bear in heart and mind the earnest desire to live a good life and be kind to nature and people, would you agree?

An image comes to mind relative to this that I never forgot because it portrays how indigenous people live with animals and nature relative to us that don't live that way. It was on a documentary with a tribe in the Amazon and it was lunch time, a man was eating an animal it had caught on hunt and a cat (presumably a cat that showed by) was there trying to eat too and the man snapped it (not violently but firmly) and told him to go way because he was eating. I thought that was a marvellous lesson because they were exactly equal (the cat could also go and hunt for himself) and we tend to dominate nature to an extent to create dependencies and feel guilty to eat other animals we didn't had the job to hunt for survival... So I remember this now and then as to what is natural to the human being but of course we have to balance it to how we have evolved as a society. So I wonder if you can share some thoughts on this inner work mixed with personal responsibility and natural guilt, from your perspective.

Thank you Rad,
Helena

Hi Helena,

To me the best way to create an antidote to the willful destruction of the environment, nature itself, and animals is do do whatever one can by way of educating others about all this, to work or volunteer for organizations that are themselves helping to educate, and restore a sense of balance, to our overall environment, and to donate money to this end to such organizations.

There are many, many organizations around the world that are dedicated to animal rescue work. To me, that would be the number one thing to do as a human being if one can find a way to do that in their personal lives.

God Bless, Rad 

Hi Rad,

Thank you for your answer, I agree. I find communicating about it, getting/sharing education, even if indirectly through work or other means is something we can all do for sure. Rewilding communities are also very important and spreading all over the world to restore wildlife and natural habitats and they make an amazing work.

Thank you again,
Helena

Hi Helena,

Yes, working with re-wilding our planet in some way is critical to trying to re-establish some kind of BALANCE on our planet is essential, a wonderful way to deal with the natural guilt that you were talking/ asking about.

I would like to share a story about bees that perfectly illustrates the very nature of CONSCIOUSNESS that permeates the manifest Creation. Like JWG and others taught consciousness is like water in that it is inherently formless. Yet water, consciousness, assumes the function of the form that it inhabits. So if I put water into a glass it will assume the function of that form. Yet that water, when poured into a glass, can also overflow that glass: function defined by form.

So here we have the example of the formless form, the un-created created. The very nature of consciousness, of itself, has inherent properties, dynamics, that exist of themselves independent of form. These properties, dynamics, are INTELLIGENCE, EMOTION, and AWARENESS. When these natural properties of consciousness manifest in forms then we have the phenomena of individual Souls that are self aware where that awareness if defined by the nature of the form itself.

When these inherent properties of consciousness of then put into form they assume the function of that form. This story of bees that I am posting perfectly illustrates these natural truths. I am posting this story of the bees not only to illustrate these truths but to also illustrate how we all need to educate ourselves, and, thus, others as the very nature of the animal world that you were asking about, and the natural guilt that manifests in humans as they, the majority of them, that bulldozes, destroys, through the totality of Nature because because of the ignorance that exists in that majority as to the true nature of the animal and plant worlds: worlds that are conscious and self aware.

So this true story of the bees, the nature of them, will illustrate these natural truths that we all need to understand as human beings because these bees demonstrate the truths about the nature of all animals. So as we attempt to educate other humans beings about these truths we can start with the story of the bees themselves.

God Bless, Rad

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The consciousness of bees

Experiments indicate that bees have surprisingly rich inner worlds

Perspective by Lars Chittka
Lars Chittka is the author of the book The Mind of a Bee and a professor at Queen Mary University of London.
WA Post
8/7/2022

The French philosopher René Descartes, whose views on animals were highly influential, argued that these creatures acted purely by reflex — they had no intellectual capabilities. But there has been a Copernican revolution since then: We now know that sophisticated minds are all around us in the animal queendom — not just in close relatives of humans such as chimps and apes, but also in "aliens from inner space" such as the octopus.

