Neptune
_I: My eyes water. I close my eyes as if holding the pressure of Heaven on my head. And when I close them I observe the pressure inside my head. My ideas, my thoughts, what I am left with only when I close my eyes. With myself. How many really close their eyes to see? How many do it just to sleep?
_AM: Closing your eyes can be deadly for the body, and in turn, it is its maximum release. The body is designed to survive a hostile space that forces it to adapt or perish. Closing your eyes is a moment of weakness, vulnerability, in which the physical being is naked in the face of external dangers. He can't see what's coming, he can't pay attention to know where to run or what to defend himself against. This cellular memory, from the times when humans, like all animals, were easy prey for other creatures, has made the thought of closing your eyes without a specific reason seem like a waste of time, useless, and even a danger. And yet, if you don't shut them down, you can go crazy and die. The same body designed to be alert loses its ability to be alert if it does not sleep. A human needs to sleep an average of 8 hours a day, a time in which all the cells in the body take advantage of to regenerate, absorb nutrients, relax, organize data collected during the day, process information, and reestablish the vitality spent during the daytime period. Without sleep, cells do not have time to regenerate and simply die, wearing out the neurons, the heart, the digestive system, and producing a chain reaction that can lead to migraines, fainting, even heart attacks and death... Eternal sleep.
_I: How long can a person live without sleeping, without closing their eyes and resting?
_AM: It will depend on the person, but a few weeks, or months, without first having gone through the worst states. Sleep is essential for life, it regulates metabolism, facilitates homeostasis. That is, it keeps the body in order. But as I said, it is a moment of absolute weakness if you consider yourself prey. Some animals achieved something incredible, sleeping with half their brain. This way they can remain attentive to the other half and at the same time rest. Humans tend to have constant moments of micro dreams, since complete insomnia is impossible, and certain parts of the brain turn off from time to time, generating lapses, blank moments, where you lose track of what is happening.
_I: Like those moments when you stare at a point, and someone catches your attention and you say “Oops, what happened?”
_AM: That's right, it is the body knowing that it needs a moment to regenerate or organize information, and to do so it must concentrate internally, turning off all external nervous alert states. The body never really rests, but rather divides itself into two tasks. During the day he puts everything into being alert and active, and during the night he puts everything into being focused on himself.
_I: Biologically this has a clear utility. To have energy and be attentive, you need to rest and recharge. And... Psychologically?
_AM: In sleep, the brain organizes all the data processed during the day and stores it as useful information for the following days. This way you save time in reactions. Everything it captures is assimilated to be used in similar circumstances. This storage activity is what you call Dreams. You see the images, emotions, situations, ideas pass by, all mixed together, because the brain is trying to make a selection of the most useful. This is where something unique and impressive occurs: the Dream generates Abstractism.
_I: Like Salvador Dalí's paintings... Surreal Abstractism... Melting clocks, Elephants with long legs like bamboo... Things that go beyond the structured and that are above reality.
_AM: And this allows a completely different interpretation of the world than the specific one that the eyes see. The question would be: if the brain is active working at 100% in the case of wakefulness and drowsiness, and its task is to gather constant data for survival and transcendence, then what differentiates the real from the unreal? What says that what the brain perceives when awake is reality and what says that what the same brain perceives when sleeping is a lie? Don't you think that if the brain was tricking us in our inner world it could do exactly the same thing when it shows us the outside world?
_I: Ugh... You just destroyed reality for me again, or at least any point of reference I might have... But it's true, it doesn't exist, or on the contrary, everything exists. That is to say, either what I perceive externally is a brain illusion, or what I perceive in my dreams is as real as what I see during the day.
_AM: Exactly… Another of the beautiful paradoxes. But one thing is for sure: it is easier to control the external than the internal, and although there are hundreds of dangers in the internal world, none are as deadly as those that confront me externally, since all of them can lead to my death. . Dreaming about a monster only shows me the monsters that lie within me, but an external monster coming, like a war, a beast, a murderer, can end all dreams and nightmares. There is no escape. This makes people downplay the internal world, as it is not practical for life.
