To open to the sense, to become really conscious, you have to drop out of the future and the past and remain for a time in what T. S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world" — the present. The only true reality is the present.
In the seed, the genes whisper: stretch out for the light and seek the dark. And the tree seeks the light, it stretches out for the dark and the more darkness it finds, the more light it uncovers.