Tag Archives: Civilization

Optimistic Elements Of Life

All elements of life are optimistic.

 

The fetus, for example, is remarkably optimistic, carrying within itself the miniature pattern for an entire human adult, taking it for granted that conditions will be favorable enough so that the entire pattern of normal life will be fulfilled despite any impediments or adverse conditions .

This expectation to grow and flourish is addressed within each atom, cell, and organ, and all of life’s parts contain this optimistic expectation and are blessed with the promise that their abilities will grow to maturity.

Children spontaneously take it for granted that their acts will result in the most favorable circumstances, and that any given situation will have a favorable end result. These attitudes pervade on the animal kingdom also. They are embedded in the life of insects, and in fish and fowl. They are the directions that provide life with purpose, direction, and impetus. No organism automatically expects to find starvation or disappointment or detrimental conditions — yet even when such circumstances are encountered, they in no way affect the magnificent optimism that is at the heart of life.

Even when biological “failures” develop, as with stillborn infants, or malformed ones, the inner consciousness involved does not give up, and even though death results, the consciousness tries again under different conditions. In such cases death is not experienced by the organism as a failure, or as a biological mistake. It is simply felt to be an experience, a discovery, that went so far and no further — but the events in no way impede the vitality and strength of the inner consciousness so involved.

This optimism is reflected in many other areas of life also.

Many birds in their fantastic migrations demonstrate an amazing optimism, traveling thousands of miles to distant shores, almost literally flying by faith, as it were, ignoring all dangers, unbeseiged by doubts. There is no hesitancy, but the sure flight. Birds do not question whether or not the weather will be favorable, the winds fair or foul. They simply fly toward their destination. Even if some birds do fall or die, this in no way impedes or undermines the faith of the others.

Monarch butterflies, in their remarkable migrations, often fly toward land that they have never seen themselves — and yet they reach their destination.

In all such cases there is an inbred biological faith, that courage and vitality, that biological optimism. It acts that same in people, triggering the necessary bodily responses. Only when that optimism is severely tampered with do the physical mechanisms falter. Even then, however, all creatures are sustained by that innate gift, that inner sense of security that not only propels creatures toward life, but safely conducts them past physical life and past death’s doorway.

 

The Inborn Leanings and Attitudes

These inborn leanings or attitudes can roughly be translated as follows.

  1. I am an excellent creature, a valuable part of the universe in which I exist.
  2.  My existence enriches all other portions of life, even as my own being is enhanced by the rest of creation.
  3. It is good, natural, and safe for me to grow and develop and use my abilities, and by so doing I also enrich all other portions of life.

Next: I am eternally couched and supported by the universe of which I am a part, and I exist whether or not that existence is physically expressed.

Next: By nature I am a good deserving creature, and all of life’s elements and parts are also of good intent.

And next: All of my imperfections, and all of the imperfections of other creatures, are redeemed in the greater scheme of the universe in which I have my being.

Those attitudes are inbred in the smallest microscopic portions of the body — a part of each atom and cell and organ, and they serve to trigger all of the body’s responses that promote growth and fulfillment. Infants are not born with an inbred fear of their environment, or of the other creatures. They are instead immersed in feelings of well-being, vitality, and exuberance. They take it for granted that their needs will be met, and that the universe is well-disposed toward them. They feel a part of their environment.

They do not come into life with feelings of rage, or anger, and basically they do not experience doubts or fears. Birth is experienced in terms of self-discovery, and includes the sensation of selfhood gently rising and unfolding from the secret heart of the universe.

Many people believe that birth, to the contrary, is a time of trauma, or even of rage, as the infant leaves its mother’s womb. Birth is life’s most precious natural process. Even in births that are thought of as not “normal,” there is on the infant’s part a sense of discovery and joy.

We will have more to say about the process of birth in later blogs. For now, I simply want to make the point that in the most basic of terms the human birth is as orderly and spontaneous as the birth of any of nature’s creatures — and a child opens its selfhood even as a flower opens its petals.