_I: Logical. What we dream is never usually practical.
_AM: However, there is only one thing that is capable of interacting between the external and the internal, there is a single reality that can go from a dream to the waking world and determine what you do in the “real” world, being the same tool that produced in the external world can determine what you dream in the dream “unreality”…
_I: Which one is it?
_AM: Emotion.
_I: Sure… What we feel…
_AM: A dream can awaken an emotion in you that is capable of invading your day and your routine. And in the same way, something you feel in your daily life can determine the order of your inner world. Emotion is what unites the two eyes, the internal and the external, the two visions of your being, your two realities, are united by what you feel, which in the end is the only thing that truly exists, because the Emotional sensations are the language in which the electrical pulses of the nervous system are translated.
_I: We are a Sea of Emotions, in both worlds, internal and external.
_AM: And therefore they regulate everything you are, think, do, feel, say, perceive, everything, absolutely everything, to a lesser or greater extent, from the philosophical, psychological, biological, everything. The Subconscious is the Ocean where the reality you believe in is produced.
_I: Neptune…
_AM: Do you see it? The God of the Seas. His Roman name is a readaptation of the ancient Greek sea god: Poseidon. Neptune is an Etruscan word from the languages of the Middle East, specifically from the Iranian and Great Stan areas, where water is called “nepa” and wet is called “népita”. Thus “He related to Water” would be said in Italic languages as “Nepitunus”. Water is the basis of life, the foundation of a civilization, the pillar of existence. Thus, the seas were the origin of life, and therefore, it is the God who contained the birth of Venus (Aphrodite), who generated beauty in the evolution that emerged from the oceans. Water is the pulse and rhythm of the times, its floods mark the cycles of time, agriculture. Drought marks the end of production and the beginning of migrations. For millions of years, the human body received information based on searching for water and managing food that arises thanks to it. Blood was interpreted as water or internal ocean. Water is one, and therefore, internal water unites us all. Thus families were interpreted as blood groups.
_I: “Family is carried in the blood”, when in reality it is not like that, because the genetic codes are in the cells, in the nucleus, within the chromosomes, not in the blood.
_AM: Although some elements in it, such as white blood cells, do carry this information. But beyond that, it was the same one that, related to water, speaks of transformation, of what unites us, and by not knowing the cells, they understood that the power that unites us inside is in the blood. Pulse and blood pressure allow nutrients to vitalize the body, regenerate cells, and make them sensitive to the absorption of information. Thus the nervous system is more active, and cognition improves. Staying hydrated speeds up the general functioning of the body, since lack of water, dehydration, shuts down all functions. There is no longer good connectivity, and delusions, hallucinations, dizziness, and fainting begin. Water is a conductor of light, information, and electricity. For this reason, the spirit and consciousness move through the water, and it knows reality through it. The manifested spirit is water in constant adaptation. And this electricity is what generates pulses and impulses that give rise to movement, acting from a tension, that is, “ex-motio”.
_I: …Emotion.
_AM: The Planet Neptune was named after its discovery in the 19th century, following the tradition of calling the planets after gods who walk the heavens. Its constitution is mostly gases, and its size is similar to Uranus. It is about 4 hours at the speed of light from Earth, and is the eighth planet from the Sun, forming part of the 4 Gas Giants, being at the edge of the solar system, which makes it one of the two planets more subtle and profound, those imperceptible that affect the most internal aspects of the being, the intangible and invisible. It is one of those that you need to close your eyes to perceive, and that perhaps you will spend a lifetime trying to find in yourself. Well, its pressure is imperceptible, and yet it is what drags the external gravity of all the other planets inside the system, and in its movement it generates the waves of the subconscious.
