Metanoia - When Returning Does Not Mean Returning to the Same Place

Body-Territory, Cellular Memory, and New Possibilities of Being

You enter an experience.

Then you leave it.

Breathing slows down. The heart approaches its previous rhythm. The music ends. The pain decreases. You come down from the mountain. You remove the headset. The conversation ends.

From the outside, it seems that we have returned.

But returned to where?

Throughout W40/2026, we observed systems leaving a state A, crossing a perturbation, and reaching some form of state B.

But perhaps there is an earlier question that we have not yet asked deeply enough:

Who produced A?

Because A also has a history.

What we call the initial state has already encountered food, temperature, culture, belief, fear, safety, sleep, movement, relationships, infections, hormones, learning, and territory.

The organism entering an experience never truly begins from zero.

And this profoundly changes our question about Metanoia.

Perhaps transformation is not only leaving A and reaching B.

Perhaps it is realizing that A was already only one of the possibilities that this Body-Territory was currently able to realize.

The Baseline Itself Has a History

An organism must continuously regulate temperature, circulation, glucose, blood pressure, osmolarity, oxygenation, energy availability, immune responses, and countless other variables.

But homeostasis does not mean immobility.

Regulation happens through change.

When demands are repeated over long periods, particular systems may remain repeatedly recruited. The concept of allostatic load attempts precisely to describe the cumulative physiological dysfunction associated with demands encountered throughout life, although its measurement remains heterogeneous across studies. (sciencedirect.com)

This allows us to ask:

How many things that we now call “my way of being” also carry the history of the conditions under which this Body-Territory had to continue existing?

A breathing pattern.

A posture.

A tension.

A reaction to noise.

A difficulty resting.

A need for control.

A way of approaching.

A way of defending oneself.

We do not need to say that culture or personal history are “stored in interoception.”

The formulation can be more precise.

Culture and personal history participate in the conditions through which different physiological configurations are repeatedly produced; interoception participates in detecting, integrating, and regulating many of the internal signals resulting from those configurations.

We now know that interoceptive systems monitor mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and pathological signals arising from the organism through multiple bodily and neural pathways. (annualreviews.org)

Proprioception, through another route, continuously informs the organism about bodily position, tension, and movement.

Perhaps a history can therefore remain with us not only in the form:

“I remember what happened,”

but also as:

this is the repertoire of movements that my Body-Territory has learned to make more probable.

Before Autobiography Exists, Trajectory Already Exists

This history begins early.

Even before we are capable of saying:

“I like this.”

During pregnancy, compounds derived from some foods consumed by the mother reach the amniotic fluid. Evidence supports fetal chemosensory learning, particularly regarding aromatic compounds, and prenatal exposure to particular flavors may produce greater familiarity or acceptance later in life. The literature does not allow us to claim that this determines the child's future diet, but it demonstrates something conceptually important:

sensory experience can precede autobiography. (annualreviews.org)

Before there was:

“this is my family's food,”

there may already have been a chemical encounter.

This does not mean culture biologically determines the future.

It means that the boundary between territory and organism was never completely closed.

The territory had already begun to enter.

The Cell Also Encounters a Territory

We can move even further down in scale.

A cell does not simply read its DNA sequence and execute the same program forever.

It exists within an environment.

It encounters nutrients.

Oxygen.

Ions.

Hormones.

Cytokines.

Neurotransmitters.

Metabolites.

Neighboring cells.

Extracellular matrix.

Pressure.

Mechanical tension.

Temperature.

Signals of injury.

Immune signals.

This does not mean that this cellular environment is “interoception.”

The internal environment exists before it is interoceptively represented.

But it forms part of the Body-Territory that interoceptive systems, at other scales and through different pathways, help detect and regulate.

And the cell responds to the environment in which it exists.

Mechanical signals from the microenvironment, for example, can reach the nucleus through mechanotransduction mechanisms and participate in chromatin reorganization and gene-expression regulation. (sciencedirect.com)

This is where we need to discuss epigenetics carefully.

DNA methylation is not simply a direct recording of the environment.

Epigenetic states emerge from complex genetic, cellular, developmental, environmental, and stochastic processes.