The inborn leanings and attitudes that we have been discussing should ideally remain with us for the rest of our lives, leading us to express our abilities, and finding fulfillment as our knowledge expands through experience. The same feelings and beliefs should also ideally help us die with a sense of safety, support and assurance. While these inbred psychological supports never leave us entirely, they are often diminished by beliefs encountered later in life, that serve to undermine the individual’s sense of safety and well-being.

All of this talk about exuberance, health and vitality may seem quite beside the point to many. It may seem instead that the world is filled with unhappiness and disease.

 

I admit that this certainly seems to be the case. It may also strike you, my blog readers, as quite shocking when I tell you that there is no such thing, basically, as disease. There are instead only processes. What we think of as disease is instead the result of an exaggeration or overextension of perfectly normal body processes. We are not attacked by viruses, for instance, for all kinds of viruses exist normally in the body. There are no killer viruses, then, but viruses that go beyond their usual bounds. We will have more to say about such issues in later blogs — for I hope to show how certain feelings and beliefs do indeed promote health, while others promote an unfortunate extension or exaggeration of perfectly normal bodily processes, or viral activity.

This means, of course, that we do not fall victim to a disease, or catch a virus, but that for one reason or another our own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs lead us to seek bouts of illness.

Certainly, such ideas will sound like medical heresy to many of my blog readers, but the sooner we begin to look at health and “disease” in these new terms, the healthier and happier we will become. We are not one thing and illness another, for our thoughts and emotions are the triggers that lead to bouts of poor health. Once we know this, we can begin to take steps that will serve to promote exuberance and vitality instead of fear, doubts, and “disease.”

We will discover that so-called diseases perform certain services. They fulfill purposes for us that we may believe we can achieve in  no other way. The reasons for such illnesses are not deeply buried in the subconscious, as we may think. They are much closer to the conscious mind, and usually consist of a series of seemingly innocuous decisions that we have made through the years. Other illnesses, of course, may be caused by sudden decisions that are a  response to a particular event in our life.

People have been taught that their bodies are a kind of battleground, and that they must be in a constant state of readiness lest they be attacked or invaded by alien germs or viruses or diseases that can strike without warning.

Soon, in future blogs, we will begin to discuss other negative beliefs that cause poor health. For now, however, we will concentrate upon those inbred, positive attitudes, feelings, and beliefs that constantly improve our sense of well-being, strength, and fulfillment.

 

 

 

Inborn Cooperation

The picture of man, woman, animals, and nature depicted in movies, is the only possible portrayal of reality that could be logically shown, considering the beliefs upon which the premise rests.

The environment, man, woman and the animals are all characterized as ferocious, hostile to each other, each one determined to attain survival at the expense of the other. Man and woman could not have existed under the conditions fostered in most movies — nor for that matter could any of the animals. Despite any other theories to the contrary, the world, all of its physical aspects, and all of its creatures depends upon an inborn cooperation. The species do not compete with each other over a given territory, no matter how frequently that appears to be the case.

Science has promoted the idea that hostility is a constant attribute of nature and all of its parts, while it sees the cooperating characteristics of nature as rather infrequent or extraordinary — but certainly outside of the norm.

Even biologically on the most microscopic of levels, there is a vast inbred network of cooperating activity, and these unite the animals and mineral kingdoms with all the other aspects of earthly existence. Each organism has a purpose, and it is to fulfill its own capabilities in such a way that it benefits all other organisms.

Each organism is therefore helped in its development by each and every other organism, and the smooth operation of one contributes to the integrity of all. Men and women did not begin hunting animals until certain groups of animals needed a way to control their own population. As I have said before in previous blogs, men, women and animals learned from each other. They were immediate allies, not enemies.

Men and women also domesticated animals almost from the very first, so that men, women and animals both did each other a service — they worked together. The stability of planetary life depended above all upon this basic cooperation, in which all species pooled together.

Man’s and woman’s brain was always the size that it is now, and the animals existed in the forms by which we know them today. No animal — or virus — is truly extinct. All exist in an inner web-work, and are held in the memory of an overall earthly knowledge — one that is biological, so that each smallest microbe has within it the imprinted biological messages that form each and every other microbe. The existence of one presupposes that existence of all, and the existence of all is inherent in the existence of one.

