The Aperture of Awareness

Everything is created through connection, including consciousness itself. When describing Philokosmia and consciousness I often use the philosophical riddle ‘if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’

Because I don't think it does!

Think of it this way, ‘if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to see it, does it make a sight?’

Philokosmia says no.

When you break it down, it starts to explain some of the most unexplained phenomena we encounter.

When a tree falls, it creates pressure waves from kinetic energy variations in air density rippling through the environment. But without a biological receiver, there is still total silence. Those waves reach the human (or any other) ear, move through the fluid of the cochlea, and eventually fire off electrical signals in the nerves.

Even at this point, there is no ‘hearing’ and no ‘sound.’

The electrical signals reach the brain, and only then does the awareness of consciousness and the ‘hearing’ occur. That subjective experience of the observer connecting up the data that renders the ‘crash’ sound of the tree in their stream of consciousness. The sound does not exist in the tree, the air, or the neurons; it exists in the relationship between them and your awareness. It comes into existence at the precise meeting point between kinetic energy and the internal stream of consciousness syncing up.

Remove the tree - no sound.

Remove the air - no sound.

Remove the ear - no sound

Remove the neurons and the conscious awareness and there is no sound.

If no one is there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound.

Now you are the on board with the concept, we can dive deeper and be ready…

…your experience of the world is about to change.

That single moment of awareness requires the entire universe to cooperate. It requires gravity to exist and pull the tree to the Earth; it requires atmospheric pressure; it requires the water, the sun, and the evolution of photosynthesis that created the tree in the first place. Simultaneously, it requires the evolution of the ear.

Every relationship in every level in the universe must come together in a perfect orchestration to create that single ‘aperture’ of awareness. That specific point of consciousness where sound is finally rendered and becomes real.

Remove any relationship, any element - no sound!

Now, this then applies to everything. Every sound, every sight, every sense you have right now, is created because your awareness exists for it to sync up with and be rendered. All of those potential energy transfers reaching out ready to become a reality, that have no consciousness to make them exist. Without you, your universe does not exist…

…Without consciousness, there is no universe!

You may be thinking, wait, hang on, if all humans or all consciousness beings disappeared tomorrow, all the stuff would be there?

Think of our tree that may or may not have fallen or indeed made a sound.

Where exactly does the tree end and the environment begin? The tree is constantly breathing the atmosphere, drinking the soil, and absorbing the sun. The idea that the tree is a separate, standalone "object" is not a physical fact, it is a mental boundary. The tree is shaped by the world and Environment, without this it would not exist.

At the deepest subatomic level, quantum mechanics proves that matter does not exist as a solid ‘thing’ until it is observed. Before observation, a particle is just an undefined unconnected wave of potential; pure, formless potential.

Without a subject, there is no object.

The universe is actually single, undivided, continuous quantum energy.

If you remove all conscious beings tomorrow, the lens vanishes. The ability for that energy to connect up, for the circuit to form and create the reality we experience has been broken.

Without an observer having an aperture of awareness to force the quantum potential to stabilise into what we are conditioned to believe it to be, to what we ‘know.’ Our stable coherent world that gives us the sense of ourselves, stability and safety…meaning…

…has vanished.

There are similarities with language, these shapes, squiggles of words you ‘read’ give you a reality you are creating.  What was a tree before it was a ‘tree.’ Did it still have the same meaning we give to it as a ‘tree’ or was it a ‘ghbsu’ or indeed before language, many different ‘things’ to many different apertures of awareness.  

Language reassures us into meaning.

We narrate our reality to maintain stability.

My 3 year old son said to me, ‘what does mean, mean?’

…and it made me realise that the meaning of any word is simply the mean average of what we collectively agree the word to mean. And this changes over time. Words stay the same but the meaning drastically changes based on the people that use that word as part of stabilising their world into a reality that makes sense to them. Different apertures of awareness change with meaning of every word.

I did warn you! The universe has stopped being a collection of distinct ‘objects’ we label up with words and is now a single, formless ocean of infinite potential.

‘I’ ‘hope’ ‘you’ ‘are’ ‘ok’

How does a coach know what you're thinking?

