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A strange title for this post, however, comes from the research I am carrying out to develop the essay that will be called “Dintornism in Literary Creation”. I have already commented on the concept of Dintornism which I defined in my book “Dintornism. A plastic-philosophical theory of reality”, in posts DRAWING, TO KNOW BETTER OURSELVES, DRAWING AND THRESHOLDISM, TO KNOW OUR INNER SELF, and DRAWING AS SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE.

Although it is a title that sounds philosophical and in a way it is, its overall conception also contains very concrete and practical aspects about walking and other topics, which as the blog and reflection have developed, I have been able to correlate with the WALK-RWD SYSTEM, such as Abstraction, Meditation, Concentration, Relaxation both physical and mental, Ecstasy, Contemplation, the Unconscious, Synchronicity, Archetypes that are intimately related to the theme of emptiness (in Sanskrit: Sunyata), which are an important part of the Indian philosophical-religious mentality.

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In this case it is a matter of identifying and valuing the concept of Emptiness with the WALK-RWD System of walking, reading, writing and drawing. And that it has a close relationship with our external senses, as I will explain later.

Emptiness as an Indian (Hindu) concept, is a path that we can use for a better awareness (application and use: utilization) of the WALK-RWD system.

Let us first try to understand this term from the conceptual point of view of Indian philosophy, in its origins.

The Upanishads texts -from the most remote centuries, 8th century b.C.- The Indian philosopher and monk Nagarjuna (2nd century A.D.) took up the concept of Emptiness and began to use it in a more profound way, affirming that the human being could awaken in such a way that he would be able to observe and understand the reality that surrounds us.

I must point out that the qualifier of empty, vacuous or vacuity does not represent trivial, futile or obtuse aspects, but it means one of the greatest conceptions that Hindu philosophy (Brahmnism, Buddhism and Jainism) has ever conceived and established. We are obviously not referring to that kind of emptiness that we experience and feel when, for example, we watch television, without seeing it, or when we listen to the radio, without hearing it; that we do not separate ourselves from those electronic devices – because we do not want to and cannot – for 1, 2 or more hours and without being attracted or interested in seeing and listening.

On the contrary, that power of observation – seeing, thinking and imagining – through the lens of the Sunyata (Emptiness), about all the things that surround us in an empty way, allowed the person an absolute awakening.

Master Nagarjuna suggested that in order to achieve this power of liberation and awakening it was indispensable to live a special way of life; to move and remain in a differentiated existence (in Sanskrit: Samsara) to the traditional one, and appropriate to the new way of observing the world (external and internal reality).

The Sunyata works by creating and allowing the observation of new worlds (external reality and internal reality) by allowing the unveiled enquiry (seeing, thinking and imagining) through meditation, creating different forms of thought, which will be empty elements to reach the absolute awakening.

To achieve this awakening, a path must be followed, the path of the Sunyata or Emptiness, an empty path, a path of detachment and munificence (generosity and altruism). It is a path that must be travelled and in which there are no exaggerated extremes, but which is sown with moderate demands and actions.

This moderation is the qualification that must be arranged so that actions under the guidelines of the Mahayana or Nagarjuna school of emptiness are at the midpoint of human behavior, centered within the extreme limits of the human condition.

Extreme actions are cancelled as a functional demand of the Sunyata, however, if for some reason the “sunyatins” (adepts) had – or have – to relate to exaggerated actions or ideas they can always cancel or avoid them by rejecting them. Nagarjuna’s School flourished precisely because it responded to this moderation in demands and condemned the obligatory nature of behavior in exaggerated extremes; hence it included the way of the Middle Path, or the Middle Centre or the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) in its philosophy.

The world is empty. Things are empty. Concepts, like words, are heard empty. These are the fundamental philosophical propositions of the Mahayana or school of Emptiness. What we present in this post is one more of the dozens of interpretations that have been sought on the stipulations and foundations of Nagarjuna’s school of thought of Emptiness, the Mahayana.

For our western conception to imagine that our existence is a void and that it is surrounded by empty things is quite confusing, however, we should not understand it as an absolute and unlimited vacuity; we would better understand it as a Metaphysical Emptiness.

For Nagarjuna this philosophy was a creative process that she used to achieve the Awakening.

This objective could be equated to a philosophical rebirth that involves the mental, the emotional and the spiritual.

In order to achieve this, it is essential to walk on an empty path, the path of emptiness. This goal is achieved through imagination and fantasy, and upon reaching this empty place, the awakening begins, which in turn, impacts our own imagination and fantasy because of how disturbing the concept of Emptiness is for us.

How and what is this path to Awakening?

How can we take the right path to Awakening and not make mistakes?