In those early days men and women did live to ages that would amaze today — many living to be several hundred years old. This was indeed due to the fact that their knowledge was desperately needed, and their experience. They were held in veneration, and they cast their knowledge into songs and stories that were memorized throughout the years.

Beside this, however, their energy was utilized in a different fashion than ours is. They alternated between the waking and dream states, and while asleep they did not age as quickly. Their bodily processes slowed. Although this was true, their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. There was a much greater communication in the dream state, so that some lessons were taught during dreams, while others were taught in the waking condition.

There was a greater and greater body of knowledge to be transmitted as physical existence continued, for they did not transmit private knowledge only, but the entire body of knowledge that belonged to the group or tribe as a whole.

Now: our dreams represent the larger rooms of beliefs into which we are emerging. The many people, and connecting rooms, represent the new structure of vaster beliefs that are all interconnected while we are still, however, concentrating upon the private creative self, and from that viewpoint viewing the world — hence our private corner in which we paint, as from that corner of private creativity we view the large interacting structure of new beliefs.

The Bible is a conglomeration of parables and stories, intermixed with some unclear memories of much earlier times .The bible that we recognize — or that is recognized — in not the first however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man and woman tried to look back, so to speak, and recount his and her past and predict his and her future.

Such bibles existed, not written down but carried orally, as mentioned some time ago, by the Speakers. It was only much later that this information was written down, and by then, of course, much had been forgotten. This is apart from the fact of tampering, or downright misinformation as various factions used the material for their own ends.

The paternal feelings of our dreams, allow us to expand our experience while in the dream state. This also presents us with an example of the ways in which early man and woman expanded his and her own knowledge and experience in the dream state. In the same way, as mentioned in a previous blog, man and woman also had dream images of actual geographical locations to which he or she had not physically traveled.

The Present Becomes the Past

Apropos of our discussion concerning time.

The nature of universal creativity is so remarkable that it’s true reaches are literally beyond most understanding. The implications are staggering — so that the affair is almost impossible to explain.

The past, and every moment of the past, are being constantly changed from the operation point of the present. In our terms, the present becomes the past, which is again at every considerable point from the latest-present. Yet through all of this immense, continuous creation, there is always a personal sense of continuity: We never really lose our way in the distance between one moment and the next.

In somewhat of the same fashion the objects about us are constantly in motion, as we know. The atoms and molecules are forever moving, and in a way the electrons are the directors of that motion.

Our own focus is so precisely and finely tuned that despite all of that activity, objects appear solid. Now objects are also events, and perhaps that is the easiest way to understand them. They are highly dependent upon our own subjective focus. Let that focus falter for a briefest amount of time, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down, so to speak.

Remember that we are also objects, and also events, and as physical bodies our organs are also composed of atoms and molecules whose motion, again, is directed by the electrons.

The electrons themselves have their own subjective lives. They are subjective events, therefore, so there is always a correlation between those electrons in our bodies and those in the objects we see about us. Nevertheless again, subjective continuity itself never falters, in that it is always a part of the world that it perceives, so that us and the world create each other, in these terms.

When we change the past from each point of the latest-present, we are also changing events at the most microscopic levels. Our intent has also an electronic reality, therefore. It is almost as if our thoughts punched the keys of some massive computer, for our thoughts do indeed have a force. Even as sentences are composed of words, there is no end to the number of sentences that can be spoken — so “time” is composed of an endless variety of electronic languages that can “speak” a million worlds instead of words.

 

Dates are but designations applied to the days.

Mankind and womankind lived without such designations for a much longer period than he or she have used them. Animals, without such designations, still know their position on the planet itself, and they are aware of tides and the movement of the earth and planets.

 

Extremes

Our situations can be called extreme — but true extremes are far less fortunate. We have, for example, the extremes of poverty suffered by people in many other parts of the world — a poverty that stunts all kinds of growth, mental and physical, and brings about an early death. Or the extremes of disease, in which children are born without all the faculties needed for life, and — therefore also die an early death. Or those extremes when entire families suffer patterns of tragedy so whole numbers are wiped out at one time.