They don't and they never will!

We express our thoughts and feelings in many different ways, from what we say, to how we say it and from how we breathe to when we blush or how we gesticulate (wave our arms about 😊).

A coach might be more skilled in picking up these nuances and may reflect them back to you but only you ever truly know what you think and why.

Our experience of the world is completely subjective and unique. No one can ever measure your experience. What is it like to be you? How does it feel?

An picture of a shadow cast on the ripples of water of 2 people in love holding hands

Are words, sentences and language good enough to allow for clear expression? They can’t measure a feeling but alongside emotions or perhaps arts and creativity, do allow our qualia to solidify in that moment to words or expressions that go some way to describe our experience or feeling. 

The feelings and expressions we articulate through words are collectively and continually shaped as part of our culture. Language is continually evolving in our collective agreement of what words mean.  

The words you say and how you say them have your meaning and expression. Meaning and expression that may mean one thing to you and something else to someone else.

The word, ‘run’ is said to have over 600 different meanings. If you run an organisation that runs running events that sometimes run late, causing tears to run down your face, the way you use the word run and the meaning it has may differ to you and other people.

What do the following words mean to you: Value? Success? Balance?

What matters most is your thinking and your expression, helped by the use of words. Regardless of the words you use or how you externalise your inner experience, the act of expression itself makes you more coherent.

And it doesn't really matter what you say or how you express yourself or even how well you are understood. Externalising your internal experience in the way you do is absolutely correct and creates your world.

Our experience becomes coherent when it is expressed. People say, ‘speaking it aloud somehow makes it real.’ Do thoughts and feelings ever take their full shape through words? Would you know your thoughts as well if you didn't express them?

How good are you at expressing yourself? How well do you know yourself? How well do you understand yourself?

When you share, hearing yourself, experiencing yourself, you elevate awareness of your thoughts. You see yourself and how you express your experience of the world.

When a coach actively listens, they create the environment for you to hear yourself. They slowly enable the environment for your thoughts to flow and become connected. For you to let loose and express yourself and your meaning.

A coach remaining non-judgemental allows you to flow and express freely and for the meaning to be most important to you. Your expressions of thoughts and feelings surface safely and without judgement.

A coach doesn't offer advice, a coach offers quality thinking time and space to explore your expression. A coach listens, a coach sits with you and allows you to think, explore and make sense. They are a passenger that supports your journey.

When you are heard, when you are seen, you are connected to the listener and the viewer; these connections generate awareness, they create consciousness. 

It feels like we have a desire to be connected and to be in agreement, as this agreement helps stabilise our world. This collective agreement moves us from subjectivity, towards objectivity.  The connections are incredibly important. 

If a tree falls in a wood and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound. Without the connection between the tree falling, the air moving and the ear listening no qualia of sound is experienced. 

If a person expresses themselves and no one experiences it, they aren't connected…they aren't as conscious?

(Dictionary definition of conscious: from Latin conscius "knowing or being aware of something, knowing something along with another person," derived from con-, com- "with" and scire "to know")

And what does this mean for you?  Well, a good way to think about this is what assumptions or agreed subjectivity might be limiting your view? If what you perceive to be the objective world is simply a reality that the majority of us have agreed upon, whose reality have you been agreeing to live in?

If we are creating an objective reality only through agreed subjectivity, what agreed filters are you looking through?  

Are we constantly creating a reality through our collective yet subjective agreement?  This feels somewhat aligned to simulation theory.  That what we experience is simulated.  This has many angles from an actual simulation like the film the Matrix, or a computer game simulation, based on the thought that as a virtual reality or game becomes increasingly real, one day it may be as real as your life feels today… 

…And maybe that simulation is already the reality you are experiencing.

What I am proposing is our collective subjective agreement creates the simulation. Objectivity is the simulation and it may be a skewed view of reality to help us have stability, to evolve and to grow.   What lies beneath this? Or indeed above it?

We all decide to call a tree a tree and that creates the reality of a tree being a tree. It wasn't a tree until we labelled it that.  What was it before we existed? 

If a tree existed before anyone experienced it as a tree, then that tree never existed. 

