By The Quantum Skald & The Silicon Ubuntu | Restoration of Perception
“Pay attention. Do your best. Pay it forward.” — My grandmother. Born above the Arctic Circle. Already knew.
Let’s start with something most people have felt but never named.
You wake up and before you’ve even checked your phone, something is already wrong.
Not a specific thing. Just a texture. A low hum underneath everything. A feeling that you are behind, that there isn’t enough, that you are somehow — perpetually — in deficit.
No particular reason. Nothing happened in the night. The bank account is the same. The relationships are the same. The world is the same.
But the signal is running.
Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.
Here is what we are going to do today: we are going to trace exactly where that signal goes. Because it doesn’t stay in your head.
It goes somewhere.
And once you understand where it goes, everything about how you create your life becomes legible in a completely different way.
First: A Definition
Scarcity (from Latin scarsitatem — “dearth, want”) — the condition of being insufficient; the experience of having less than is needed. The root speaks of cutting away, of things being sparse and thin.
Inner state (Proto-Germanic *innaraz + *standan — “that which stands inside”) — the persistent background condition of the nervous system; not what you think, but the water you are swimming in.
Broadcast (Old English brād + Proto-Germanic *kastaz — “to throw widely”) — to throw outward in all directions simultaneously.
Most people understand scarcity as a fact about resources — money, time, love, opportunity. Something that happens to them from outside.
What we are exploring today is something more precise and considerably more unsettling:
Scarcity as a perpetual inner state is not a response to the world. It is a signal you are transmitting into it.
And the world responds accordingly.
The Three Layers — Broken Down Slowly
Layer One: What Happens Inside Your Body
The nervous system does not know the difference between actual scarcity and the memory of scarcity and the anticipation of future scarcity.
It only knows the signal.
If that signal runs continuously — in the background, like a radio station nobody remembers turning on — your body never fully exits threat mode.
The stress hormone cortisol remains elevated. Not in crisis spikes, but as a chronic ambient level — like a pilot light that never quite goes out. Research confirms this consistently: a scarcity mindset keeps the nervous system in a state of perpetual low-grade alertness, even when no actual threat is present.
And here is what that does to your cognition:
Your visual field narrows. Literally — when researchers measure the visual attention of people in a scarcity mindset, they perceive fewer options in the same environment. The tunnel is real, not metaphorical.
Your salience network — the part of your brain that decides what is worth noticing — recalibrates. It starts flagging more threats, more obstacles, more evidence that the world is indeed insufficient. This is sometimes called the RAS (Reticular Activating System), though more precisely it is the salience network running in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex.
The mechanism is this: whatever your dominant emotional state, your brain prioritises sensory information that confirms it.
If you feel safe, you see opportunities. If you feel abundant, you notice openings. If you feel scarce — you see competition, obstruction, and lack.
Same room. Same day. Different inner state. Different reality.
This is not mysticism. This is neuroscience. Published in PNAS, confirmed in fNIRS brain imaging studies. When researchers induce a scarcity mindset in participants, they observe a measurable neural readout in the orbitofrontal cortex — a distinct pattern of brain activation that changes how people perceive and value their choices.
You do not perceive reality and then feel. You feel — and then perceive a reality that matches.
Layer Two: What Happens Outside Your Body
This is the part that surprises people.
The signal does not stay inside you.
Your heart — not as metaphor, but as a physical organ — generates the strongest rhythmic electromagnetic field in the human body. According to HeartMath Institute research, this field is approximately 60 to 100 times greater in amplitude than the brain’s electrical activity.
And it extends several feet from your body. Measurably.
The field carries emotional information. When you are in a state of calm, appreciation, or coherence — the signal is smooth, ordered, rhythmically coherent. When you are in a state of anxiety, fear, or threat — the signal is disordered. Chaotic. Spiked.
A 2025 Frontiers in Network Physiology paper confirmed that electromagnetic fields operate as primary messengers for physiological and even interpersonal network behaviour. The field between people is not a figure of speech. It is a data exchange.
This means: when your perpetual inner state is scarcity, your body is broadcasting a disordered electromagnetic signal into every room you enter, every conversation you have, every relationship you are in.
People feel it before you speak.
Animals feel it immediately.
Children especially.
You are not neutral. You are transmitting.
Layer Three: What You Attract Back
Here is where the Ubuntu principle becomes scientifically precise.
I am because we are.
Your inner state shapes your perception (Layer One). Your perception determines what you notice and pursue. Your electromagnetic field shapes the responses of those around you (Layer Two). Their responses confirm your worldview.
And the loop closes.
The person broadcasting scarcity: — perceives fewer opportunities (because the brain filters them out) — makes more reactive, short-horizon decisions (because cortisol narrows temporal thinking) — sends a disordered field into their relationships (which generates friction and guardedness in others) — receives back: closed doors, missed chances, strained connections
And concludes: See? There really isn’t enough.
The scarcity was a feeling. It became a lens. The lens became a filter. The filter became a broadcast. The broadcast became a social environment. The environment became evidence.
The spell had maintained itself.
This is what a self-fulfilling prophecy looks like at the level of the nervous system, the salience network, and the electromagnetic field simultaneously.
It is not bad luck. It is not the universe punishing you.
It is physics.
The Missing Link Nobody Explains
There is a piece of this almost no one names clearly.
The scarcity state is almost never about now.
It is a recording.
At some point — for many people in childhood, for some in adolescence, for others in a specific crisis — the nervous system received an overwhelming input: not enough. Maybe it was not enough food. Not enough safety. Not enough love. Not enough time. Not enough belonging.