There are reasons for such cases, of course. I simply wanted you to know that many very severe extremes exist, that would make our lives seem most favorable in contrast.

Species Not discovered

There are many, many species that men and women have not discovered, in all the categories of life — insects onward.

There are multitudinous species of viruses and so forth that man and woman have not encountered and recognized, and there are connections between viruses and other species of living matter that remain unknown. There are indeed two different kinds of upward-walking mammals, much like our own species, but much larger, and with infinitely keener senses. They are indeed amazingly swift creatures, and through scent alone they are aware of the presence of man and woman when any member of our species is at all in the immediate area — standing, say, at least several miles away. Vegetable matter is a main diet, though often implemented by insects, which are considered a delicacy.

They have, for that matter, devised many ingenious insect traps, so that hundreds or more can be caught, for many are needed since insects are so small. These traps are often constructed on trees, in the bark, in such a fashion that the tree gum itself is used to trap the insects. The traps appear to be part of the tree itself, so as to protect them.

These creatures do indeed remember, but their remembering operates extremely rapidly – a kind of almost instantaneous deduction that comes as sense data is interpreted. That is, received and interpreted almost at once, or simultaneously.

Offspring do not occur until the individuals are well past the age that we would consider normal for breeding. Otherwise the procedure is the same. With some territorial variation, such creatures reside in many of the world areas on our planet, though their overall population is very small — altogether, perhaps, several thousand. They rarely congregate in large groups, but do have a family and tribal-like organization, with at the very most twelve adults in any given area. As offspring are added, the groups break up again, for they know well that in larger numbers they would be much more easy to discover.

They all use tools of one kind or another – perhaps not quite the standard of tools we’ve come to expect from those reviewed on outdoor REI, like axes and survival knives – and live indeed in close concord with the animals. There is no competition between them though they could be extremely dangerous if they were cornered, or of their young were attacked.

They grow quite sluggish in wintertime, in very cold climates, and their temperature drops, as is characteristic of hibernating animals, except that their temperature is more sensitive to daily variations, so that on some winter days they can forage for food very well, while on the other hand they may hibernate for even weeks on end.

They have a keen understanding of nature, and of natural phenomena. Language is not developed to any great degree, for their sensual ordinary equipment is so pure and swift that it almost becomes a language of its own, and does not need any elaboration. Those senses possess their own variances, so that without any word such as “now” or “then,” the creature are able to know quite accurately how many living creatures are in the vicinity, how long they have been there — and their experience with time is one that follows the seasons in such a way that they have formed a wordless, fairly accurate picture of the world, including navigational direction.

Joy In Living

Exuberance and a sense of vitality are always present to some degree or another.

Some people are always aware of their own joy regardless of circumstances. They feel safe and protected even when the events of their lives do not seem favorable. Regardless of their own doubts and worries, such people feel themselves supported, and feel that in the end everything will work to their advantage. Many other people, however, lose this sense of safety and abundance, and it may seem as if joy in living was an attribute only of the young.

Exuberance and joy, however, basically have nothing to do with time or age. They may be expressed as vividly and beautifully at the age of 80 as at the age of 8. For whole segments of the population, however, it seems as if joy and health are fleeting attributes expressed briefly in childhood, and then lost forever.

There are innumerable ways of reclaiming joy in living, however, and in so doing physical health may be reclaimed by those who have found it lacking in their experience.

The quality of life is intensely important, and is to a large extent dependent upon a sense of well-being and self-confidence. While these attributes are expressed in the body, they also exist in the mind, and there are some cumbersome mental beliefs that may severely impede mental and physical well-being.

We will not concentrate upon these, but we will indeed discuss them, so that each person can understand the relationship between poor beliefs and poor health, for through understanding these connections the individual can re-experience the great mental variety that is possible. No individual is helpless, for example, in the face of negative beliefs. He or she can learn to make choices once again, and thus to choose positive concepts, so that they become as natural as negative beliefs once did.