As consciousness is created in connection, so is our world.  

An 'objective' view is apparent when we all agree to wear and look through the same headset.  

This simulation starts to break down or open up when we truly explore our reality.  Coherence coaching can help people take off their headset for an hour and see their real world. 

Coaches challenge people to see the real world and not the one they think they should see to fit in. Is it better to stand out or blend in? 

A coach will truly listen to you, challenge your assumptions and help create the connections required for your model of the world to emerge and solidify from you, without the filters. This can help you know yourself and be yourself more. 

If you feel like you are constantly fighting for others to see the world the way you do, wasting energy on trying to agree what is true and objective, perhaps you need to be heard? 

What happens to our shared reality when we finally take the time to truly listen to one another more?

This post has explored many elements of Philokosmia and particularly the 7th harmonic of Philokosmia, ‘Objectivity is collectively agreed subjectivity’

What do coaching and the taste of chocolate have in common?

This blog aims to explore a statement I often find myself making: ‘I am interested in the overlaps between coaching and consciousness.’

You might be thinking, ‘well we are all conscious and we can all be coached there doesn't seem to be an overlap? These are 2 unrelated fields?’

Well, it depends on how you define consciousness and how you define Coaching. 

I propose consciousness is something that is created within and between relationships. These can be relationships on a human scale, a small biological scale or a huge cosmic, or even fundamental scale, but the underlying principle is that consciousness is created between all of these different relationships taking place. They become so networked and coherent that we become aware of them, as that awareness and network turns inward.

To give an example, the taste of chocolate isn't created by the chocolate or by the taster.  It is created in the relationship between the two. 

Taste does not exist inside the chocolate. It only exists relationally between the chemical composition of the chocolate and the receptors and neurons in the taster.  

Chocolate doesn't taste of anything without a taster.  You could leave it in an empty room and there would never be taste. 

Taste is an emergent property of the relationship between the chocolate’s chemistry and a taster's taste buds.

Consciousness relates to coaching because coaching is also something that is created between a coach and a coachee. This relationship is instrumental to coaching and individual’s success. It is a space for people to think really, really deeply. To be more aware than they might be in their busy everyday lives, and therefore to be more conscious. As a coach, it is our role to facilitate these higher levels of awareness and consciousness, to elevate people's ability to truly realise themselves.

On a deeper, wider scale, consciousness is a property of the relationships between everything we sense and the sources of that sense. 

Between light being created, bouncing off an object and entering our eye, to create a sight.  Sight needs the light, the object and the eye to exist. Without any one element sight does not exist as a process or experienced as qualia.  

‘If a tree falls in a wood and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound!’

The sound is created in consciousness between tree falling and the sound/ pressure waves vibrating in our ear and being connected with our neurons.  Without the listener hearing it, the sound will never exist.  The tree will fall, yes, the airwaves will vibrate but it will go undetected and unexperienced. 

‘If no one sees it, it also doesn't make a sight’ The sound and the sight are experienced as qualia, the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from these relationships.

This relates to the hard problem of consciousness too.. materialist science can measure the chemistry of chocolate in the same way it can measure the neurons of the taster’s brain, but it cannot measure qualia and consciousness because experience is not a physical object; it is a relational resonance. Consciousness isn't something you can isolate; it is the space between things.

In the same way coaching requires the coach and coachee and is found between the two, and between many other relationships within the experience.  

Continuing the chocolate metaphor, The chocolate might represent the room or environment where coaching occurs, the structure of the coaching, or the questions that are asked by the coach.  

They all have potential but require a coachee for coaching to emerge. A coachee with biology, with a state of mind and the receptors to hear the questions and sense the coach and then express their views and thoughts. 

So what emerges between the two?  

Not just coaching but Consciousness itself!  Awareness of oneself, observation and awareness of the thinker (of you!).  

You can experience a higher level of consciousness by interacting with a coach who creates the thinking time, space and structure for awareness and transformation to emerge.  

This is where clarity can emerge from coaching. The making sense of ambiguity, the ‘Aha!’ moments where a coachee realises what they need to do. They can feel more coherent, more confident to make decisions and more aware of others to lead effectively.  