_I: It's like the fish that is in the water and will never be able to see the ocean. Not knowing the presence of the ocean because you are used to moving in an environment does not mean that it does not exist or affect you. In the same way that for someone born on Earth, air seems like something non-existent, a void, and for an alien born on Mars, Earth's air would mean a horrible crushing death.
_AM: The habit of moving in an environment makes you barely notice it. That is the subconscious, the depth of this ocean that you do not see, that you do not feel, of the waters that you do not perceive, controlled by Neptune. While the Moon will move the waters of your life day by day, conditioning what you do and feel, being the waves that you can contemplate and recognize in its movements; Neptune will be the depths of this ocean, where you cannot notice the currents, the waves, the movement, or the lights. Everything is in the deep. And for this reason, you must close your eyes.
_I: I close my eyes. I sustain the pressure that comes from all sides. My eyes become moist... Well, I see myself... I see what is inside me...
_AM: And that is what most fear to face, because going deep takes attention away from the external, leaving us vulnerable to predators. For this reason, most people deny seeing themselves, closing their eyes and daring to swim in the deep waters of the subconscious, because there reality is abstract, it is unreal, that is where you only find sensations, emotions, and none of them are related. to the daytime world. Well, they are a mixture of all things, all times and spaces.
_I: It's scary to go in there...
_AM: Because you will see what you have denied. You enter a consciousness so broad that you lose the notion of who you are, to be everything. The memory of everything you were, are and will be, connected to everything that exists. You are a fish that, by looking inward and feeling the water around you, allows yourself to recognize yourself as the ocean itself, with all the creatures that inhabit it. By recognizing your internal world, you realize how small and even insignificant your life is, in that everything you have done is nothing more than a simple point in infinity.
_I: Facing Neptune is a great existential crisis…
_AM: Accepting Him in you is recognizing you as a spiritual being. Whoever seeks the expansion of his being must integrate Neptune into his life. Meditation, conscious sleep, ceremonies with sacred plants, hallucinogenic drugs, temazcals, everything that takes you to a deep experience of abstraction from reality, that opens your inner world allowing you to feel everything that was in you and you denied. or you didn't know, it opens, it is felt, it is lived...
_I: It's jumping headlong into the sea... Without knowing what's underneath...
_AM: That's why it terrifies those who don't dare to swim. Those who are afraid of water. But only in this way will you be able to feel the most real thing about existence. Close your eyes.
_I: I see myself... Floating in a sea of ideas and emotions, I perceive emotions that I thought were forgotten or already worked on... Why are they still there if I have already faced them? Why do tears flow from my eyes if I have already felt and released them.
_AM: Just because you've read a book doesn't make the story go away. Just because you see a movie once does not mean that knowing the ending you will not feel the same emotions when watching it again. Only one thing will change when you cry again for what lives in you: consciousness. By knowing why, you can allow yourself to feel the emotion like someone rereading the pages of an old book. By doing so, you will understand things that you had not seen before, but by knowing him and getting to know him, they do not disappear from the ocean, but rather begin to become part of it.
_I: I let my tears fall because…
_AM: And drink them, this time with awareness. This is your Neptunian task. Sit down, close your eyes, and remember, think about the deepest part of your soul, the pains, anguish or joys and pleasures that you long for. Make them resurface, feel how the emotion translates into your senses, into your touch, smell, taste, hearing, into the colors you perceive inside. And he lets your inner sea manifest, let Neptune emerge from you, let the waves of the subconscious wash the shores of your world. Let the held, silenced tears fall. Let your eyes get wet, releasing the force of the tides as you have never done before: not from melancholy, but from the awareness of manifesting the gravity of a world within you. And when the waters return, when they fall down your cheeks, drink them knowing that you integrate into you the living force of that entire world.
_I: Every tear is a book. Drinking them is like reading to them. Closing your eyes is not ignoring the world, it is becoming the entire world.
_AM: Close your eyes, and when your memory moistens them, you will be ready to daydream.