I also surround a metal mug with a lot of store-bought (dead) ACV. The ACV leaches out trace minerals from the mug, which I drink in my coffee. Don't try this at home: My mug is guaranteed non-toxic and full of good metals. I also keep a silver dollar in this mug, for the silver). However, I recently added LIVE ACV to this. As I expected, a slime developed. What was interesting about this was that the slime coated all around the bottom and inside of the mug. It was clearly feeding off of the rich minerals.
I cleaned off this slime and dropped it into a nearby oyster can. The slime began to resemble - what do you know? - oysters. I added a little slime to my dog's dinner, being so rich in nutrients. Like a fire catching here to there, we partake in the circle of life, consuming energy and life, to make energy and life. Consciousness from slime.
Being an astute gardener in the past, I have long been a big advocate of mycorhyzhal fungi. These are the fungi that gather about the tiniest roots of plants and trees, making nitrogen available to them naturally, and, in fact, helping the plants communicate and share with each other via a vast root-fungi network - underground! Fungi are the original subversives.
I was once told not to plant trees too close to houses, as the roots will eat into the foundations and cause problems, like water leaks. I later learnt that it was not the trees who were eatign away at the limestone blocks - it was the fungi. The fungi chew up the rock and make its nutrients available to the trees, via the roots. In the same way as the ACV sought out the minerals in my metal mug, the roots of trees seek out the minerals in rocks beneath the soil, using the vast fungi-root network - a network informing communication across areas as large as an entire forest.
We know that plants can sense the presence of specific insect enemies. We know that plants respond to environmental changes - such as types of ambient music(!) Studies have show that plants even display phenomena resembling animal pain, memory and sight. Well, much of what goes on with each plant's info-processing, and reactivity, is communicated chemically to other plants via their roots - all around. En masse, the forest - or field - like the Earth itself - can be seen as a single extensive organism - or at least as a coordinated community of feeling, living beings. The forest or field is consciousness itself - or one manifestation of it.
It doesn't have to walk, to plan or manipulate in order to FEEL BEING - to BE conscious. Like the slime, like the roots, its mind constructs according to the lay of the land.
And what better proof of the magic, the memory and the promise of consciousness is there than in the miracle called a seed?
Consciousness is found in how we sway the arrows of time. You've got yours and I've got mine - but we walk and together gather a future - from the clouds and rocks - a little more actively and precariously than plants - and we may create stories denying it - but we, too, are sharing in a greater field of consciousness unfolding - developing a time that most everyone can agree to, with some necessary endings.
It's like a game of rock, paper, scissors - but not all cutting down or pounding. It is a game of rock, cellulose, and scientist - this consciousness thing...