Katey On: information
I draw a line between information and representational information. Representational information consists of words, so anything based on speech and writing is representational information. That podcast about the health benefits of meditation is a way to convey representations of the health benefits of meditation. You aren’t actually getting the benefits because while you’re listening to that podcast, you aren’t meditating. The article about your favorite band? Same thing. You are not actually experiencing the music; you are experiencing a representation of the music.
Representational information is amazing. Don’t get me wrong. It simply is not as good as the real stuff. Information. Information from the source to your bod, that is what I’m talking about.
Information is our physical, chemical, biological world. The vibrations of light and sound. The interaction between elemental compounds and chemoreceptors. The life coursing through the cells of the plants, animals, fungi, and kith on Earth. This is information.
I believe we do not get enough information and we get way too much representational information. If this rings true for you at all, I highly recommend doing a mind cleanse and removing a large portion of representational information from your life for a month. If, instead, you’re like, Whaaaaaaat? Keep reading.
We inherited our bodies from 800 million years of evolutionary responses to the environment. We are products of the world around and within us. We are formed, informed, transformed, by the information of immense and gentle forces pulsing, radiating, and shuffling around the universe. Unfortunately we are largely disconnected from this information. It is time to reconnect.
Our bodies are information processors. Here is how it works. Through your senses your body receives vital information from the environment. This information falls on a spectrum from safe to dangerous, good to bad, life-enhancing to life-diminishing, however you prefer to think of it; the point is, the information lets your body know whether it is time to fight for survival or time to chill and snuggle. Our immediate environments are artificial, though. The information in your home, your office building, your car, is comatose energy. Walls, books, tiles, plastic, glass windows, etc. these are all inert, just bouncing our vitality back to us. It is not fully alive and therefore not giving you broad spectrum information. Your body evolved to process vital information. Vital, meaning information pertaining to your life and death, but also meaning information full of life-force.
