Still on the ‘time’ question I was thinking about my stay at Loch Ness these past couple of days.  The loch itself was formed upon a huge fault line where two parts of land have come together and are moving into each other, the sides are as steep as the mountains that overlook it and the bottom is flat.  Two separate continents have crashed and are still moving into each other, technically Scotland is made of two separate lands.  I have been wondering how long it took for our earth to look the way it does at the moment and how long it will take to look different yet again in a time I will never see.  The movement is barely visible yet it is consistently happening,  huge shifts are happening right now so subtly and each step of the change is unnoticeable.  Everything even the mountains are changing, the earth is moving not just in orbit but within itself, from the largest down to the smallest particle everything is moving.  I speak for myself, as a human I’m am rarely conscious of this but it is happening, we are continually adapting on every level all of the time.  What does that do to our psyche, never in stasis,  much large shifting within our consciousness non visible to us in the moment, instead only to be seen in retrospect.  It seems a part of us needs to be aware of what is past in order to understand that we have a ‘now’.

Then & now. Still I am curious about the purpose of moving energy.

Immediate accessible evidence of movement 

There are clues of time when we look.  Tree rings, gases & minerals stored in ice core etc evidence that things are different in this moment compared to another.   This evening as I sat on the banks of the water I saw evidence of time on the rocks, the way they are shaped by the movement of the water

Earlier in my journal I was exploring the experience of separation, beginning with birth, and arrived at our special human gift of perception, the observation, witnessing of something then making a discernment based on our knowledge and experience to date (whether the outcome is helpful or not).  Again I arrive at the curiosity of being human, animals too can discern danger, safety, nurture etc but can they in addition to perception…reason? beyond basic survival? What is it that makes the human life different (if we truly are) from other animals/ mammals?  What is this oddness of perception…the subjectiveness of it? How do we see what we see, both visually and within our mind and being?

Earlier today

Coming back to conversations with others today on being human the quote of the day has to be:

“The human race is nothing but a virus – it has taken a home in a host and feeds off the host endlessly until it destroys it”

-Duncan, Highlands in Scotland

Very like the first day of the trip there is an issue with how we behave in accordance to our environment, whether we nourish it or destroy it.  Duncan believes that the human race is responsible for feeding off of what the earth has to offer and isn’t offering anything back to nourish and grow to aid the health of the planet.
From my knowledge, which is minimal…I think a virus is growing to survive, it is a life form growing multiplying feeding trying to dominate and control to evolve.  Survival of the fittest from a microbiological invisible to the eye perspective. In deep contemplation I find that (aside from the obvious harmful choices made by our species with regard to the environment and its inhabitants) this comment is not far from the truth biologically.  Both us and viruses are the same fundamentally. How do we know that the particles of a virus don’t have conscious thought?

Like day one I am brought back to us being in a position of having the responsibility of making choices to help or harm and find a question further to that being; what is right and wrong when looking at it from a microbiological level (where at the moment I am not aware of any evidence of ‘intent’ in the action just the isness of the process of evolution). I query if there is even such a thing as right and wrong in the natural order or if this a human concept.

Morality

Saw this article and moving away from the microbiological natural order I considered  responsibility, help or harm, right or wrong on a more moral level.  There is something about being human that is about the level of care that we can chose to apply, about morality.  So there is the very nature of being a physical developing organism with its general inner survival instinct and additionally a moral choice. We are faced with the paradox of basic instinct and social existence.  

Much to ponder, I feel my first piece of art coming into being…