And now we are learning just how smart insects can be. As I show in my new book, "The Mind of a Bee," the latest research indicates that even tiny-brained bees are profoundly intelligent creatures that can memorize not only flowers but also human faces, solve problems by thinking rather than by trial and error, and learn to use tools by observing skilled bees. They even appear to experience basic emotions, or at least something like optimism and pessimism. The possibility of sentience in these animals raises important ethical questions for their ecological conservation, as well as their treatment in the crop pollination industry and in research laboratories.

Social insects are traditionally thought to be wholly governed by instinct: They can build complex nests and efficiently divide up their labor through innate behaviors, but are considered stupid as individuals, with complexity emerging only at the group level. But there is significant evidence that bees have an inner world of thought — that they are not responding to stimuli only with hard-wired responses.

To explore bees' learning abilities, scientists reward them with little drops of sugar water when they have solved a task — the same reward that bees obtain in nature when they discover a nectar-rich flower. For example, to probe bees' face recognition skills, foragers were first rewarded with sugar water on a platform in front of a black-and-white photo of a human face. Once they learned to fly to this platform, they were confronted with a test in which they had to locate the correct photo out of a number of images of other people. No rewards were now present, and the correct photo was located in a different position during the test. Nonetheless, they found the correct face over 80 percent of the time — lending credence to the common beekeepers' assertion that bees can recognize the person who looks after them.

To test whether bees can count, we trained them to fly from their hive past four identical landmarks, shaped like 11-foot-high pyramids. During the training, they found a sugar reward after the third landmark. In the tests, we increased the number of landmarks between the hive and the training location of the feeder. When we did, bees landed at a shorter distance from the hive than during the training, apparently thinking they had flown far enough when they encountered the third landmark. Reducing the number of landmarks had the opposite effect — bees then overshot the training distance and flew farther to seek the third landmark.

Bees are flexible in accessing memories. A master storyteller of the mysteries of memory, Marcel Proust describes in "Remembrance of Things Past" how the narrator, after tasting a tea-soaked madeleine, suddenly recalls long-lost childhood memories in vivid detail. Similarly, a scent experienced by a bee inside its hive can bring back the memory of a flower patch with the same scent. To demonstrate this, scientists first trained bees to memorize two different feeding locations about 55 yards from the hive and 33 yards apart, one smelling of rose and the other of lemon. When researchers blew one scent or another into the hive, it activated the bees' memory of the correct feeding station, to which they flew directly. Thus, their memories can be activated separately from the setting in which they are learned.

On occasion, bees activate such memories in the darkness of the hive at night, and even communicate with other bees about them. Bees have a "dance language" by which they can inform others in the hive of the precise location of a rewarding flower patch. The symbolic language involves repeating the motor patterns ("dances") of a knowledgeable bee on the vertical honeycomb. The movements make reference to gravity and the direction of the sun; since it's dark in the hive, bees that want to learn from the dancer need to touch its abdomen with their antennae. Sometimes, such dances are displayed at night, when no foraging takes place: The dancer appears to think about locations visited on the previous day, without an obvious need to do so at the time, indicating that memories can be browsed in an "offline" situation.

My team has shown that bees can, in a sense, picture things in their minds. Bees that first learn that balls, but not cubes, are linked to a sugar reward by seeing these shapes through plexiglass — in a "look but don't touch" situation — can subsequently identify the same shapes by touch alone. We tested this in darkness, viewing the bees' behavior with infrared equipment (such conditions are not unusual for bees, since their nests are naturally dark). Bees trained to tell cubes from spheres in darkness could also later identify the correct shapes when seeing but not touching them, indicating a form of mental image that can be accessed with more than one sense.

Bees can also solve problems in a manner that indicates they understand the desired goal. In one experiment, bees learned to roll a ball to a certain area to obtain a sugar reward — a simple form of tool use, in which an object needs to manipulated in a specific way. Untrained bees then improved the technique. A trick was played on the "demonstrator" bee, so that only the farthest of three balls could be moved to the target area (the two other balls were glued to the horizontal surface). A naive bee was then allowed to observe the skilled bee's performance — always moving the farthest ball — three times. But when the observer was subsequently allowed into the arena alone, now finding none of the balls glued down, it spontaneously (without trial and error) picked the closest ball to move to the goal, solving the task in a manner inspired by the demonstrator but clearly not merely imitating its performance. Observer bees could have conjured up this solution only through a kind of mental exploration. This indicates a form of intentionality that was previously recognized only in large-brained animals, such as chimps.

