Valuing Water

“Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they’re after.” Thoreau Thoreau understood the value that living on the pond had for him. Not just the beauty and quiet but water itself as offering something special. Today’s neuroscience verifies the value of all kinds of interaction with water, even just looking at it. The Thoreau quote came from a book surveying research on water called “Blue Mind” by Wallace J. Nichols. It presents a variety of studies on the benefits of water for both body and mind. Drinking water is important for physical and mental health. We sleep better if we’ve had enough water during the day. Experiments with rats showed cognitive decline when they were dehydrated. Just looking at water, even in images, is good for well-being. When hospital patients could look at water paintings, they had less anxiety. It was observed that blood pressure dropped when looking at an aquarium, a fact they must know at the cancer center where a big one sits in the middle of the waiting area. On the occasion of World Water Day it’s worthwhile to consider the many ways we are nourished by water and ways we might better care for it . The area of the brain most active when looking at nature, and in particular water, is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This is the area that judges value, knows what is important to us. The location is at the front of the brain, right between the eyes. This is also the location of the spiritual third eye, a concurrence that stimulates my imagination in multiple directions. Central to them is the attunement to the whole as our ultimate guide to what matters. Though beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, it is always something that feels right and connected to us in some way. What draws us relates to how we feel, what matches our personal state, aligns us. David Bohm said the creative act was a matter of finding what fits. What we choose to see is a creative act of finding what fits our state of being. A friend recently sent me a graphic that said in big letters “Quantum physics is where they hide the scientific proof of spirituality.” It was my reading of David Bohm and Nick Herbert and others that generated my sense that the non-locality at the quantum level of is consciousness. Water and sky are my primary symbols for consciousness. How tranquil or choppy provides a clear metaphoric quality, as is a stormy day or one that’s clear and bright. Though waves may look separate they are part of the same substance. I see one consciousness flowing through all of us. Though it may be filtered through our thoughts, desires and fears, the consciousness having a human experience comes through us, not from us.