FLOW PSYCHOLOGY

Source: Circular Time

The Judea-Christian view of time is that it is linear..therefore, it is consistent with a timeline…and so have created time that has a beginning and an end….This is how Western Europe and America have created their view of sacred ‘spaces or locations’. Their linear time view of the world has an ending,the final resting place or Heaven is where their culture defines Sacred locations…This idea that time has a timeline can best be seen in the Bible…For example, the world seen through traditional Christian eyes includes an interpretation of historic political and social events as the cultural views of history in that it is interpretable as God’s plan, which completes after Revelations and the second coming.

This view of time can have numerous impacts on Earth’s spirituality and land. It can be illustrated by the Western European tradition of colonialism and their need to ‘subdue the earth’. These terms are realized because of the feeling that ‘sacred space’ is elsewhere or in Heaven. This belief of the idea that the current location of Earth is inferior or flawed has led to the industrialization of the world and the new global market far cheap goods.

For traditional Native Americans, they conceive time as being circular similarly to the seasons. This view of time as a circle or a repeating process creates continuous unique outcomes that are infinite in possibilities. The circular view of time, if fully realized can do remarkable things to our modern concepts of time. For Example, a belief in continual or infinite time creates a calm refreshing feeling of ‘having time’. The opposite view could be epitomized by a man running to the subway station to catch a train. Alternatively, the idea of ‘Indian Time’, which is ever repeating, has quite interesting effects on the concept of location or space. The word space should not be thought of as outer space, but as an entire area that encompasses their life.

Again, this idea of Indian circular time or after a while the loss of ‘feeling’ of time creates unique bonds with Land, which can be seen in Native Americans sacred locations like mountains and lakes. Once, you lose the idea of time and think of location first, the land you live on becomes your life. This land is than passed from generation to generation. As more and more people live and die on the same piece of land without the thought of time- The location start showing patterns and symbols. these patterns and symbols can be seen by long term inhabitants of the land, which allow them to locate themselves within the concept of Nature.

The inherent feeling of connection to everything is felt by the circular thinker because Time has no meaning and location is the only consideration. This connection to space over thousands of generations, creates the spiritual experience in everyday life. These experiences are felt for thousands of generation in the same spot and patterns start emerging. As patterns emerge the characteristics of animals and plant life can be seen as patterns due to the connection to time and the communal understanding of the location.

Filed under: ecology, perception Tagged: | circular time, flow, Native American, natural, nature, neuroscience, perception, present, social conditioning, society, subconscious, time, universe, wholeness