Tag: earth

Patterns in Process: Transdisciplinarity as a Background for Working with the Elemental Cycle of Transformation

Abstract

This essay outlines connections between the Elemental Cycle as an archetype of transformation, transdisciplinarity, and cybernetics. A number of questions are addressed: the nature and importance of connecting these fields, an examination of resources and the dominant disciplinary discourses for the associated fields, and a critical examination of my assumptions, beliefs, and position.

Introduction

How often do we find ourselves in a position of not being able to see something unless it is first pointed out to us? This happens all the time with the visual and other physical senses, but of course also occurs in our thinking; certain concepts seem to hide in plain sight, and unless we are cued into where and how to look for (or to think about) them, they slide on by as a part of the undifferentiated background of conceptual life. Usually we are introduced to these sorts of concepts just like we are to new people, through a third party who is already familiar with each of us: “Seth, I’d like you to meet Recursion; Recursion, this is Seth.” Often with this sort of introduction comes an experience: “Oh hello Recursion! You know, I feel like you must hang out at some of the same coffee-shops as I do, but we’ve never been formally introduced.” And so a relationship begins with a concept, and just as with human beings, you can become more intimate and familiar, get into fights, seek new levels of understanding, and go on adventures. (more…)

January 21, 2012
Blow your mind with epistemology and ontology!

To begin in the middle:

– There is no “it”, but there is talk about “it”. Ultimately the talk about “it”, the pointing to “it”, is more fundamental to “it” than anything else, because it is the RELATIONS that are primary: thingness is a subset of relatedness. Relations are not between two “things” but are recursively self-generated between other relations – things fall out of relations (things = Earth, relations = Water). Relations themselves are a precipitate of tension between complementarily opposing potentials (Air). Relations are to opposing potentials as things are to relations. Opposing potentials are themselves a precipitate of the whole, and work alongside each other within the whole simultaneously. Each step from the whole is a step-down transformation, we could say that beginning with level N, we move to level N-1. Each level is pulled out of simultaneity by an act of distinction within the whole, of the whole, by the whole. A cascading of levels of distinction yields the ontology of “things”, and simultaneously an epistemology of “knowing” activity, which together yield the whole of cosmology.

– This can be approached in another way. We can begin first with a problem of the modern condition, made apparent most strongly by both postmodernism and deconstructionism. The problem is that language is (more…)

March 5, 2011
a tiny window

a tiny window gathers the world

echoes morning’s rush of life

amazingly, my fingers trace your carved shoulder

like they have never known geometry

somebody somewhere is getting coffee,

walking the dog, dressing for a long day –

but not we, whose worlds have just collided

under the gaze of a tiny window

that no one is looking through

because we are beyond ourselves now

and I know this by the way your hair

threads lightly across the bow of your cheek

by the way every gesture becomes music

and because when you smile I am lost

again, you have taken my watch, and found forever in the bargain –

I pretend to be offended because my world is now upside down

and I can’t understand why everything else isn’t falling

drawn inexorably by the velvet honey of your eyes

this must be what yes is

this must be the future twining round our ankles

lacing up our hands in unspoken prayer

while beyond our reach the coiled leopard of time

anchors claws to earth for its inevitable leap

why should time be linear anyway?

for it is the timeless in us that is now rejoicing

in this spiraling pressing of bodies and souls

upwards into the long arms of the sky

through a tiny window

a tiny window gathers the world
echoes morning’s rush of life
amazingly, my fingers trace your carved shoulder
like they have never known geometry

somebody somewhere is getting coffee,
walking the dog, glancing at a watch –
but not we, whose worlds have just collided
under the gaze of a tiny window
that no one is looking through

because we are beyond ourselves now
and I know this by the way your hair
threads lightly across the bow of your cheek
by the way every gesture becomes music
and because when you smile I am lost

again, you have taken my watch, and found forever in the bargain –
I pretend to be offended because my world is now upside down
and I can’t understand why everything else isn’t falling
drawn inexorably by the velvet honey of your eyes

this must be what yes is
this must be the future twining round our ankles
lacing up our hands in unspoken prayer
while beyond our reach the coiled leopard of time
anchors claws to earth for its inevitable leap

we care not of its landing
for it is the timeless in us now rejoicing
in this spiraling pressing of bodies and souls
upwards into the long arms of the sky
through a tiny window

July 30, 2009
on destruction

The role of destruction, and of the working out of polarities, is a subject that has been dealt with an the alchemical tradition for a very long time. Alchemically, it is understood that the issue you are dealing with, in which you find yourself (the prima materia) MUST go through a process of putrefaction, of fermentation… the individual elements cannot by themselves produce a work of lasting value (a Great Work), but must be destroyed in order to be refined. The refined elements then have the capacity to ‘marry’ the other elements to form a higher, more integrated, more complex and simple unity which ennobles and embodies the transformation of the worst parts of ‘the matter’.

All diagnoses are misdiagnoses because they stay at the level of the overt fact, and do not take into account the necessary inclusion of relationship, reversal, and the whole. The image of the fireweed and the pinecone are examples in nature of the aspect of the Fire element in which destruction is required for new life. In this sense, the destruction is viewed not as a negative process but as a transformative one, in which the potentials of the lower state are realizable only through their passing away, and indeed, it is their very passing away which creates the space (Air element) into which the potential new state can flow, because room is made for it.

The same pattern occurs in the human being all the time – we do not transform without the heat of the Fire, also known as the Will – but not a will directed towards a specific absolute (an Earth), but what is known as an ‘open will’, which is just the part which maintains itself by transforming itself through its own death into a new state…

February 13, 2009
concerning the evolution of consciousness

Earth –> Day-waking (i.e. ‘normal’ adult) consciousness
Water –> Imaginative consciousness
Air —-> Inspirational consciousness
Fire —> Intuitive consciousness

Earth –> Thinking ‘about’ – object-oriented
Water –> Thinking ‘with’ – process oriented
Air —-> Thinking ‘between’ – polarity-oriented, (Brad exemplifies this very well)
Fire —-> Thinking ‘as’ – whole-oriented

Further, considering that all thinking is relational, and all relations are between beings:

Earth –> consciousness of other as if the other was an object (separation)
Water –> consciousness of other as if you were dreaming into the other’s experience, as if you were ‘seeing’ in an inner way the other’s perspective
Air —-> consciousness of other “as if” you were the other from the inside, as if you were ‘hearing’ in an inner way the tonality of the other’s experience
Fire —> consciousness of other AS the other, as if the other were living through and into you directly, with almost no distinction between who is who

The sequence is one which lays out the polarities between separation and coincidence of self and other. Goethe made a strong case for the Water, or process, level of experiencing with his morphological studies of plants and his scientific work (particularly optics).

Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

January 28, 2009