And we now have evidence of emotion-like states, using the same criteria that researchers employ to evaluate whether domestic animals such as goats or horses are being kept in conditions that result in a positive or negative outlook on life. We trained bees to learn that blue was rewarding and green was not (another group of bees was trained with the opposite conditions) and subsequently presented them with an intermediate color, turquoise — an ambiguous stimulus. Crucially, the bees' judgment of this ambiguous color depended on what happened before the experiment. Unexpected rewards before the test appeared to induce an optimistic state of mind in bumblebees, making them more curious about new stimuli and more resilient to aversive stimuli. This optimistic state relied on the neurotransmitter dopamine, as it does in humans.

A negative emotional state can be induced by predator attacks. Some species of spiders sit on flowers and try to catch pollinating insects. We re-created this in the lab, constructing a plastic spider with a mechanism by which a bumblebee was momentarily held between two sponges and then released. The bees' behavior changed fundamentally: They seemed more nervous for days after such attacks. Beyond a simple learned aversion to flowers with artificial spiders, they extensively scanned every flower before landing, and even if there were flowers without a robotic spider, they sometimes fled — as if they were "seeing ghosts." The bees behaved as if they were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A critical reader might observe that each of these abilities could be programmed into a nonconscious robot. She would be correct, but such a robot would often fail at tasks that a programmer did not build into it. For example, a robot built 20 years ago to replicate all the skills of a honeybee as understood at the time would not have been able to exhibit the abilities of bees that were more recently discovered: to roll balls to a goal, recognize shapes across senses or display emotion-like states. Nature has no room to generate beings that just pretend to be sentient. Thus, while there is no accepted formal proof for consciousness in any animal or machine, common sense dictates that growing evidence of consciousness does indeed indicate what it seems to show.

The observation that bees are most likely sentient beings has important ethical implications. It's well known that many species of bees are threatened by pesticides and wide-scale habitat loss, and that this spells trouble because we need these insects to pollinate our crops. But is the utility of bees the only reason they should be protected? I don't think so. The insight that bees have a rich inner world and unique perception, and, like humans, are able to think, enjoy and suffer, commands respect for the diversity of minds in nature. With this respect comes an obligation to protect the environments that shaped these minds. Common migratory beekeeping practices in industrialized agriculture, for example, involve the frequent transport of hives across continents on trailers, which not only spreads disease but is most likely detrimental to bees' psychological well-being, weakening their health further. Finally, countless insects are sacrificed annually in research laboratories and the insect food industry, the methods of which are entirely unregulated. It is plausible that our findings about bees' capacity to suffer also extend to other insects, and this should be considered in any legislation regulating their treatment.

I'd like to recommend a PBS Naure documentary called: My Garden of a Thousand Bees.
A nature photographer sidelined because of covid turned his attention to his own backyard - a truly wonderful show - very much recommend

Hi Rad,

I'de like to share an amazing synchronicity, not only because it's true but because God/dess certainly speaks to us in this ways and we should take notice.
As I was reading your reply yesterday later in the day I remembered that during the day while I was at a beach I noticed a bee that was flying under a cafe table put in the sand and I noticed it because it was unusual a bee was there (few vegetation just around) and what was she doing flying under a table, I remember thinking, the whole time we were there. Since I was taking pictures at that time I went to check the time and it was right in the hour of your post, so I just think it's a lovely synchronicity and a way to confirm everything you mention. We need to pay attention to nature as living consciousness and spread that word as much as we can...

Thank you for the time to write and share that Rad,
Helena

P.S. Nerissa, thank you for your suggestion, I am not sure I can catch it were I am but will look.

Hi Helena

   

God Bless, Rad

Hi Helena,

Thought you would find this interesting.

God Bless, Rad

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Some spiders may enter REM sleep — and maybe even dream, study says

By Julian Mark
WA Post
August 16, 2022

With their big eyes, furry legs and exotic colors, jumping spiders are described as some of the most adorable arachnids — but members of its more than 5,000 species are amazing in other ways, too.

