The questions and ideas you raise and the way you put them together are as seeds to an enchanting path .....mind fucking blowing !
However I found one question drumming as I read my way past all that you wrote - how does the linearness of a path of existance moving forward not exclude the possibility of ancient times co existing with the current times - that these realities travel together not one before the other and co effect each other or even that we might be moving backwards ??
Hi Yinchi. Thank you for partaking of my article, and for your words here. And thank you for offering some of your own stirring wonderings.
What I see in your question is an articulation of a bi-pedal inquiry (a body that orients “forward”). It’s also a question that, for me, invites reflection on the myriad ways different bodies/peoples relate to and understand time.
For example, some of my own ancestors (the Passamaquoddy) do not have a word for time, and do/did not orient with being-ness/becoming in a linear way.
So the idea of future being “ahead” and the past being “behind” weren’t embodied orientations.
And if there’s no word for time, and language is an expression of one’s understanding of the world/reality (especially in this case an indigenous language (the Algonquin language family) that arises out of place/in relationship to place) then “time” becomes something more slippery. Time can feel/be experienced as seasonal, circular, spiraling, webbed, holographic.
For myself, I don’t experience time as linear, and I experience the past, present and future as confluencing through bodies and imaginations (which might be another way of pointing at what you’re speaking to as “traveling together”). Though I’d wonder about the idea of them “traveling” as that suggests (to me) a destination point, leaving out the territory of emergence.
However, this doesn’t mean (in my opinion) that those who do experience time as linear are “incorrect” in their experience.
That being said, I’d wonder what revelations this question may have in store for you?! Because it’s an evocative question whose presence I can feel deep in the belly of wonder.
And clearly, i don’t have any answers, only more wonderings and inclusions.
In response to your wondering about the revelations your writing has had for me, if I am really honest your response has created doubts about my perceptions that aren't helpful to a trust in my body wisdom.
Did I really imagine the tone I had read in your article of where do we go now etc that had for the flavour of linear ? Does your ancestral lineage knowing trump my non indigenous lineage ?
And it has sent me off down a path of considering how particularly with marginalised peoples I let my own wild human instincts down. I can see so much of how white priviledge has colonised everything that at these type of moments, out of guilt and a deep shame, I give way to someone who proffers their cultural heritage and knowledge. Rather than the alternative which would be to engage with you as you, I find I am engaging as cultural oppressor with you as a cultural victim. I am grateful to be able to see this is what I have been doing - but I also see how very unhealthy it is from the point of view of truth and moving away from that old way of seeing other humans through labels.
Today I am finding an urgent rising within me of the wild human heart which doesn't need to rely on a cultural identity to feel justified in thinking something. I also realise I see no point in scaring the shit out of myself by trying to work out what is going to happen or what the meaning is. And curiously as a result of that I feel the internal power to respond to whatever comes next with the truest thing for me, this unique speck of stardust. Perhaps that is the best that any of us can hope for in uncertainty (which of course is all the time) ..a faith in our heart.
The questions and ideas you raise and the way you put them together are as seeds to an enchanting path .....mind fucking blowing !
However I found one question drumming as I read my way past all that you wrote - how does the linearness of a path of existance moving forward not exclude the possibility of ancient times co existing with the current times - that these realities travel together not one before the other and co effect each other or even that we might be moving backwards ??
Hi Yinchi. Thank you for partaking of my article, and for your words here. And thank you for offering some of your own stirring wonderings.
What I see in your question is an articulation of a bi-pedal inquiry (a body that orients “forward”). It’s also a question that, for me, invites reflection on the myriad ways different bodies/peoples relate to and understand time.
For example, some of my own ancestors (the Passamaquoddy) do not have a word for time, and do/did not orient with being-ness/becoming in a linear way.
So the idea of future being “ahead” and the past being “behind” weren’t embodied orientations.
And if there’s no word for time, and language is an expression of one’s understanding of the world/reality (especially in this case an indigenous language (the Algonquin language family) that arises out of place/in relationship to place) then “time” becomes something more slippery. Time can feel/be experienced as seasonal, circular, spiraling, webbed, holographic.
For myself, I don’t experience time as linear, and I experience the past, present and future as confluencing through bodies and imaginations (which might be another way of pointing at what you’re speaking to as “traveling together”). Though I’d wonder about the idea of them “traveling” as that suggests (to me) a destination point, leaving out the territory of emergence.
However, this doesn’t mean (in my opinion) that those who do experience time as linear are “incorrect” in their experience.
That being said, I’d wonder what revelations this question may have in store for you?! Because it’s an evocative question whose presence I can feel deep in the belly of wonder.
And clearly, i don’t have any answers, only more wonderings and inclusions.
In response to your wondering about the revelations your writing has had for me, if I am really honest your response has created doubts about my perceptions that aren't helpful to a trust in my body wisdom.
Did I really imagine the tone I had read in your article of where do we go now etc that had for the flavour of linear ? Does your ancestral lineage knowing trump my non indigenous lineage ?
And it has sent me off down a path of considering how particularly with marginalised peoples I let my own wild human instincts down. I can see so much of how white priviledge has colonised everything that at these type of moments, out of guilt and a deep shame, I give way to someone who proffers their cultural heritage and knowledge. Rather than the alternative which would be to engage with you as you, I find I am engaging as cultural oppressor with you as a cultural victim. I am grateful to be able to see this is what I have been doing - but I also see how very unhealthy it is from the point of view of truth and moving away from that old way of seeing other humans through labels.
Today I am finding an urgent rising within me of the wild human heart which doesn't need to rely on a cultural identity to feel justified in thinking something. I also realise I see no point in scaring the shit out of myself by trying to work out what is going to happen or what the meaning is. And curiously as a result of that I feel the internal power to respond to whatever comes next with the truest thing for me, this unique speck of stardust. Perhaps that is the best that any of us can hope for in uncertainty (which of course is all the time) ..a faith in our heart.