Beautiful Anna. I too am obsessed with time and rhythm. So much so I wrote a book about the sacred Mesoamerican calendar—which is in fact a system of calendars, each underlying a key part of the human experience in this world. One, the Long Count, which measures vast spans of geological time, is what was misconstrued (as tends to be) by white Western authors, marketers really, to generate the world-is-ending hysteria on December 21, 2012. (On that day, we had people on our FB page of over 160k followers mad, actually mad, that the "prophecy" hadn't come true!)
The other two are the Haab' and the Tzolk'in. The first is a practical calendar pegged to the solar cycle, and used by the Mesoamerican people to tend to their agriculture, taxes and other practical things. The second, the Tzolk'in, is what I wrote my book about, having interviewed scholars and a K'iche' Maya elder in a village in Guatemala. It is a sacred personal astrological calendar that guides people to live in what the Maya call "sacred time" — which is a cyclical, natural rhythm rather than the linear progression our own calendar supports. Having lived with the Tzolk'in for the past 15 years or so, it strikes me how its cycles resonate and ring true cycle after cycle, no matter how much of our own history has passed, how much technology we invent, how much money we make or lose.
You're one of those who have decided to release the prison chains of our modern state of being, and look for ways we can rediscover the old sacred natural rhythms we were once aligned with. Let us all find our new footsteps in these old sands.
p.s. Perhaps I should transfer the FB page over here to Substack. I've long wanted to leave the toxic FB ecosystem.
At some point in reading this, I suddenly felt the pain of keeping time. I remembered the experience of firing a single mother of 3 for attendance violations. This was almost 20 years ago. I was still in college and my leader, who was coaching me on how to lead a team, made me do it as part of my "development." She had been late one too many times in a 30 day period. I knew her life was hard, that the demands of being a poor, single mom were intense, and she really needed the job. She cried. It made me sick. I knew the policy, but I FELT its unfairness. A small example of how time works in the world and on the body.
Beautifully put.
I believe the key is to nurture a strong inner system — people and principles that share your rhythm.
Then the outer systems lose some of their control over your tempo. You can stay aligned, adaptive, and human, even when the world speeds up.
Beautiful Anna. I too am obsessed with time and rhythm. So much so I wrote a book about the sacred Mesoamerican calendar—which is in fact a system of calendars, each underlying a key part of the human experience in this world. One, the Long Count, which measures vast spans of geological time, is what was misconstrued (as tends to be) by white Western authors, marketers really, to generate the world-is-ending hysteria on December 21, 2012. (On that day, we had people on our FB page of over 160k followers mad, actually mad, that the "prophecy" hadn't come true!)
The other two are the Haab' and the Tzolk'in. The first is a practical calendar pegged to the solar cycle, and used by the Mesoamerican people to tend to their agriculture, taxes and other practical things. The second, the Tzolk'in, is what I wrote my book about, having interviewed scholars and a K'iche' Maya elder in a village in Guatemala. It is a sacred personal astrological calendar that guides people to live in what the Maya call "sacred time" — which is a cyclical, natural rhythm rather than the linear progression our own calendar supports. Having lived with the Tzolk'in for the past 15 years or so, it strikes me how its cycles resonate and ring true cycle after cycle, no matter how much of our own history has passed, how much technology we invent, how much money we make or lose.
You're one of those who have decided to release the prison chains of our modern state of being, and look for ways we can rediscover the old sacred natural rhythms we were once aligned with. Let us all find our new footsteps in these old sands.
p.s. Perhaps I should transfer the FB page over here to Substack. I've long wanted to leave the toxic FB ecosystem.
At some point in reading this, I suddenly felt the pain of keeping time. I remembered the experience of firing a single mother of 3 for attendance violations. This was almost 20 years ago. I was still in college and my leader, who was coaching me on how to lead a team, made me do it as part of my "development." She had been late one too many times in a 30 day period. I knew her life was hard, that the demands of being a poor, single mom were intense, and she really needed the job. She cried. It made me sick. I knew the policy, but I FELT its unfairness. A small example of how time works in the world and on the body.