Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Take Poplar Trees For Instance

Once you have scraped up a small pile of words onto intuition, you must organize and straighten out before you can begin inuiting again - you must understand what it is that you have intuited. The words act as revelation.
Specifically, the mind - I am thinking about what I have come to believe about the mind - not from any theory, but from my own flashes of understanding into how my mind works. The main idea I have become convinced of is that the mind has at least two parts - one contains words & awareness & knowledge, and the other contains abstract understanding of the world. I think of it as under and over the surface of water. I dont say this for any reason except personal experience - I have always felt that words didnt bring knowledge, but brought awareness & articulative light to abstract concepts - ideas - that haven't been particularized, and therefore known personally. What I know I have known - words didn't make me know things. Words made me see what I know. Take poplar trees for instance (this is how I should have started this, with an image - I'll just retitle it) - there is a line of five sky-sweeping poplars behind the house I grew up in. They've always been there. I think I have always loved them. But up until a few years ago I don't think I would have mentioned them to you if I was telling you about my house. I would have told you about things that fit within the common area of our language, or at least the common area that I was a part of at that time; that is, I would told you about the size or color of the house, where it is in the state, how long we had lived there. General stuff.
But a couple years ago, coming on 5 now I guess, I learned the name of the poplar tree. With just that one word, my conception of them ...was brought into the light - came alive ... suddenly I remembered everything I knew & loved about those tall leafy wind-whisperers in the back yard, that had hung above my head since I was little.
The understanding of the trees was there - the sense perception, and the bringing in of that perception into some kind of sub-awareness pool where all understanding mingles in unworded abstraction. Mingles isn't the right word - because there is no particular. Particular things (for that is how they were created) are known, but in the un-worded mind, the abstract mind, they are perceived and held as ... large mass of world color. But my thought is that we have understanding of these things before we word them - that because of the relative unity of all things inside the abstract mind (dare I say "spirit") understanding comes more naturally.
But without words, ... there would be no light, no seeing, no thankfullness and communication of such for this beautiful world. Adam's given task of naming the animals makes more sense at that point.
You who came up with the name for the Poplar tree: thank you.

1 comment:

KMOB said...

im really liking these trains of thought. keep feeding them coal.