I have seen monkeys in my dreams. A snow covered grey Japanese macaque soaking in a hot spring. His clear blue eyes are a perfect mirror of the sky, seeing out to the ends of the universe. And a mother monkey in springtime, gazing into a delicate flower with open wonder.
Their curiosity echoes the Dhammapada: “Who will select a well-taught Dharma teaching, as a skilled person selects a flower?” The mind, once cleared, is open to appreciate the beauty of the world.
Journeys of the mind begin with questions. I have been feeling our bodies in a state of “Halfway Healed,” ankles still swollen from a strain 20 years ago, nervous systems in shock from an impact now forgotten.
Some shrug at old injuries, eyeing joint replacements like cars needing parts, while others scoff—shouldn’t the injury be done and gone?
So why doesn’t the human body fully complete its healing process and return to its original bioelectric state? We can look at some obvious factors, including chronic inflammation, nutrient and oxygen deficiencies, inappropriate mechanical stresses and the like.
But our shape and form is not just an emergent mechanical process. Michael Levin’s work shows how specific voltage and gap junctions patterns are the bioelectric “code” that orchestrate cells into action. When directed to “build an eye here” through bioelectric stimulation, they do. The fundamental implications for biology of his work are beautiful, as we begin to understand the information content of the bioelectric structure of life.
Healing is an electrically coordinated process that changes our form and directs cells through different states of activity. Looking at our wounds from the view of energy we see the empty space inside a cut becomes negatively polarized, drawing healing cells in to lead the repair. Some regenerative species can completely regrow limbs or even heads, so what makes humans different?
“In both regenerating and nonregenerating animals examined immediately after injury, the wound surface was strongly negatively charged relative to surrounding tissue. Once the epithelium covered the wound, a switch to a positive charge was observed. However, only in regenerating organisms does the potential reverse a second time to return to a negative state.” (McLaughlin and Levin, 2018)
This is how the salamanders do it: electrically switching the healing process back on after skin closure and maintaining it consistently until the process is fully complete. While this is not the normal course of affairs for humans, they cite several studies where birds and even rodent mammals were able to regrow limbs with the help of electrical field stimulation.
So it seems in humans the electrical voltage gradient that guides the regenerative process fades away at a “good enough” place, while in amphibians it remains at a high level until the limb is fully restored. Salamanders demand full form - can we nudge ours?
With modern biology re-programming the patterns of life to this extent, my work with Matrix Repatterning seems almost tame. Gentle pressure along the vectors of the original injury, electrical field stimulation with magnets that pulse to earth’s heartbeat at 7.8hz, and most importantly healing intention make for a powerful call. But we have to begin with a mind open to the possibility of change.
These discoveries are stunning - I have selected a flower for you. But the Dhammapada goes on to say: “As a bee gathers nectar and moves on without harming the flower, its colour or fragrance, just so should a sage walk through a village.”
Here we dig into the information at our fingertips, at the sunrise of the open mind.