They have spectacular vision, can make complex decisions and are capable of forming memories. Some do hypnotic mating dances like tropical birds. And many can leap relatively far distances.

A new study, from German, Italian and U.S. researchers, says that a species of jumping spider may have another fascinating trait: the ability to have rapid eye movement sleep, a phase of rest characterized by twitching limbs, high brain activity, and eyes that race in different directions. Scientists say humans have their most vivid dreams during REM sleep.

"There was no way ever in my life I would have thought that [jumping spiders] could have something like REM sleep," Daniela Roessler, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the lead author of the study, told The Washington Post.

One night in September 2020, Roessler came home and noticed that some jumping spiders she had collected and placed in boxes on her windowsill were hanging upside down from their silk lines, very much like little Christmas tree ornaments.

"I was like, we don't know what they're doing, but they're hanging really neatly, super exposed, not in a silk retreat, so let's figure it out and let's just film them throughout the night," Roessler recalled. "So that's what we did."

What she and her fellow researchers saw amazed them. Using an infrared camera, they observed the young Evarcha arcuata jumping spiders experience bouts of limb twitching as they hung upside down. Because the spiders had translucent exteriors, Roessler also recorded the spiders' interior "retinal tubes" — a part of the eye that allows the arachnids to shift their gaze — shake rapidly during the state of apparent inactivity. It did not happen when the spiders were active.

"These twitches seemed so classical, and they immediately reminded me of a dog dreaming," Roessler said.

And it's possible the spiders dream, too, she said.

"Whether that means that they're visually experiencing this similar to how we experience visual dreams is a completely different story," Roessler said, musing that the spiders may "dream in vibrations."

Roessler said she and her team are not ready to answer those questions. First, they must prove that the spiders actually enter into REM sleep. The study cautiously characterizes the behavior as "REM sleep-like," since the researchers haven't yet shown that the spiders engage in sleep as it is typically defined by scientists. Roessler said she plans to test for those criteria — namely, lowered responsiveness and regulated periods of rest — in the future.

But experts in the field, including those who did not participate in the study, are excited by its findings.

"I'd be really surprised if this isn't sleep," Barrett Klein, an entomologist and sleep biologist at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, told The Post. "I'd be surprised if they don't show lowered responsivity during these REM-like states."

Little is known about REM sleep in mammals, birds or other creatures thought to exhibit similar behavior, like octopuses, experts said. Klein called REM sleep a "paradox" because an animal's muscles become largely paralyzed during the sleep phase, while the brain appears to light up as though awake. He also called it a "black box" because it's unclear why humans and other animals go into the paradoxical sleep state, and it has been debated since REM sleep was discovered in humans some seven decades ago.

Some studies suggest there are "some psychological or emotional aspects that are specifically orchestrated during REM," Klein said. "Memory consolidation and a type of learning seems to be specifically benefited by REM sleep."

And some of humans' most vivid and bizarre dreams take place during REM sleep, said John Lesku, a zoology professor at La Trobe University in Australia who studies sleep in animals. So it's not out of the question that animals in which REM-like sleep has been observed — like dogs, cuttlefish and maybe jumping spiders — might be dreaming, he told The Post, although it's hard to say for certain because dreams, even in humans, are impossible to prove.

Two people might tell each other they dream, he said. "But strictly speaking, I don't know that you dream, and so it becomes even harder when you're talking about nonhuman animals for which you have no ability to ask what they are doing."

But if he can assume his cat has dreams, Lesku said, "I'm willing to suggest that maybe the spider does as well."

Before the study published last week, not a lot of attention was paid to whether spiders slept, experts said. "The assumption is more like they just take little rests during the day or ... whenever they're active," Roessler said. "But I don't think there was such a clear idea if they actually sleep during some extended period of time."

The idea that a jumping spider might go into REM sleep is fascinating to Lisa Taylor, a research scientist at the University of Florida whose research focuses on jumping spider behavior. She said jumping spiders have remarkably complex sensory systems — eight eyes, sensory hairs on their legs, the ability to feel vibrations through surfaces, as well as senses of smell and sound, and varying degrees of color vision.