Yet environmental stimuli can modify gene expression and participate in epigenetic alterations, and some epigenetic configurations can persist through cell division. Recent reviews describe mechanisms through which transcriptional memory and chromatin states may be partially maintained across mitosis. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Therefore:

cell division does not mean beginning again from zero.

The daughter cell receives DNA.

But it also receives organization.

Structure.

State.

History.

Memory Does Not Exist Only in Neurons

The immune system makes this even clearer.

B and T lymphocytes possess classical mechanisms of immunological memory.

But today we also know that components of innate immunity can acquire persistent functional states after particular encounters.

The concept of trained immunity describes situations in which previous stimuli produce metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming capable of altering future responses of innate immune cells and their progenitors. (link.springer.com)

This is not autobiographical memory.

A macrophage does not “remember” the way we remember childhood.

We therefore should not place all these forms of memory on the same level.

But they have something in common:

the past modifies the conditions of the next encounter.

Neural memory.

Immunological memory.

Transcriptional memory.

Epigenetic states.

Tissue remodeling.

Motor learning.

Autonomic habits.

Beliefs.

Narratives.

They are not the same phenomenon.

But all of them prevent us from treating the next instant as though the organism had just been born.

This is path dependence descending through different scales of the Body-Territory.

DNA Does Not Describe a Single Way of Being

Here we can return to Alfredo Pereira Jr.

In his exploratory model of astroglial hydro-ionic waves, Pereira proposes interactions involving ions, water, charged regions of proteins, extracellular matrix, and calcium waves as part of a material dynamic potentially participating in astrocyte-neuron relationships. (journals.sagepub.com)

It is important not to attribute to him a statement that is our own extension.

Pereira did not simply propose:

“DNA manufactures proteins to control the movement of water.”

The connection can instead be constructed at another scale by BrainLatam:

DNA → gene expression → proteins → channels, transporters, aquaporins, receptors, extracellular matrix, and cellular structures → movement of water, ions, and molecules → cellular and tissue dynamics.

The important point is not to turn DNA into a “program of consciousness.”

It is almost the opposite.

The same DNA sequence permits an enormous diversity of cellular and metabolic states.

DNA does not describe one single possible configuration of the organism.

It participates in a structure capable of realizing different possibilities according to development, environment, gene expression, epigenetics, cellular signaling, relationships between tissues, and trajectory.

The living Being happens precisely within those relationships.

When a Learned Path Becomes the Only Path We Can Perceive

Now we can return to culture.

In the UFMG exhibition Indigenous Worlds, Indigenous curators presented different concepts without requiring them to be immediately translated into Western categories. Among them are Në ropë, from the Yanomami world, and Yãy hã mĩy, presented by the Tikmũ’ũn/Maxakali. (ufmg.br)

Isael and Sueli Maxakali relate Yãy hã mĩy to transformation: beings, images, animals, trees, and people transform; existence itself is crossed by change. (musica.ufmg.br)

In the BrainLatam extension, we use Extended Yãy hã mĩy to ask about learning through approximation, repetition, imitation, and incorporation.

We imitate.

We repeat.

We learn.

We automate.

This is extraordinarily useful.

It would be impossible to reconstruct every gesture from the beginning each morning.

But a possible problem emerges.

A movement that worked may become so available that other possibilities stop being explored.

A belief can organize.

A religion can provide shelter.

A habit can protect.

An identity can produce belonging.

A posture can sustain.

A defensive response can save a life.

The problem does not necessarily begin when a pattern exists.

It begins when:

“this works”

becomes:

“only this can work.”

Perhaps blind faith can be understood, in the BrainLatam extension, precisely there.

Not simply as “a false belief.”

But as the loss of enough movement to continue encountering difference.

The Body-Territory Needs Space and Movement

This sentence can now acquire another meaning:

The Body-Territory needs space and movement in order to signal and regulate itself.

Space is not only physical distance.

It is a space of possibilities.

Movement is not only muscular displacement.

It is the possibility of transition.

To be able to breathe differently.

To move.

To interrupt.

To approach.

To withdraw.

To rest.

To update a prediction.

To perceive a signal that previously disappeared among others.