So what makes it more or less effective?  Coaching often focuses on rearranging the furniture (goals, habits and routines) in the room (your life), which can be very effective. Coherence Coaching builds on this to expand the room itself, opening the doors to let more in and options to a more holistic and deeper transformational change can take place. 

Consciousness isn't just a mystical concept but an actual, physical state of awareness and perception that can be elevated and tuned during coaching.

Interested?   

The Dreaming Newborn: Are We Born Remembering?

​I am writing this with a brand new life resting on my chest.

​He is 3 weeks old. As I sit here having a skin-to-skin cuddle, feeling the rhythm of his breathing against my own, it has been really interesting just observing him.

​Watching these incredible brand new babies and how they interact with the world, they seem far, far more aware and conscious than we take for granted or we assume.

​The first thing I noticed particularly was the dreaming.

He was dreaming vividly. It was like he was experiencing something real, not just from his world of the last 3 weeks, but something far deeper. He was responding and reacting to things more when he was asleep than when he was awake.

​It begs the question: Where is that coming from?

​Babies dream! But about what? Their eyes move, their breathing changes, they make noises. If he has no experience of this world yet, no memories of traffic or trees or faces, what raw material is he thinking about / experiencing?

He sometimes laughs, something he hasn't done whilst awake yet.  How can this be?  Are his noises and movements the first steps towards adult verbal speech and mobility? Have you ever heard someone making noises in their sleep or experienced them yourself?  I have woken up shouting as I was dreaming but as I woke realised my shouts in the dream were grunts or mumbles in the ‘real’ world. 

​Curious, I asked his brother, my three year old what he dreams about. He looked at me and simply said: "The sun!"

​It struck me how elemental that is. He isn't dreaming of cartoons or toys; he is dreaming of the source of life itself. And it made me look back at my baby. From a consciousness perspective, he is experiencing a dream in the same way we do, but based on no memory.

• ​Ask yourself: If you stripped away all the noise of your daily life, would your consciousness be as clear and elemental as something like "the sun"?  

​The Old Soul

This boy seems like an old soul. He seems to have a depth, a kind of wisdom and understanding to him.

​I don't know if it’s just me, but he just seems to have that sense that he knows more than he’s letting on.

​When he looks at me, he doesn't look at a stranger. He looks at me like he is remembering who I am. And strangely, I feel like I am remembering him, too. It feels like a reunion.

People talk of remembering, when they are being creative and also speak of receiving ‘downloads’ when they realise something or bring something new or creative, that really works or makes a difference.  

​Shaped by the Environment

Kids are an amazing reminder. You can watch them experience their environment and be shaped by their environment, constantly blossoming and growing as part of the experiences they have day in, day out.

​It really is telling that they are more shaped by the environment than you think. And in turn, you are more shaped by your surroundings and your interactions than you think.

​You are a product of all of that happening.

• ​If your environment is chaotic, your internal world becomes chaotic.

• ​If your environment is coherent, you blossom.

​The Flow of Feelings (Qualia)

Watching him has made me realise that consciousness is a product of that environment, too. All those connections and interactions taking place insight and outside your body create awareness.  But does it start with thinking or does it start with feeling?

​It is about the flow of the feelings. The qualia.

​Feelings are unique to you. They have a quality that is yours alone and no one will ever know your experience or how you feel. Right now, hormones are flooding my baby’s tiny system, oxytocin, warmth, safety influencing his feelings.

​Does it all start there?

Consciousness isn't a logic engine and we are not machines. Your sense of self, your ‘I’ is created by the levels of coherence in and around you on many many levels.

​It is the putting together of all of those connections into one. That is what creates consciousness; that is what creates awareness. It is that highly aware state, that high level of coherence between all of the experiences that are happening for you that makes consciousness appear.

​It’s almost as if it appears as a result in between all of those connections happening. The environment moves you, the biology responds, and the feeling emerges.

He is absorbing everything. He is connecting on many, many different levels. And perhaps that is what he is dreaming about not images, but the pure, unique flow of feelings.

​Welcome to the world, my boy. Thank you for the reminder.

The dreaming newborn, asleep on his Dad’s chest.