This body – This life
OK I’ll try.
Everything connects to everything and eventually everything is everything, everything’s the same.
So let’s start at biology: It takes about 9 months for baby to be born. Then it takes about 16 years (so and so) for the being to survive. Specially the first 3-6 years are quite vurnerable. So in order to survive, as species, we need a sense of time, and sense of self. To be able to take care of the children we have to remember that we have one, when it’s been fed last time and so an so and so.
This sense of time as past, present and future gives us possibility to have a sense of self. But all that, sense of self and sense of time comes out from our perception: touch, sound, smell, taste, vision.
You see a baby. At first it isn’t aware of it self, it’s limbs, it’s place in the world. Slowly it starts to realize through it’s perceptions the world and it and their relation and self starts to evolve.
I am I, only because of my perception, but slowly my self can become stronger than my immidiate perception. We learn who “I” am. “You’re good boy”, “You’re such a beautiful girl” “why you always have to be so grumpy” “my god you have an big nose”. We perceive, what is being said and how we are treated. We re/act, world re/acts and we re/act soem more. Quickly we learn what is “good” and what is “bad, what is “normal” and what is not. So instead of seeing angels or spirits or maths we decide not to see them, because I, self, wants to survive and be “free”. And being normal, means that you perceive certain things and certain things you do not. And being normal means that you can walk free instead of being locked up in institution. Of course it’s not only that, being normal eases up your place in community and thus you life, but at the same time it creates another “prison” quite invisible one. And it’s ok as long as we don’t feel imprisoned.
So the I, self, starts to choose what it perceives instead of just truly perceiving all what is there.
Without perception, body, there can not be I,self.
Thus when this body dies, I, myself die.
There will not be another life for me, because I’ll never perceive the same as I did. Until world goes around again.
(all of this is also said by the buddhist, there is no self, only dream of the Mind and mind is everything, so why on earth they believe in reincarnation? I can’t get it)
To change the mind, to alter it, usually we alter the perception. Drugs work fine for this, but I think they’re not necessary. They can give a boost, and sometimes too big one. But it’s possible to alter your perception just by perceiving, through perception itself, Letting it chance.
Also to chance body is to chance the mind, there is no difference, my body my mind are the same thing. All of this is done by me. body and mind, dichotomy is in the language, not on “reality” (what is reality is a different topic then again). So to make my hamstrings longer I need to alter the whole of myself, not to thing me as body and mind but whole. I also need to let myself perceive how long my hamstrings are, and let them be longer.
Most of this stuff I have said simpler and shorter long time ago. This is from my “work diary” that was in darlingdear.net while I was still in school:
03-02-05
How hard can this be. The writing process. The attempt to open up myself and my dancing, moving verbally. Time is essential. Space is at least as much. My perception is the most important. Thank you Deborah Hay.
As I’m writing the time don’t seem to pass so well. Sudden realization that actually today the time passed in rush when writing, but slowly when dancing. Was I dancing? Trying to at least.
As I create myself I set bounds, frames. Those frames are not me, they frame me but I may not be inside the frames after all. Frames are the picture of myself, attempt to realize, understand, what I am. I am my perception, my perception is not me. I create myself through relation and comparison, picture of me in this world I’m perceiving. Without those relations/comparisons I’m not.
Without relations/comparisons I’m unbound/unframed.
Without bounds/frames I’m not.
Without perception I’m not.
Words are skin…
Words bound and unbound.
Skin and perception bounds me into this being.
Without “rational” thinking, without words I cannot frame my being.
Without words, Am I?
So at that time I didn’t draw line’s to “afterlife” or the trueness of self as strongly as I do now. But basically it’s been said already then.
And of course like I already mentioned, Christianity goes over this believing the resurrection of the body, and thus perception, and thus I. But at the same time Christian theology is full of hypothesis what that body would be and how we all will and would chance, because the presence of god and us in heaven. I think we are in heaven (already) and god is here, but because we are having problems of perceiving god (eternity, infinity, everything, oneness), we turn this place/life to something else than heaven.