To encounter another relationship.

Without sufficient movement, a system can remain alive while traversing an increasingly narrow repertoire of configurations.

It continues metabolizing.

But perhaps it repeatedly produces similar conditions.

It is in this sense—and only as BrainLatam conceptual language—that we can speak of congestion of vital flow.

Not as an invisible blocked tube.

Not as some unknown measurable energy.

But as a Body-Territory in which certain transitions have become difficult to realize.

Në ropë: Not Only Continuing to Live, but Continuing to Be Able to Produce Life

Davi Kopenawa describes Në ropë as the value of growth of the forest-land: that whose presence makes plants grow, maintains abundance, and participates in the fertility of the forest. (horizon.documentation.ird.fr)

We do not need to translate Në ropë into metabolism.

Doing so would erase the concept itself.

But we can allow it to pose a question to our science:

Is being alive enough?

Or does life also depend on preserving conditions that allow it to continue producing growth, relationships, diversity, and future?

In the BrainLatam extension, Në ropë can provoke the idea of flourishing or vital fruition.

Not a permanent state of pleasure.

But the capacity of a system to continue encountering enough movement to realize new possibilities.

Taa: Knowing Does Not Yet Mean Being Able to Be

Hanna Limulja, in her study of Yanomami dreams, records –taa as a root associated with knowing, understanding, and also seeing. From this encounter, BrainLatam has been using Taa as a conceptual extension of a “dreamed knowing”: knowledge that does not end with the verbal availability of information. (brainlatam.com)

This introduces another fundamental distinction.

You can know:

“I need to rest.”

“this is not good for me.”

“I do not need to defend myself now.”

“I can breathe differently.”

“this belief may not be true.”

And still remain unable to realize another configuration.

Information does not guarantee transformation.

Perhaps knowing deeply involves the moment when a difference stops existing only as a sentence and gains enough space to participate in the next movement of the Body-Territory.

Knowing that another path exists does not yet mean being able to walk it.

Perhaps Transcendence Means Recovering Movement

This is where we can open another possibility for the word Transcendence.

Not leaving the body.

Not abandoning matter.

Not necessarily accessing a dimension outside biology.

But:

allowing the Body-Territory to realize a movement that, in its previous configuration, was not functionally available.

Perhaps the possibility was already contained within that materiality.

But it was not accessible in that state.

Then something changes.

The territory.

Breathing.

Movement.

A relationship.

An experience of vastness.

A memory.

A prediction.

A metabolic condition.

A perception.

An interpretation.

The literature on awe shows that experiences of vastness can temporarily alter one's relationship with the self, while important individual and cultural differences remain. Studies of experiences described as self-dissolution likewise reveal a phenomenology far more heterogeneous than the expression “transcendence” might suggest. (nature.com)

There is therefore no universal biomarker of Transcendence.

There is a question:

What became possible afterward?

Perhaps Metanoia Occurs When the Impossible Becomes Merely Improbable Again

A 2024 systematic review of transformative experiences found precisely this complexity: intense experiences may involve discrepancy, insight, epiphany, and subsequent changes, but intensity alone does not guarantee transformation. (frontiersin.org)

The original text in this series had already made this distinction:

physiological change,

neural change,

and change in meaning

are not the same thing, and no level should automatically be used as proof of another.

We need to preserve this.

Different breathing does not prove Metanoia.

An EEG alteration does not prove transcendence.

An epigenetic change does not prove an epiphany.

A subjectively extraordinary experience does not, by itself, reveal which biological mechanism occurred.

Feeling confirms consciousness, not truth.

But neither should we make the opposite mistake and imagine that transformative experiences have no materiality.

If a new relationship persists and modifies subsequent encounters, something within the Body-Territory has remained different.

Perhaps in memory.

Perhaps in attention.

Perhaps in posture.

Perhaps in behavior.

Perhaps in autonomic relationships.

Perhaps in the social territory.

Perhaps across several scales simultaneously.

We cannot know in advance which one.

That is why Metanoia should not be sought as a single biomarker.

And What Someone Calls a Miracle?

A person lives for years within a particular configuration.

Something seemed impossible.

Then an experience occurs.

