We Can't Know Ourselves Alone

Reconnecting to the animate universe through mingjue practice

Here's the ultimate irony of being human: you will never see your own face. You can look into mirrors, study photographs, watch endless videos of yourself, but you will never have the direct experience of seeing yourself as others see you.

That's the paradox of self-knowledge: How can we truly know ourselves if we can never see ourselves directly?

The answer is simple, but profound: through the mirror of others.

Know Thyself

Two Ways of Seeing

The question is: what counts as "other"?

To answer this, we must consider two fundamental ways of meeting the world: conceptual and relational.

The conceptual way treats the world like a lab. Everything is seen as an "it," an object to be analyzed and categorized. A tree becomes a bundle of cells and processes. A river becomes H₂O moving downhill under gravity. We can think about the world, believe in many concepts, but true connection gets blocked by our analytical mind.

The relational way is different. It experiences the world as alive, responsive, and full of consciousness. A tree becomes "them," a presence whose inherent consciousness you can sense. The river becomes a neighbor whose qi state you can perceive. In this way of seeing, we recognize that our consciousness field—that extension of ourselves that reaches far beyond our physical body—is constantly interacting with the universal hunyuan qi that connects all things. When you experience this direct qi connection, there's no need for belief—you don't "believe" in your friend's consciousness, you connect with it through the unified field.

The Great Shutdown

Human society only shifted from relational to conceptual frameworks very recently. That shift didn’t just change how we see the outside world—it literally changed the physiology of our brains. We turned off the part of ourselves that knows how to sense and interact with the consciousness inherent in everything. It’s like having a stroke that affects only the “relationship” part of perception. No wonder most people think it’s not possible to listen to the trees—our brains simply aren’t wired for it anymore.

This conceptualization of everything has created energetic blockages in our natural ability to connect. It’s as if a wall has been built between ourselves and most of the world. We can still think about the river, but we can’t perceive its qi presence. We can study the tree, but we can’t sense its inherent consciousness.

To clear these blockages, we must reconnect with our wild nature—the part of us that can perceive consciousness directly, without filters, without the civilized mind deciding what’s “real” or “proper.” The wild mind doesn’t question whether the mountain has consciousness; it feels it. The wild heart doesn’t analyze the river’s flow; it joins with it. No belief necessary.

Many of us learned as children that it was safer to keep quiet and to close this way of sensing off. It was how we protected ourselves. Our society ridicules people who sense the world as alive. To acknowledge a tree’s consciousness field is to risk being shamed as unscientific. In academic or professional circles, the pressure is even heavier.

But what protected us then now limits us. These energetic blockages cut us off—not only from the animate universe, but from our own reflection. Without recognizing the consciousness that pervades all existence, we can never truly know who we are.

Remembering Through Practice

The good news is: we can turn it back on through our mingjue practice.

Here's a personal story: In December 2020, after a year of cancer treatment, isolation, and general upheaval, something shifted. I had been practicing zhineng qigong daily—opening my consciousness field, connecting with the hunyuan qi that underlies all existence, and learning to sense and interact with the consciousness inherent in everything around me.

It wasn't about being "spiritual." It was survival. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I was desperate for healing. What I stumbled on was more than comfort and much more than I had bargained for: it was a doorway back into relationship.

Suddenly, the world woke up. Every leaf, every hawk, every wisp of mist carried the same essential consciousness that I did. The ordinary shimmered with mingjue love. It felt less like a miracle and more like remembering—like sensing the world as I had as a child, before I was taught that consciousness belonged only to humans.

The world hadn't changed. My practice had expanded my capacity to connect.

The Path Back Through Nature Healing

This is the task of our time: remembering how to perceive living consciousness where we've been trained not to feel it. As we navigate our world's time of great change and uncertainty, we need this expanded consciousness to meet challenges that (to paraphrase Einstein) cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.

Hearts Rooted's weekly Nature Healing practice (most Tuesdays, 5pm PST) offers a direct pathway back. Each session begins like a campground ranger show: we explore owls, rivers, and forests not as abstract information, but as living expressions of hunyuan qi. We share what moves our hearts about these "beings", acknowledging them as conscious participants in the greater unified field.

Then comes the profound part: we descend together into a mingjue healing practice. We let go of our analytical minds, our protective barriers, our need to categorize and control. We open our consciousness completely and return to our natural state of awareness, merged with the hunyuan qi that is the fundamental reality underlying all existence.

In this state, the boundaries dissolve. My consciousness, your consciousness, the consciousness of the forest, the mountain, the sky—all are recognized as expressions of the same fundamental hunyuan qi. We remember that we were never separate. We experience directly that every rock, every cloud, every breath of wind carries the same essential consciousness we do, because consciousness is inherent in EVERYTHING.

This isn't meditation. This isn't visualization. This is direct consciousness field experience of the animate universe as it truly is.

When we return from this deep connection, something shifts in all of us and the world doesn't look the same. The tree outside isn't just a tree—it's a conscious being whose field interacts with ours. The mountain isn't just rock—it's a vast consciousness we can sense and play with.

The Living Mirror

Through regular qi science practice we discover something remarkable: the animate world is our mirror. The consciousness of the forest reflects back our own state. The mingjue love in the mountain shows us our own solidity or restlessness. The flow of the river reveals our own capacity for surrender or resistance.

We cannot know ourselves alone because consciousness is inherently unified. Our individual awareness is simply one expression of the universal hunyuan qi that underlies all existence. When we open to this truth through practice, self-knowledge becomes not a mental exercise, but a lived experience of our fundamental interconnection.

You'll never see your own face directly. But through the generous mirror of all the other "beings" around you, you can discover who you truly are: not a separate individual, but one unique expression of the mingjue entirety field.

This is why we practice. This is why we gather. This is why we return together to our natural state of awareness and rise again, remembering that we are both individual expressions and the one hunyuan qi expressing itself through all existence.

We can't know ourselves alone. But through our mingjue practice, we don't have to.

Join Our Nature Healing Practice

Each week (Tuesdays @ 5pm PST) we gather to explore the consciousness fields of the natural world, share from the heart, and descend into mingjue healing together. In this way, we can experience the profound peace of merging with the infinite animate universe while discovering who you truly are in relationship with all consciousness. Email abstractalmegan@gmail.com to subscribe to the weekly Nature Healing newsletter.