more on spiral time
spiral time animation
After writing the last newsletter, I woke up the next morning to a flurry of thoughts.
In spiral time, there are periods of high productivity and periods of daydreamy rest.
What occurred to me later was how shame can distort our perception; how it can keep us feeling stuck on either end of the ellipse.
On one end, we round our project faster and faster. We measure our worth in productivity. Things get really tight and controlled. We lose the natural energy of the gravitational pull and instead whip ourselves around by brute force. We shame ourselves into completion, breaking natural rhythms.
But inevitably, at some point we are forced to let go — we get sick, burn out, something in life goes terribly wrong. In the letting go, we are whipped out far into space. Maybe this shame-fueled momentum flings us much further away. Maybe there is a path of destruction in our wake.
On the other side of the ellipse, we shame ourselves into perpetual inaction. It looks as though we may never do anything again. We are orbiting self hatred, numbing instead of living. There is a muddiness here, ripe with despair.
What I like about these visuals is that meanwhile, we can see that the ellipse persists. as reliable as gravity. seasons continue to change. leaves bloom anew in spring. At any moment we can drop the shame-filled stories. We can forget and remember over and over. It is benevolent by design. the spiral is always on offer, beckoning us back to our natural orbit.