"So it's a really noisy world," Taylor said, adding that "one of the big challenges that animals face is to make sense of all this information and to somehow decide what to let in and what to process and what to do with it all."

If jumping spiders do enter REM sleep, they might be consolidating memories or behavior patterns, as some jumping spiders have sophisticated cognitive abilities and make complicated decisions, Taylor said.

"They're not little robots that go out and attack anything that they see," she said. "There's a lot going on in their brains as they're making decisions about whether to attack one thing over another."

"So whether something that happens at night plays a role in that is particularly interesting," she added.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=761IHhgrU3s

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And to bring some joy into the Soul .........


No one wanted this special needs duck. Then this woman took him home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiqUvzhnF8

Hi Helena, quick reply from my little place in the the Universe.

I struck a bird, actually two birds, my favorite local species mind you, and I, like you turned around.  Turned out the victims were a male and female of the lesser goldfinch species.

The female was dead on contact.  I retrieved the male as he was regaining consciousness and he did survive. 

It was a tough pill to swallow because me driving in my car is what caused this tragedy in their sweet little bird world of courtship.  I guess maybe they had lessons too about being aware of the other things in their environment, but the impact it had on me was total guilt too. You know, like maybe if I had been driving slower it wouldn't have happened, etc..

The other day I watched a young robin flying gleefully as it was discovering it's aerodynamic capacities, and it just flew too close to moving cars, and I watched it get clipped.  Then I saw the bird flapping around desperately and I felt no other priority in the world other than to retrieve that bird. 

I immediately tried to turn around to help but got stuck at a traffic light that forced me to wait for non-existic reasons (i.e. no traffic), and by the time I could lawfully circle around and got to it, the little robin had given up the ghost.  I was extremely disturbed by all the other slain bird bodies all up and down that road. 

Best thing I could do at that point was take the lifeless robin with me and make him a quiet resting place in my own garden where it's quiet and peaceful, to pay respects to the soul that was minutes ago inhabiting that body.  I still lay fresh flower petals on it's decomposing body because I too feel an automatic guilt for how human society is evolving without taking into consideration the needs of Nature.

My emotional reaction is like, 'why the f*ck am I here right now? To watch Nature suffer while human populations explode and natural lands and ways shrink so I can experience the fallout from all of that?'  It's traumatizing.

It's hard not to feel that instinctual guilt when we encounter this clash of modern human society infringing on the simplicity and genius crafted web of Nature with all these remarkable species, because we are a part of that human society, even though we are here to help. I sometimes feel like there is way more ultimate purpose in their tiny, wild lives than anything that humans are trying to do right now if I'm frank.

 It's something Daemon's need to cope with and do whatever we can as the current moment prescribes, and yes that task feels daunting because humans are taking over the planet without a whole lot of thought for our plants and animals, so the challenges are real.  It makes me want to scream and cry and demand an immediate passport to other worlds that are more integrated with Nature.  But we're here now, so we daemon's do whatever we can do when we can do it. 

The fact you went to find the bird you struck is exactly what you should do.  You made the sincere effort and didn't find it, but God knows you went looking.  We've just gotta keep on that behavior to the best of our might, and try to use our voices to help others understand the things we perceive in this semi natural world that others don't, in order to influence and contribute to a turn of the tides.

Stacie

Hi Rad and Stacie,

Rad, really loved this incredible story of the Sunny duck, such a beautiful little soul with a Uranian vibe to it for sure. And the work and care of the family with all the other animals is simply amazing...I was thinking what better image could there be to portrait what the upcoming aquarian times could be relative to including and celebrating all differences, as well as awareness to the natural world. Just beautiful.
Stacie, I absolutely agree... we should care and spread the word.

It reminds me of a story of two brothers I saw the other day, they called themselves the "iron brothers" because despite the cerebral palsy of the younger brother, both run the iron man competition which is an extremely physical demanding triathlon to raise awareness for inclusion, they just want to finished in time for not to get disqualified, and in which one carries the other throughout the entire competition but both are essential to support one another to finish... it's and incredible testimony of empathy and unconditional love.

Thank you again for sharing,
Helena