Emptiness (Sunyata) is the characteristic nature (proper and real) of all things, of all beings, of all existence. There is nothing that is not empty.

Nagarjuna’s instruction and teaching was a path that had to be travelled by rejecting extremes; that path had to be followed through the middle points, without touching the extreme limits of the human condition.

That walk along the middle way must be done with defined and precise (concrete) actions of the being, conditioned or not, voluntary or involuntary, generated by necessity, by desire or by instinct.

In order to be able to lead ourselves along this middle way, we must use meditation, leaning creatively on imagination and fantasy, avoiding falling into extremes (passions, hatred, greed, etc.) with the purpose of seeking to make Karma lose its capacity to reproduce itself, and thus be able to reach liberation from all suffering and from reincarnation, by achieving Nirvana.

Now, all those sensitive (the 5 senses) and thinking forms are empty, and it is precisely the realization and recognition of that Emptiness – awakening – that makes us walk through that empty reality – an apparent reality – and that only in this way can we remain in the sphere of Awakening.

In the WALK-RWD system, the precise, specific and delimited path that we define with our walk, by fixing our footprints on the floor of the path we choose, is unique and unrepeatable, because it is impossible to duplicate it, in the same way that Heraclitus explained in his conception of becoming: a person can never bathe twice in the same waters of a river, because they change and flow permanently. To paraphrase him we would say: a person can never make a journey twice in the same way on the same chosen path.

These are the traces of our journey, along a defined path.

I would like to mention a passage from Borges in one of his essay-reports, although it refers to a questioning of the Holy Scriptures (Borges would certainly deny this, and I add: with good reason). I wish to comment on it because I do believe that our steps (physical and in allegories) do describe some form of our feeling and thinking, not to mention our attitudes, and why not? also our future, since to walk, to advance, is to define “a path of the future” or meaning of life. Borges says: Those people thought that a Creation prescribed by the Holy Spirit was a categorical discourse […] That wonderful premise of an enigmatic book to chance […] Their apology is that nothing can be casual in the work of an Infinite Intelligence. And he comments that every theologian will always be willing to explain it. Borges prefers to give an example and that is precisely what I want to emphasize. He explains: The steps that a human being takes, from the day he is born until he dies, draw in time [and space] an inconceivable figure; and the Divine Intelligence perceives that figure immediately, like that of men a triangular figure. And he adds: This figure has its own motive and function in the construction and economy of the Universe.

I observe it more concretely: it is not necessarily a complex filigree, it is the first step of any day, the direction we take, the sense of our steps, … and of course, it has a personal purpose – encrypted – or a function in the economy of the universe, as Borges points out.

Using my theory of Dintornism, and making an analogy with a painting, we can say that the physical limits of the path we are travelling, which are on both sides of it, is the frame of the painting; what is represented in the painting plastically with lines, shapes, colors, etc. (conformation, configuration, organization), is equivalent to those traces of the route of our journey, throughout the whole of the journey. The interpretation that is achieved from the pictorial work is an equivalence referred to our path and walk (line and body expression).

We can walk as we please: forward, backward, zigzagging, slowly, hastily, etc., with the observation that these traces specifically mark a personal and unrepeatable route.

Our walk (the complete line made up of the traces) is conditioned to not leaving the path, just as the painting is done within the frame.

Here it is indispensable to mention something so that oriental thought on Emptiness can be clarified a little. When reference is made to the fact that all things are empty we must understand – as we have pointed out in our essay on Dintornism – that they are empty because we are directing (using) our senses towards formations (creations, structures, works) that we do not perceive. In the Dintornism system we have called these empty structures “Absence Ensemble”. We are directing our sight towards a space where we cannot see; we are wrong where we think we are going to observe something; simply what we suppose to be in a space absent to our sense of sight, is in another place; our vision is misdirected. We try to hear something where there is no sound; we are wrong to direct our ears to a point where we cannot hear anything; our sense is misdirected because the source of sound is elsewhere. And in both cases we can assure that there is an Absent Set, which allows us to become aware of the apparent reality and re-discover the true one.

Returning to our theme of walking, one difference between the functional principles of the Walk-RWD system and the philosophy of Emptiness is that the latter, through its path, leads the individual to a final place: Nirvana, where he attains freedom from suffering and reincarnation; and in the WALK-RWD system his achievements are obtained throughout his journey, from the beginning to the end; and when he reaches the end point, we have already achieved all the satisfactions and benefits that the Walk-RWD system grants and favors (Future posts THE IMPORTANT IS NOT TO REACH THE END and THE “HOW” IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN “WHAT”).

