With deep nestedness, one feels part of the Whole, senses oneness with others, human and non-human. It starts in the womb, feeling part of Mother, an oceanic feeling of oneness.
Birth of course breaks that feeling but with communal evolved nested care, it is restored. After birth, the child needs to be wooed back to oneness (as the Japanese recognize). The sense of oneness expands beyond mother to a community of arms and bodies with different smells and movements that reassure the infant that it is held by love.
The nested community is entangled with the rest of Nature as partner and so the child lives in the cocoon of Nature’s embrace, adjusting to the bright heat of the day and cool darkness of the night, falling into Earth’s rhythms.
The child is held and moves more and more confidently in the dynamism of Earth and Cosmos.
The sense of entanglement extends to other Earth entities as a community of cooperation. Whether human or nonhuman, animal or plant, waterway or soil, the aliveness of all is experienced. Life is shared. The fullness of the present moment is experienced along with the precarity of all life. Gifts are shared. Foods are left for others.
For this preconquest consciousness, time is fluid, past-present-future overlap. Ancestors are present. Future generations are in mind.
Being, the process of living, is the point of life. Not product, not destination reached. Dynamic energies are flowing, intermingling, pressing, inviting. One must learn to discern the energies that lead one away from Oneness. Wise elders guide. Community rituals return straying hearts and minds back to center.
In rigid hierarchical civilization that predominates today (in the last 1% of human species existence), postconquest consciousness is emphasized and cultivated. Instead of encouraging oneness, it forces separation, from babyhood on.
We then carry a separation complex which breeds alienation and despair because it goes against our evolved inclinations to be connected in flow.
We might think we are in flow when we watch a show on screens or scroll through TikTok videos, but these are not the enhancing flow we expect, the oceanic feeling of oneness. They drag us in the other direction, exhausting us, pushing us into addictive despair.
The nested pathway is one that thrives on aliveness, not machines that imitate it. Go to our evolved nest checklists for nudges on what you might do today. Or try our 28-day self-nesting tools.
References
Nakano, S. (1997). Heart-to-heart (inter-jo) resonance: A concept of intersubjectivity in Japanese everyday life. Research and Clinical Center for Child Development Annual Report, 19, 1-14.
Narvaez, D. (2025). Overcoming climate havoc with inner development from deep nestedness. Ecopsychology, 17(3), 201-215. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2024.006
Sorenson, E.R. (1998). Preconquest consciousness. In H. Wautischer (Ed.), Tribal epistemologies (pp. 79-115). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. AVAILABLE FREE HERE.
Tahhan, D. 2014. The Japanese Family: Touch, Intimacy and Feeling. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wolff, R. (2001). Original wisdom. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.