One of the greatest detriments to mental and physical well-being is the unfortunate belief that any unfavorable situation is bound to get worse instead of better. That concept holds that any illness will worsen, any war will lead to destruction, that any and all known dangers will be encountered, and basically that the end result of mankind’s and womankind’s existence is extinction. All of those beliefs impede mental and physical health, erode the individual’s sense of joy and natural safety, and force the individual to feel like an unfortunate victim of exterior events that seem to happen despite his or her own will or intent.

Ultimately, it is no secret that mental health issues can have a serious impact on your sense of self. Addiction and substance abuse issues for example can have devastating consequences. With this in mind, if you know someone that is living with addiction, sometimes the best thing that you do for them is to point them in the direction of professional help. Rehabilitation has come a long way in recent years, and although overcoming substance abuse issues might not happen overnight, no one is past the point of no return. Consequently, you can find further mental health resources on the Enterhealth website.

The ideas I have just mentioned are all prominent in our society, and now and then they return to darken our senses of joy and expectation.

It is very important that they be recognized when they appear. For that recognition alone can clear our thoughts and mind.

I am saying that to varying degrees those concepts sometimes return, and it should be obvious when this happens less and less. Remind oneself also to remember that oneself does not have any particular disease. Society would be much better of if man and woman labeled multitudinous levels of physical health rather than dignifying negative concepts by giving them names and designations.

The Body Consciousness

The body consciousness, on its own, is filled with exuberance, vitality, and creativity.

Each most microscopic portion of the body is conscious, strives toward its own goals of development, and is in communication with all other parts of the body. The body consciousness is indeed independent. To a large degree its own defense mechanisms protect it from the mind’s negative beliefs — at least to a large extent. As I have mentioned before in past blogs, almost all persons pass from so-called disease state back into healthy states without ever being aware of the alterations. In those cases the body consciousness operates unimpeded by negative expectations or concepts.

When those negative considerations are multiplied, however, when they harden, so to speak, then they do indeed begin to diminish the body’s own natural capacity to heal itself, and to maintain that overall, priceless organization that should maintain it in a condition of excellent strength and vitality.

There are also occasions when the body consciousness itself rises up in spite of a person’s fears and doubts, and throws aside a condition of illness in a kind of sudden victory. Even then, however, the person involved has already begun to question such negative beliefs. The individual may not know how to cast them off, even though he or she desires to do so. It is in those instances that the body consciousness arises and throws off its shackles.

With free will, however, it is not possible for the body consciousness to be given full and clear dominion, for that would deny large areas of choices, and cut off facets of learning. The main direction and portent, however, of the body consciousness on its own is always toward health, expression, and fulfillment.

The molecules, and even the smaller aspects of the body act and react, communicate, cooperate with each other, and share each other’s knowledge, so that on particle of the body knows what is happening in all the other parts. Thus, the amazing organization usually works in a smooth, natural fashion. Many body events that we think of in our society as negative –certain viruses, for example — are instead meant as self-corrective devices, even as fever actually promotes health rather than impedes it.

The main characteristic of bodily consciousness is its spontaneity. This allows it to work at an incredibly swift rate that could not be handled by the topmost conscious portions of the mind. Its operation is due to an almost instantaneous kind of consciousness, in which what is known, with no distance between, say, the knower and the known.

The act of seeing, and all of the body’s senses, are dependent upon this inner spontaneity.

Our “negative” dreams express left-over doubts and fears, and hold the concept that the poorest rather than the best outcome of any event will happen.

Secondary Personalities

People who have epilepsy are afraid of their own energy.

They do not trust it, nor do they trust the spontaneous portions of the self. They are afraid that left alone their energy might strike out against others, and so they short-circuit its use, having attacks that momentarily render themselves helpless.

People with so-called secondary personalities also fear their own energy. They divide it up so that it seems to belong to different personalities, and is therefore effectively, divided. In basic terms, true amnesia does not exist in such cases, though it appears to. The people involved are quite aware of their activity at all times, but they behave in a fashion that is not continuous — that is, the main personality does not seem to behave in a continual manner, but is broken up, or again, seemingly divided. This psychological ploy neatly prevents the so-called main personality from using all of its energy at any one time.

