by Marcia Sherman, Ph.D.

Although most intellectuals today look at our world as if it were linear with three dimensions because that's what science can see and measure, I'd like to postulate the idea our existence may be circular. Generations ago, our limited perspective believed our planet was flat and the sun revolved around the earth, yet science was finally able to convince the Catholic Church and then the rest of humanity otherwise. Yet, doesn't it strike you as strange, while science was proving our earth is round and we are actually circumventing the sun, they were, by the same revelation, actually disproving their own theories of everything moves in a straight line and has a beginning and an end?

How could both be true at the same time? Welcome to the world of dualism.

Everything isn't as straightforward as we thought or would like it to be. Maybe it's time we put aside some of our past concepts like religions, science, political beliefs, psychology, competition, getting rich, discrimination, color and racial prejudice and who's right in favor of working together for a change. It's called mutual respect and cooperation.

[I]t appears that lots of human beings love to get one thing in their head and then beat it to death with somebody else's self-esteem.

We have been mostly trapped in the straight line perspective for quite a few years because the predominant wisdom at most Universities today insist that's all there is; no other viewpoint has any validity. Besides, we have evolved enough to recognize that human life has a past, present and future. And once Galileo, Copernicus, Plato, Socrates, Newton and the Cartesian-mechanistic perspective took hold with the European elite and Darwin along with archeologists began to unearth incredible examples of fossils and ancient cultures in our soil, how could we not become enamored by the wonder of their discoveries.

This is not an example of science vs. religion or evolution vs. creationism. I was married to a physics professor and I meditate, so I've always been in favor of the theory of both containing some element of truth. But it appears that lots of human beings love to get one thing in their head and then beat it to death with somebody else's self-esteem. So, to prove my point, virtually all the remaining Celts in Scotland and Ireland plus millions and millions and millions and millions of witches all over Europe gave their lives for hundreds of years for the sake of unseen and uncontrollable realities like emotions, silence, instincts, intuition, healing herbs, childbirth, synchronicity and other invisible and unmeasurable phenomena. When that wasn't enough, they proceeded into Africa and the Americas and destroyed the culture, beliefs and lives of everyone they could find there as well.

Although most people today are not aware of this monumental struggle thanks to the neglect of most of our historians who bought the convenient amnesia without a whimper with the phenomenal exception of Howard Zinn and his wife, people became so gratified with all the new toys the industrial revolution produced, civilization has barely looked back at what we have lost. Well, as I said, life is a circle and our unfortunate distortion is about to come up and hit us in the face.

Most indigenous cultures learned their survival skills from the planet. If one looks at all the so-called "primitive" people, they had what appeared to be a mysterious if not childish perspective on the meaning of life and how to survive. Many Indians built their teepees and yurts as a circle, Stonehenge is circular, the inhabitants of Alaska built their igloos in a circle, eggs are oval, the petals and leaves of flowers and trees are rounded, the orbits of the planets and the galaxies certainly don't move in a straight line and the only sharp edges I have seen is where man has decided to improve things.

This is not an article to cause conflict between science and religion, men and women, truth and fiction, left and right brain thought processes or a reason to debate dualistic thought. Actually, it's a plea for the opposite. The reason being that there is no right or wrong and every perspective has validity all at the same time!

How can this be true? Because there aren't just three dimensions; life is a circle and there is no up or down, past or present, right or wrong or accidents or mistakes to debate.

It's the part of the brain identified as the left side that perceives straight lines, logic and the materialistic outlook as it's perspective because that's the actual function of it's existence! That's it's job! It takes the information coming from all the material world and the right brain, the round, abstract, emotional, intuitive, instinctual, creative, spiritual world and puts it into a recognizable form so we can all identify and converse about it in our objective state of existence! And, this poor left-brain guy feels obviously perplexed in all of his huge variety of belief systems, because how could the part of the brain that thinks only straight possibly understand round.

And if the other side, the right side, did know how to take its amorphous nebulous and be able to shape it into tit for tat, revenge, getting even, competition, manipulation, two sides to every story and all the rules, laws and beliefs that lead to human pain and suffering including war from the ownership, territorial side, instead of fear, anger and emotional reactions, 'she' has to come to the conclusion that it must be the fault of that inflexible, left brain who rationalizes and causes all the problems because it should be perfectly obvious that 'she' couldn't possibly have imagined it. This is the real conflict of Adam and Eve which has nothing to do with sexual content.

But did you know that human interaction also moves in circular ways. People think when they 'get' somebody or throw a punch, verbally or physically, have been aggressive or passive/aggressive or inflict pain on someone else, it ends there. But it doesn't; it always bounces back; like Einstein's theory…when two forces collide...there's an equal, opposite response. You might not know where that slap in the face comes from, but you earned it or it wouldn't be there. This is how the concept of guilt got born but the real energy is called 'consequences.'

Oh, and by the way, what I'm talking about is not the same thing as the psychological concept called projection.

My request is for human beings to become aware that we don't know everything, believe it or not; there may actually be new concepts that we haven't even thought of yet. It is more a prayer that we change our beliefs that one person has to be right and the other person wrong, that some people are more important than others, that some deserve to live like kings and queens while the rest go without food and water, that competition may be fun but it causes wars and great pain to anyone who loses; and, mostly, that we realize how wonderful it is that people are different, be more accepting of each other and learn how to work together without prejudice to make sure all our children and grandchildren can grow up working together for the good of the whole.

© -  2010 - Marcia Christine Sherman, Ph.D. Marcia can be reached at mcsherman@gmail.com.