Why don't we remember the world before the words?
Words are memory's brick and mortar, the conditions of possibility that make the infinite yesterdays of humans, finite and at all possible.
If not for them, we would live always in the Present Moment, with little awareness of a Past and a Future to project our minds upon.
If not for them, we would live always in the Present Moment, with little awareness of a Past and a Future to project our minds upon.
Early Development
For an innerdance facilitator, it is interesting to think of the mental functions of young children, particularly of those between 1 to 3 years old. In the spiritual experience, we borrow various features of the toddler's mind that undergoes initiation stages of moving into words, language and memory. Prior to this stage, a baby doesn't understand Time or Space as we do. A baby's cognitive structure only allows for what is currently taking place.
A baby does not think of something that is not in the room. A baby doesn’t have a timeline to draw from. In order to have a “past,” patterns and memory need a library of conceptual containers. Vessels that can retain the world as a set of abstract thought patterns that are meaningful and inter-related.
A baby does not think of something that is not in the room. A baby doesn’t have a timeline to draw from. In order to have a “past,” patterns and memory need a library of conceptual containers. Vessels that can retain the world as a set of abstract thought patterns that are meaningful and inter-related.
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Slowly thus, babies repeat basic sound patterns as they move their bodies across the room, bringing Sound, Movement and Image to Convergence:
1.) The spatial mappings in their brain allow images to be organized in the Iconic Network in the Brain. 2.) The various sound and frequency combinations a small child hears are organized in the Echoic Network in the Mind. 3.) The movements the baby and toddler makes become the glue that merges echoes and icons into the Sound-Image, what would eventually be represented by Words, organized in the Brain's Semantic Network. |
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These networks (and there are more) provide the blueprint for Mind and Personality. When deep Transformations occur, these networks are redrawn from the mind's most foundational architectures.
In the innerdance, the adult's rigid networks of sounds, images and words stored in memory are flushed fluid, rendering solid structures watery and windy. This topic was touched in so many ways in the Orange, which we consider inversely in the Blue. How does the human mind return to the world of words, after resting from it for a time and a half.
The general theory that shares how words emerge as memory containers are found in the seminal work of the Russian Developmental Psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Theory of the Mind describes how words act as mental placeholders for our minds. Building on the initial work of Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, Vygotsky proposed how toddlers initially had to fuse Sound and Words together during the Egocentric Speech Stage - the process in which toddlers often talk to themselves at the first onset of Language Production.
In the toddler, Sound and Meanings come together. Babies lived in Sound Spectrums, and when they uttered baby talk, it was a way of thinking and moving through spaces without a sense of the separation between objects, self and world. Prior to Ego-Centric or Private Speech, small children speak socially. The inner mind is linked with the outer environment.
In the innerdance, the adult's rigid networks of sounds, images and words stored in memory are flushed fluid, rendering solid structures watery and windy. This topic was touched in so many ways in the Orange, which we consider inversely in the Blue. How does the human mind return to the world of words, after resting from it for a time and a half.
The general theory that shares how words emerge as memory containers are found in the seminal work of the Russian Developmental Psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Theory of the Mind describes how words act as mental placeholders for our minds. Building on the initial work of Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, Vygotsky proposed how toddlers initially had to fuse Sound and Words together during the Egocentric Speech Stage - the process in which toddlers often talk to themselves at the first onset of Language Production.
In the toddler, Sound and Meanings come together. Babies lived in Sound Spectrums, and when they uttered baby talk, it was a way of thinking and moving through spaces without a sense of the separation between objects, self and world. Prior to Ego-Centric or Private Speech, small children speak socially. The inner mind is linked with the outer environment.
The baby's thoughts are thoroughly soaked in the world. Everything is connected, nothing is separate. All thinking are expressed by the body and the noises, to be heard by others, to be coordinated with the world's dance. Nothing to a baby is invisible, all thoughts are made Public.
As words are slowly learned, so is time constructed - Time is constructed out of an ocean of meanings from where thought systems arise. In the existence of Time (during Ego-centric Speech), babies begin to internalize the external universe. They begin to shape a world of their own, through basic structures their central nervous system is able to grasp. As they hear and absorb more and more words, their initial language system acts as a scaffolding that support the future mature mind.
Around the age of 5 to 7, speech shifts inwards. Children have learned to think and hold their own sacred secrets, achieving a Self-Concept, an Identity. At this stage, thought has been created.
In the long innerdance, the above process happens overnight or over the span of years. Facilitators must revisit the mysteries of the Egocentric Stage, that sacred moment when a Self surfaces from the Ocean of Oneness.
Turn to Speak
During the Egocentric Speech Stage, Children are able to structure their mind and its contents be engaging in listening and speaking, taking turns to do so. Similarly, questions and answers are revealed between the left and the right brain, both of which are activated in conversations, a dialogue that often takes place in the innerdance process where it feels like a group of people are given a chance to "be alone together."
Very often, people give the feedback as to how crying, talking, screams or laughter emanating from other people seem to speak to the internal experiences they are undergoing. Like looking into a mirror, some kind of internal dialogue is happening externally, healing rifts and ruptures that took place in one's childhood or adult life that allows all of the Unspoken to be Spoken through the language of energy. Especially in those who were not given free expressions during their formative years, there are clear blockages in the Voice and one's expression patterns being cleared in so many ways.
Very often, people give the feedback as to how crying, talking, screams or laughter emanating from other people seem to speak to the internal experiences they are undergoing. Like looking into a mirror, some kind of internal dialogue is happening externally, healing rifts and ruptures that took place in one's childhood or adult life that allows all of the Unspoken to be Spoken through the language of energy. Especially in those who were not given free expressions during their formative years, there are clear blockages in the Voice and one's expression patterns being cleared in so many ways.
Additional study material
Our cosmic clockworks - essay on facilitation, music and language in the innerdance processes.