The individuals concerned pretend to themselves that they have no memory of the other personalities’ existences or activities. These personalities, however, store up their energy so that one personality often exhibits explosive behavior, or makes certain decisions that seem to go against the wishes of the main entity. In this way, different kinds of behavior may be exhibited, and while it would seem that many decisions are made by one portion of the self, without another portion of the self knowing anything about it, such usually is not the case. In fact, the main personality is able to express many different kinds of probable action, but the entire personality is prevented from acting with its full energy or power. Instead the energy is diverted into other channels.

All portions of the self are indeed conscious, and they are also basically conscious of each other, though for working purposes they may seem to be separate or isolated.

The idea of the sinful self will not be predominant in my blogs, but I certainly will delve into the many unfavorable concepts that are held by the various religions — concepts that certainly make many people feel that the self is indeed sinful rather than blessed.

The self is indeed blessed, and just the reminder of that fact can often short-circuit negative beliefs, particularly if they are not too deep-seated.

The Will to Live

The will to live can be comprised by doubts,fear, and rationalizations.

Some people, for example, definitely want to live, while they try to hide from life at the same time. Obviously, this leads them into conflicts. Such people will impede their own motions and progress. They become overly concerned about their own safety. If any of my blog readers feel this way, they may even hide these feelings from themselves. They will  concentrate upon all the dangers present in society in their own country, or in other portions of the world, until their own frightened overall concern for safety seems to be a quite natural, rational response to conditions over which they have no control.

What is actually involved is a kind of paranoia, which can become such a powerful response that it can take over a person’s life, and color all projects. If this has happened to any of my blog readers, you might recognize yourself in any number of different scenarios. You might be a “survivalist,” setting up stores and provisions to be used in case of a nuclear disaster. It may seem to you that you are quite justified in protecting yourself and your family from disaster. In many such cases, however, the people so worried about the occurrence of danger from the outside world are instead concerned about the nature of their own energy, and afraid that it might destroy them.

In other words, they do not trust the energy of their own lives. They do not trust the natural functioning of their bodies, or accept this functioning as a gift of life. Instead they question it at every point — even holding their breath at times, waiting for something to go wrong.

Other people may actually impede those portions of the body given to mobility, so that they limp or tighten their muscles, or otherwise tamper with their bodies so that the end result is one that requires a cautious, hesitating approach to motion. Some may even cause themselves to have severe accidents, in which they sacrifice portions of their bodies to retain a sense of false safety.

These rather self-deceptive feelings are not hidden deeply in the subconscious mind, as we might suppose. Instead, in the majority of cases they consist of quite conscious decisions, made at one time or another on quite surface levels.

 

They are not forgotten, but the people involved simply close their own eyes, so to speak, to those decisions, and pretend that they do not exist, simply to make their lives appear smooth and to save face with themselves, when they know very well that the decisions really rest on very shaky ground indeed.

I do not wish to simplify matters, but such decisions can be uncovered very easily in children. A child might fall and badly scrape a knee — so badly that limping is the result, at least temporarily. Such a child will often be quite conscious of the reason for the affair: he or she may openly admit the fact that the injured part was purposefully chosen so that a dreaded test at school could be missed, and the child might well think that the injury was little enough to pay for the desired effect that it produced.

An adult under the same circumstances might become injured to avoid a dreaded event at the office — but the adult may well feel ashamed of such a reaction, and so hide it from himself or herself in order to save feelings of self-esteem. In such cases, however, the adults will feel that they are victims of events over which they have little or no control.

If the same kind of event occurs with any frequency, their fear of the world and of daily events may grow until it becomes quite unreasonable. Still, in most such instances those inner decisions can be easily reached — but while people are determined to “save face,” they will simply refuse to accept those decisions as their own. People will to live, to act or not to act. To a large extent they will the events of their lives — whether or not they are willing to admit this to themselves, and they will to die.

Begin to understand that energy is the gift of this life — to be expressed, not repressed — and to understand, again that spontaneity knows its own order.