Afterward, a possibility appears.

They sleep.

Breathe.

Move.

Forgive.

Leave.

Create.

Return.

They manage to do what they previously could not.

They may call this:

healing.

liberation.

rebirth.

Metanoia.

or a miracle.

Science does not need to use “miracle” as a causal explanation in order to respect the meaning of the experience.

It can ask:

What became possible within that Body-Territory that had not previously been available?

“Miracle,” in this case, remains within the domain of meaning attributed by the person or culture.

The mechanism remains a question.

This preserves the three levels.

And allows them to speak to one another.

The Same DNA Can Encounter Another Possibility of Being

Now we can return to the beginning.

You return from the mountain.

The house is still there.

Your DNA has essentially the same sequence.

But that never meant that only one way of existing was written within it.

The organism has a history.

Its cells possess states.

Its immune system has encountered things.

Its brain has learned.

Its body has acquired habits.

Its territory has left traces.

Its culture has opened certain possibilities and perhaps closed others.

You do not receive a new genome with every Metanoia.

Perhaps something more interesting happens.

The same Body-Territory becomes capable of realizing another possibility within its own materiality.

The structure preserves enough continuity to say:

I am still me.

But the movement changes enough for us to perceive:

I can also be this way.

Perhaps this is one way of understanding Transcendence without abandoning the Body-Territory.

Not transcending matter.

Transcending a configuration of matter that had begun to appear as the only possible one.

Yãy hã mĩy reminds us of transformation.

Në ropë asks about the conditions of growth.

Taa asks when information becomes embodied knowledge.

Epigenetics shows that cellular identity combines stability with the possibility of change.

Immunology shows that previous encounters can modify later responses.

Interoception shows that the organism continuously encounters signals from its own state.

And 5D Consciousness asks:

When does a difference within all of this become a new perception of Being?

Perhaps Metanoia occurs precisely when a trajectory modifies the available relationships sufficiently that returning no longer means repeating. That was already the conclusion of the previous text.

Now we can add something.

Perhaps transformation is not only acquiring a new response.

Perhaps it is recovering enough space for more than one response to exist again.

The Body-Territory does not need to live without patterns.

It needs patterns in order to continue.

But perhaps its freedom depends on preserving enough movement not to confuse:

the pattern that made survival possible

with

the only possible way of Being.

A → B.

B → A.

The letters may look the same.

The DNA may remain essentially the same.

The house may still be in the same place.

But the system now knows another trajectory.

And perhaps Transcendence is exactly this:

not becoming something outside oneself, but regaining enough movement to discover other possibilities of oneself.

Commented References

WANG, R. L.; CHANG, R. B. (2024). The Coding Logic of Interoception. Annual Review of Physiology, 86, 301–327. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-physiol-042222-023455.
What this reference represents: a contemporary review of how interoceptive systems detect mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and pathological signals from the organism. It supports the distinction between the internal environment itself and the processes through which that environment is detected and integrated.

McCRORY, C. et al. (2023). Towards a consensus definition of allostatic load: a multi-cohort, multi-system, multi-biomarker individual participant data meta-analysis. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 153, 106117. DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106117.
What this reference represents: examines allostatic load as cumulative multisystem biological dysregulation associated with stressors encountered across the life course while also demonstrating the methodological heterogeneity of the concept.

GE, T.; BRICKNER, J. H. (2024). Inheritance of epigenetic transcriptional memory. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 85, 102174. DOI: 10.1016/j.gde.2024.102174.
What this reference represents: describes mechanisms through which developmental or environmental stimuli can produce transcriptional memory and how epigenetic marks may contribute to future responses and persist through mitosis.

FLURY, V.; GROTH, A. (2024). Safeguarding the epigenome through the cell cycle: a multitasking game. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 85, 102161. DOI: 10.1016/j.gde.2024.102161.
What this reference represents: describes how chromatin organization and histone-associated information can be reconstructed after DNA replication, preserving aspects of cellular identity across division.

