TAO OF CULTURAL REGENERATION
The Tao Te Qing or The Book of The Way, is the seminal work of Chinese mysticism, written in the 2nd century by Laozi. And it begins with the frase ‘The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao’; this is a book about how to live the best life possible and it begins by saying that what can be said cannot be eternal. This is not a cynical hedging on the part of the author to try to get out of future trouble by what could be said. It’s a very deep point about the limits of language and the knowledge that is attained from experience and not words, authors or books. Wittgeinstein put it as: “the limits of language are the limits of my world”.
“The limits of language are the limits of my world.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language is the process in which we carry around images in our minds and communicate them to each other. We use symbols that represent either sounds or images of those ideas we have in our heads. Language is one of the building blocks of culture, it carries with it and is used for conveying the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about others about the more than human territory. It is used to separate the interconnected world and divide it into small parts that can be resembled in our minds. We use language as a map given to us by other humans, our ancestors that have been thus successful in navigating the territory we inhabit. This world is one of shared meaning and assumptions. Yet there are many realities and experiences beyond our narrative framework that are difficult to convey in language, we live now in a reality where the limits of the territory are showing their boundaries. This is partly the reason why most spiritual teachers resort to a more lyrical style of speaking and writting to attempt to juggle images in our minds together in order to get at a deeper truth, those they themselves have experienced. In short our current language is a very rudimentary tecnology.
Language as representation, specifically written language, removes us from the objects and experience, thus separating time and space. Some including Charles Eisenstein in ‘The Ascend of Humanity’ have suggested that there is a language that is previous to representation where words and images are what they are not representations of what they are, And the creation of representation is reminiscent of the myth of the tower of babel where in having an immenent tecnology that unites spirit and matter we start to reach god.
A good example is ‘the Om’ ॐ in sanscrit by just saying it and letting it resound within your body you start to understand what it means.
For Humans on this planet our experience can be summed into two parts that which surrounds us, what is present, the air we are breathing, the chair we are sitting on, the music we are listening to. presence, images, embodiment, space. And the ideas we carry around our minds about these same things, about ourselves, about the future and past or narrative structures, ideas, symbols, language, culture, Time. Many of us humans, are fragmented between the world of presence and the world of ideas, yet we can become aligned, it is in the process of this alignment where our thoughts about ourselves meet our psychology, our biology is when we begin to realize the beautiful mystery that is to be alive on this planet. To begin to harvest sovereignty and autonomy.
When the spanish arrived to the Americas in the 15th century, they where astounded by their oratory style and beauty with which they conveyed words. With their narrative framework that viewed the world in a linear trajectory from genesis and apocalypses; they thought that they where technologically superior because of their development of the written word and because of their dominance of steel. However the advancement of the book that is seminal in understanding this separation, is without a doubt a huge technological advancement of humanity it decoupled however time and space. The sacred use of the Coca leaf in the American Andes as in ‘Círculos de palabra’ or council as a plant that helps materialize thought into words and then actions, where tensions and problems within a community are resolved help us begin to understand ways of knowing and being that are tied directly to a territory to the more than human counciousness that helps us get beyond narrative structures that tie us to the cultures surrounding separation.
When the map is no longer a square, a piece of paper but a spherical geodesic dome we realize that life is finite complex and beautiful and that all is interconnected and in a process of cause and effect. As the tao says “caught in desire we see only manifestations, free from desires we realize the mystery”
This series of articles on the Tao of Cultural Regeneration seek to build a theoretical and practical set threads hoping to weave a more beautiful tapestry of culture making. That will allow for more stories, ways of being and knowing to come through.