It is no coincidence, in our language, that the word “will” refers to the future, as in a line like “it will happen,” and also refers to the decision-making quality of the mind.

 

The Daily Hypothesis

It would help all if we remind ourselves that our creative mind is at work whether or not we are aware of it, and regardless of what we are doing, and that such periods of dead time have the potential, at least, of accelerating creativity, if we allow our intellect to go into a kind of free drive at such times.

Each person has such a daily hypothesis — one that might be quite different for say, Friday than it is for Monday. We build our daily experience partially by such working hypotheses.

Many of the beliefs  that we have individually and jointly are somewhat relieved in the evening, in that they so often apply to the day’s activities, when the rest of the world seems to be engaged in the nine-to-five assembly-line world experience.

We do not project as many negative ideas upon the evening hours, and to same applies to most people to varying degrees. We are jointly free of limitations that might hamper us at other times of the day. We are  less visited by preconceptions of what we are supposed to do in any given hour of the day.

The natural, magical flows of our own rhythms are more often broken up in the daytime. This applies to many people as well, because of our ideas of what we should be doing at any given time, or what is socially respectable, proper, upright, even moral in limited terms.

We have settled upon a system that seems to be naturally based, the exclusive results of our historic past, one in which our main activities are daytime ones. It seems only natural that early man and woman, for example, carried on all of his and her main activities in the day, hiding after dark. As a matter of fact, however, early man and woman were a natural night dweller, and early developed the uses of fire for illumination, carrying on many activities after dark, when many natural predators slept. He and she also hunted very well in the dark, cleverly using all of his and her senses with high accuracy — the result of learning processes that are now quite lost.

In any case, man and woman were not by any means exclusively a daytime creature, and fires within caves extended activities far into the night. It was agriculture that turned him and her more into a daytime rhythm, and for some time many beliefs lingered that resulted from earlier nighttime agricultural practices.

Many people’s natural rhythms, then, still do incline in those directions, and they are always kept operable as alternate rhythms for the species as a whole.

I have some inclinations in that direction, as do many creative people, but these rhythms are often nearly completely overlaid by culturally-learned ones. Cultures that were night-oriented appreciated the night in a different fashion, of course, and actually utilized their consciousnesses in ways that are almost nearly forgotten. I believe there are ancient fairy tales and myths still surviving that speak of these underworlds, or worlds of darkness — but they do not mean worlds of death, as is usually interpreted.

 

In a fashion, the intellect goes hand-in-hand with the imagination under such conditions. It is not that man and woman stressed physical data less, but he and she put it together differently — that in the darkness he and she relied upon his and her inner and outer senses in a more unified fashion. The night portions of our personalities have become strangers to us — for as we identify with what we think of a our rational intellect, then we identify it further with the daytime hours, with the objective world that becomes visible in the morning, with the clear-cut physical objects that are then before our view.

In those times, however, man and woman identified more with his and her intuitive selves, and with his and her imagination, and these to some extent more than now, directed the uses to which he and she put his or her intellect.

This meant, of course, a language that was in its way more precise than our own, for concepts were routinely expressed that described the vast complexity of subjective as well as objective events. There were myriad relationships, for example, impossible now to describe, between a person and his of her dream selves, and between the dream selves of all the members of the tribe. Particularly in warmer climates, man and woman were naturally nocturnal, and did a good deal of his and her sleeping and dreaming in the daytime.

We must remember, of course, that the use of clocks is a fairly recent phenomenon. Men and women thought in terms of rhythms of the time, of flowing time, not of time in sections that were arbitrary. So as far as creature-hood is concerned, we have adapted to a time environment that we ourselves have formed. Creative people, again, are often aware of those connections, at least at certain levels, and I have in particular always felt this way to some extent. We have largely buried our own natural feelings in that direction.

These rhythms are also more natural to us than we suspect. We often have freedoms, then, that we do not use — a 24-hour period that we use quite arbitrarily, one that is already sectioned for us by society — but only if we allow it to be. It can be used in any fashion that we wish.