One other somehow interesting thing about my thinking in 2005 was the last question: Without words, Am I? Now how do you think? I think with words, I create world with words, I memorise things, I tell myself a stories. But there is also something else than words, in the way of thinking. Pictures, memories like movies, clear visions. But to make them attached to certain time, I use words again. How do you think? With what medium? And then again, everything is thinking, brain is a muscle. But to set those frames of(on) self, I use language.
4 tales
Without language man can not exist. Somehow we use language and mind/consciousness to survive. You say animals don’t have language but they exist and breed…yes but animals don’t have mind/consciousness, they just have definite set of qualities like big sharp claws to hunt.
Animals have everything from the very “childhood” to survive. We don’t. If we din`t have language we wouldn’t know how to make knife that helps us to kill animal. Or we wouldn’t know should we eat this or that grass can it poison us or not.
Sure we can show our children how to make a knife it’s material thing. But what about abstract things like “passion” or “happines” or “mind” or even more helpful things like names of “chemical elements”.
If we didn`t have language we should have invent bicycle or penicillin or ship over and over again.
Words itself are nothing just noise…their content matters. Somehow we can not exist as a thinking personality without language\words.
Do you remember Robinson Cruiso? He started to write book and reread bible over and over not to go crazy and not to turn into an animal.
Ah. I disagree. I think animals have language, most of them, and with insect it actually might be based straight to chemicals, not sound. And most of the mammals don’t have everything from the childhood that they need. And Animals also teach their children. At the moment I wouldn’t even be sure who have the sense of self. Lately they have done a lot of studies and just other week I read about birds who will recognize themselves from the mirror, something that humans for a long time though that only humans do.
How that language then work on animals? I have no idea, but I have little idea how language works on humans either.
Words don’t have content. they’re symbols of something, like passion, or green. But actually we can give any content what we want to those sounds. Like how slang works, it might be familiar word but with the certain group of people it has different meaning than the main population has for it. Words have only the content we give to them.
Why should I now that the thing that I’m feeling is named as passion or anger or hate? Only to communicate more cleary, to explain my actions, and to be able to change them, maybe. Why we need to name things and thus take everything into pieces?
Once in time I was on the beach. I found a piece something that I didn’t know what material it was. It might have been a rock, or glass or something else. And for a while I though of braking it, just to get more information about what (material) it was. Then I stopped and started to laugh. I was willing to destroy something beautiful just to get more information that I didn’t even really need. When will I learn that it’s enough that the thing is, not what it is, just that it is.
Everything is.
But really, there is nothing.
Animals don`t have language! They have set of signals, gestures or facial expressions. These signals don`t give the information about future or past.
And language is not just signals… it is the system of sound and WRITTEN symbols.
How do you think, do animals have spirituality?
Words are noise I am agree but content is a content. You can call wooden table as plastic table or even as mother…but the material itself doesn`t materialize into something different. In Every country and in every epoch table will be table – board and four sticks, another question what word people use: table or der Tisch or la tavolo.)))
How do you explain another person that he annoys you? You use words. You don`t use physical power or hissing like animals (sometimes people use power, but it`s another question :-)))
Bee’s can exchange information where is the best flowers. So they tell now, where they have been and where the others should go. There is past, present and future. I don’t know do they have those concept or words/signals/symbols for them but they do use them.
Animals do remember, dog can now when he get’s food because he had got it earlier too at this time, he remembers from the past, is in the present, knowing, or assuming that something will happen in the future. just like we do.
Words don’t have content. the thing that has four legs and a board is usually called table in english, but pöytä in finnish, and somehting else in russian. The word, spoken or written is only symbol of this thing that we can perceive. Every epoch have the thing, but in every epoch or country it is not called table, so the word is different.
I think animals don’t have to be spiritual because they’re connected to the spirit (god, infinity, everything, oneness) and so are we but we have lost the sense of it, and to regain it we need spirituality. But spirit is in everything.
Everything is.
But really there’s nothing.