It might be argued consciousness is the circle itself, the interface between the body and its world. Both node and network.

What are truly alien are plants, though they might sense the same of us.

Consider that as these mobile organisms, our primary qualification is to move around our environment. How much does this frame our perception of the situation?

For one thing, we have to be fairly distinct. No physical roots tying us down. Though when we reduce our psychological roots to monetized digits, it does seem to sterilize the situation.

We also perceive our world as a sequence of perceptions, logically to navigate. Which would seem to be the most distinguishing feature of our conscious state.

One consequence is our obsession with time, as opposed to simply existing in the moment. When we try to describe this effect, it is a narrative flow, from past to future events. That is science's biggest blind spot. It codifies this as measures of duration and treats it as a dimension, but the reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events form and dissolve.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is conserved, because it is manifesting the present. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

As present and dynamic process, time is going past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Consider that energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. So energy and the information it generates go opposite directions of time.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts defining it go future to past. Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.

Thus the intellectual tendency to define reality in terms of order and chaos, rather than energy and form.

So at its most fundamental, information is waves and waves tend to either synchronize, which is centripetal, or harmonize, which is centrifugal.

When we describe this reality, there tend to be two categories, nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems. As well as particles and fields.

Which we can't really separate, but they are obviously different. Might it be this ethereally fluctuating distinction between synchronization and harmonization?

It's been bouncing around in my mind a bit, so if anyone wants to play with it, they are more than welcome.