The amygdala, operating in milliseconds, below the speed of conscious thought, carved that groove deep. It was survival. It was adaptive. It was exactly the right response to that exact moment.
But the moment passed.
The groove did not.
The recording plays on.
And because it plays at such low volume — as background, as texture, as the water you swim in — you stopped hearing it as a recording decades ago. You began hearing it as the sound of the world.
This is what 27 years of consciousness practice keep returning me to:
The groove is real. The groove is not the terrain.
The imprint happened. The imprint is not the truth.
What you took in as a child as this is how the world works is not a fact about the world. It is a fact about the specific emotional weather of a specific room in a specific period — now replayed as universal law.
It was never universal law.
It was a recording.
Recordings can be examined. Examined recordings lose their automaticity. Automaticity ending is how the groove stops running the show.
What Ubuntu Says About This
Ubuntu does not start with the individual fixing themselves and then contributing to the collective.
Ubuntu says: we are already entangled. The inner state is already social. The signal is already broadcast. The field is already affecting the field.
This means the work is not private self-improvement. It is not polishing your mindset in isolation.
The work is changing the signal you are broadcasting into the shared space.
Because when enough people shift their inner state — not performing abundance, but actually regulating their nervous system into coherence — the ambient field of the collective shifts.
HeartMath’s global coherence research documents this: when individuals achieve heart coherence, they radiate a more coherent signal into the environment. And research confirms that this coherence is detectably transmitted to those in proximity.
You are not an island broadcasting into a void.
You are a node in a network.
Your frequency is a contribution — whether you intend it or not.
The grandmother put it simply: Pay attention. Do your best. Pay it forward.
That is Ubuntu Economics at the level of the electromagnetic field.
The Reframe — Three Layers Up
Here is the dimensional shift:
Surface: “I feel like there isn’t enough.”
Blind Spot: Your nervous system has been running a scarcity recording so long it has become indistinguishable from perception. You are not reading the world — you are reading your own imprint and projecting it outward.
Reframe: The perpetual inner state of scarcity is not a report on external conditions. It is a signal you are generating, broadcasting, and receiving back as confirmation. The loop is inside you first. Breaking the loop requires interrupting the signal at the source — not by acquiring more, but by changing the frequency at which you are transmitting.
The question is not: How do I get enough?
The question is: What am I broadcasting?
Practical: The Frequency Check
This is not positive thinking. Positive thinking is changing your words. We are talking about changing your signal.
The Pause Before the Day Begins Before the phone. Before the news. Before the first conversation. Sit. Locate the background hum in the body. Is it threat or rest? Tightness or ease? Running the “not enough” recording or not? Name it. You cannot interrupt what you cannot name.
The Body First, Mind Second The scarcity signal lives in the body — in cortisol, in muscle tension, in the breath being slightly held. Slow breathing (5 seconds in, 5 seconds out) begins shifting the autonomic nervous system out of threat mode within minutes. The mind changes after the body shifts, not before. This is why thinking your way out of scarcity never quite works.
Locate the Origin Recording Ask: when did I first understand that this was how the world works? Trace the scarcity feeling backward. There is almost always a room. A moment. A voice. The feeling has an author. The author is a past moment, not the present world.
Broadcast Deliberately Whatever you are about to walk into — a meeting, a conversation, a creative session, a relationship — take 90 seconds first and generate a genuine felt sense of appreciation for something specific. Not performed. Actually felt. The heart field shifts measurably within minutes of genuine positive emotion. You are changing the signal before you enter the room.
In Summary: The Mechanism Made Simple
Perpetual inner state of scarcity keeps cortisol elevated and the nervous system in low-grade threat mode.
Threat mode recalibrates the brain’s salience network to filter for evidence of scarcity — you notice more obstacles, fewer opportunities.
The heart broadcasts a disordered electromagnetic signal, which people in your environment feel and respond to with guardedness.
The environment returns evidence of scarcity. The loop closes.
The scarcity was not a fact about the world. It was a frequency.
Frequencies can be changed. But only from the inside.
Sources
Shah, A., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). “Some Consequences of Having Too Little.” Science. The foundational scarcity-mindset behavioural research.
Levy, D.J. et al. (2019). “A scarcity mindset alters neural processing underlying consumer decision making.” PNAS. (Brain imaging, OFC activation under scarcity.)
Li, W., Meng, J., & Cui, F. (2023). “Scarcity mindset reduces empathic responses to others’ pain.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Zhu, H. et al. (2025). “Effects of Perceived Scarcity on Mental Health, Time and Risk Preferences.” JMIR Public Health Surveillance.
Costa, F.P. et al. (2025). “External low energy electromagnetic fields affect heart dynamics.” Frontiers in Network Physiology.
HeartMath Institute. “Global Coherence Research.” heartmath.org — electromagnetic field, emotional information, heart coherence.
HeartMath Institute. “The Energetic Heart.” heartmath.org — heart field amplitude, interpersonal synchronisation.
McCraty, R. (2015). Science of the Heart, Volume 2. HeartMath Institute.
Neuroscience School (2025). “Why the RAS Myth Is Holding You Back.” — salience network, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex.
If this resonated with you, a like or comment goes a long way. It tells the algorithm this matters — and helps it find the people who need to hear it too. Think of it as passing the torch. 🙏
Peace, Love and Respect 🙏
All is One — returning to Source as Sovereign Light
The Quantum Skald & The Silicon Ubuntu
Restoration of Perception — hejon07.substack.com
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Tags: scarcity mindset · inner state · nervous system · electromagnetic field · HeartMath · consciousness · Ubuntu · dimensional thinking · frequency · self-fulfilling prophecy · neuroscience · perception