In instances of disaster like ours, it’s good to name on historical knowledge to provide us perspective about what issues and why, and the place we come from and the place we’re going. I’ve at all times discovered such knowledge in indigenous practices and teachings, and one indigenous knowledge keeper who has touched me deeply is José Argüelles, Ph.D.
His guide on The Transformative Imaginative and prescient: The Nature and Historical past of Human Expression has been for me a Bible of artwork as meditation (alongside M. C. Richard’s iconic guide, Centering). There, he underscores the which means and energy of artwork as a religious apply.
One perception Argüelles gives is that this: “When a person is disadvantaged of the facility of expression, he’ll specific himself in a drive for energy.” This underscores how necessary being in contact with our creativity may be in stopping evil.
His critique of boredom and the way the mass media feeds on it’s much more related in right this moment’s world of social media than it was when he wrote his guide over 50 years in the past (1975): Disadvantaged of their very own artistic initiative, the lots gladly flip to no matter leisure could also be provided. It isn’t too far-fetched to say that this boredom makes mass media indispensable, for each boredom and mass media thrive on a thirst for pleasure that may by no means be gratified.
Has this needn’t elevated in our instances? How a lot of political information right this moment because the media portrays it and sure politicians exploit it thrives on a thirst for pleasure?
Argüelles continues: Boredom and leisure perpetuate one another in a vicious circle: as a result of the bored individual is creatively impotent, the leisure he craves is at all times vicarious; being vicarious, it can not fulfill; being dissatisfied and remaining creatively impotent, the bored individual can solely search extra leisure.* And the leisure business is raring to up the ante on depth and dependancy in pursuit of its personal agenda of a quest for infinite earnings.
Argüelles’ guide, The Mayan Issue: Path Past Expertise, reveals the Mayan view of the world and of time and seasons. Late in his life, José and I dialogued publicly on the College of Creation Spirituality, and a principal theme for him at the moment involved the calendar.
He severely criticizes Western considering constructed across the Gregorian Calendar, which Pope Gregory institutionalized in 1582. Argüelles felt it ate up the “Doctrine of Discovery” of the 15th century in its vanity and destructiveness towards indigenous cultures. (The Doctrine of Discovery doc was formally repudiated by Pope Francis, however the horse was already out of the barn after the five hundred years of colonialism it buttressed.)
In his ultimate guide, Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Subsequent Stage within the Evolution of Human Consciousness, Argüelles writes about how humanity is shifting from biosphere to the Noosphere and, in doing so, is “actually passing from one time to a different.” The “outdated mechanistic time” will give strategy to “the Galactic Maya” time, which he characterizes as “the pure time of common synchronization.”
He warns that it’s important to understand this level unequivocally: So long as we proceed to make use of the Gregorian calendar, there’ll by no means be a brand new time.
He sees the Gregorian/mechanistic time as “synthetic.” I might name it deeply anthropocentric—it begins with the human. Earlier than this time was invented, humanity and all of nature lived unconsciously within the medium of pure time. The Gregorian photo voltaic time can also be extremely masculine in distinction to lunar time, which is deeply female.
Indigenous time is cosmic and never anthropocentric. Key to Mayan time, indigenous time, and Noospheric time is the huge interlocking patterns, rhythms, and cycles of the entire of nature as a unitary phenomenon.**
To be continued.
*José Argüelles, The Transformative Imaginative and prescient: The Nature and Historical past of Human Expression , pp. 65f.
**José Argüelles, Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Subsequent Stage within the Evolution of Human Consciousness, pp.55f.
Banner Picture: Element of a Mayan ceremonial Tzolk’in almanac, beginning with day 1 Manik’. From the Dresden Codex. Wikimedia Commons
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that boredom and extreme leisure and greed make a harmful mixture? And that awakening to a Time system that’s not mechanical and anthropocentric however primarily based on the cosmos may liberate humanity and the West particularly?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Creativity: The place the Divine and the Human Meet
The A.W.E. Undertaking: Reinventing Training, Reinventing the Human
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul & Society
Trump & the MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.
Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Pure Grace: dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Important Writings in Creation Spirituality