VIVO, M.; ROSTI, V.; CERVONE, S.; LANZUOLO, C. (2024). Chromatin plasticity in mechanotransduction. Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 88, 102376. DOI: 10.1016/j.ceb.2024.102376.
What this reference represents: connects forces originating in the cellular microenvironment with mechanotransduction, the nucleus, chromatin architecture, and gene regulation. It supports the idea that a cell's immediate territory materially participates in its functioning.

FERREIRA, A. V. et al. (2024). Metabolic Regulation in the Induction of Trained Immunity. Seminars in Immunopathology, 46, 7.
What this reference represents: reviews how metabolic reprogramming and epigenetic changes support forms of functional memory in innate immunity, demonstrating path dependence outside the nervous system.

FORESTELL, C. A. (2024). Does Maternal Diet Influence Future Infant Taste and Odor Preferences? A Critical Analysis. Annual Review of Nutrition, 44, 313–337. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-nutr-121222-101404.
What this reference represents: reviews evidence of fetal chemosensory learning and shows that compounds derived from maternal diet can reach the amniotic fluid and contribute to later familiarity with certain flavors. It also makes clear the limits of evidence regarding long-term dietary consequences.

PEREIRA JR., A. (2017). Astroglial hydro-ionic waves guided by the extracellular matrix: An exploratory model. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 16(1), 57–72. DOI: 10.3233/JIN-160003.
What this reference represents: proposes an exploratory model involving calcium waves, water, ions, proteins, and extracellular matrix in astroglial interactions. BrainLatam uses it as a bridge for thinking about dynamic materiality without attributing to Pereira the specific chain DNA → movement of water.

KOPENAWA, D.; ALBERT, B. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman.
What this reference represents: a primary source for Në ropë as a value of growth associated with the forest-land, fertility, and abundance. The association between Në ropë and the “fruition of the Body-Territory” is a BrainLatam extension rather than a translation of the Yanomami concept.

MAXAKALI, I.; MAXAKALI, S.; UFMG — Indigenous Worlds.
What this reference represents: presents Yãy hã mĩy within the Tikmũ’ũn/Maxakali world, emphasizing transformation and impermanence. “Extended Yãy hã mĩy,” biological faith, and its relationship with metabolic automatization are BrainLatam formulations and should remain explicitly identified as extensions.

LIMULJA, H. C. L. R. (2019). O desejo dos outros: uma etnografia dos sonhos Yanomami (Pya ú – Toototopi). Doctoral dissertation, UFSC.
What this reference represents: source for the Yanomami root –taa associated with knowing, understanding, and seeing, and for the relationship between knowledge and dream experience. “Taa as dreamed knowing” is a BrainLatam conceptual extension built from this encounter, not a closed literal translation.

PIZZOLANTE, M. et al. (2024). Aesthetic experiences and their transformative power: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1328449. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1328449.
What this reference represents: organizes evidence concerning transformative experiences and shows that intensity, insight, and epiphany may participate in transformation without every intense event producing lasting change.

JIANG, T. et al. (2024). The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3, 475–488. DOI: 10.1038/s44159-024-00322-z.
What this reference represents: shows that experiences of vastness can modify one's relationship with the sense of self and broaden perspective, while highlighting important cultural and individual variation. It supports the cautious use of awe in discussions of Transcendence.

CANBY, N. K.; LINDAHL, J.; BRITTON, W. B.; CÓRDOVA, J. V. (2024). Clarifying and measuring the characteristics of experiences that involve a loss of self or a dissolution of its boundaries. Consciousness and Cognition, 119, 103655. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103655.
What this reference represents: demonstrates that experiences described as self-transcendence, self-loss, or dissolution of self-boundaries are phenomenologically heterogeneous, preventing “Transcendence” from being treated as a single biological state.

BrainLatam (2026). The Same Event — Metabolism, Movement, and Consciousness.
What this reference represents: establishes the formulation “We make cuts in order to learn, not in order to Be” and proposes that metabolism, movement, information, and experience are different cuts through the same situated Body-Territory.

BrainLatam — W40/2026. Metanoia: When Returning Does Not Mean Returning to the Same Place.
What this reference represents: the source text from which this expanded version develops. It distinguishes physiological change, neural change, and change in meaning, and formulates Metanoia as a trajectory that sufficiently alters the relationships available to the system so that returning no longer simply means repeating.