Taking away the philosophical and religious part from the Hindu concept of suffering, we can say that the WALK-RWD system is equivalent, as it also seeks to eliminate suffering within the physical (body) and emotional (mind/psychic) conceptions; and on the other hand, we can definitely state that it has no relation to the spiritual situation (religious belief) of reincarnation.

Now, the path of Emptiness leads us – very appropriately and certainly – to balance and awareness of the aspects outlined in the table below:

All these aspects are also the practical underpinnings of the Hindu philosophical building of the Mahayana, the religious-philosophical current of Emptiness.

On the other hand, our WALK-RWD system leads us, also in an effective way, to balance and become aware of the aspects that are related at the end of the post.

We try to walk the path, in both systems, to discover and appreciate the absence of things.

In the Mahayana (Hinduism), Nirvana is reached and all these “actions” are interrupted, specifically by being able to achieve liberation from all suffering and reincarnation; while in the Walk-RWD system the relationship is not lost and continues to flow, it is an inexhaustible regime.

For example, in both ways a healing THERAPY – on some physical and emotional ailments – is achieved.

In the Middle Way (Madhyamaka), applied in the Mahayana, we are strengthened physically and mentally, by generating, through various states and conditions, a transcendent reflection, which leads us towards the interior of a light, which has its own and real nature – all things have that natural characteristic of being empty – and by an infinite illusion (maya) that is impossible to escape from, and that furthermore, one does not wish to escape from it, because one is receiving a healing generated by the Mahayana system. In the Walk-RWD system it is not necessary to “enter” into an infinite illusion, but simply to follow the natural behaviors of the human being, the paths of the human condition, such as walking, and all the results that will be obtained, of the extraordinary type, are not super-natural.

We can face the ordered or the disordered, the positive or the negative, the good or the bad, the corrupt or the uncorrupted, the just or the unjust, the true or the false, the healthy or the unhealthy, etc., by setting ourselves to walk as an active and yet reactive operation.

Returning to sensory perception, in both healing currents, actions are a consequence of our perceptions, of what our senses perceive, of what our organism (body, mind and spirit) feels.

In the Madhyamaka (Eastern thought and feeling) the stimuli and reactions are oriented more by the sensory channels and less by reason; whereas in the WALK-RWD (Western thought and feeling) system, both – the stimuli and reactions – are oriented more by reason than by the sensory channels.

A fundamental element, common to both processes, is the walking of the middle path; in both, actions are carried out that encourage and stimulate each other, and each of these actions (activities, mental-emotional aspects) serve as a motor to invigorate and move along the whole path, and always keeping away from the extremes. In both methods, too, time is usually ignored, i.e. they are so dynamic and efficient that one arrives at and remains in the total abstraction of external circumstances and stimuli (agents), keeping one focused on the respective purposes of one or the other process.

In the Mahayana, as one moves through and advances in the process of preparation and learning (doctrinal training and formation), one comes to know and understand Existence (Samsara) and this training-learning is achieved through a continuous practice of sensory perception, knowing things and the interrelationship of all of them, but always through the middle way (Madhyamika), that is, without touching or experiencing the extremes.

Some thinkers say that the practice of Mahayana leads to the fact that it can be achieved or not, that it can happen or not, that it can result or not. However, our interpretation leads us to believe that the Mahayana leads unfailingly, through training and education, eliminating ignorance, to achieve Nirvana and Awakening, because it is possible and achievable, there is no doubt about it, and the possibility of not achieving it must be eliminated.

According to these forms of correspondence and identity that exist between the Mahayana and the WALK-RWD system, we will be able to emphasize the 3 activities structured within it (reading, writing and drawing, while walking), developing them – as we have expressed in their respective posts – in a moderate way and none of them should be placed in extremes, but should be within a path, way or middle way, that is, “the most important or main activity” and “the less important or trivial activity” are omitted; It is not necessary to live in the past and in the future, only to live in the present; the past is false and the future more so, the here and now are true (Post THE “HERE AND NOW” WITH THE SYSTEM); that is to say, time does not experience these two extremes, the past and the future, both do not exist, except in our minds as memories (already lived) or expectations that are not yet realizable; therefore, to live in the past or in the future is not to live, at most it is to use our mind to remember or to desire illusions or fantasies, that is why it is advisable to go through the middle way, through the present. In everything related to the WALK-RWD system, we must avoid and eliminate all extremes, so that the “walking” must be done by that middle way, within the extreme limits, and the 3 structured activities (reading, writing and drawing) must be kept also by that way.

Finally, I would like to comment that, just as we have condensed the aspects of the Mahayana school that we believe allow us to reach a balance and become aware of them all, we also list below those aspects where the WALK-RWD system has shown (proven) its real and positive effectiveness.

(*)One theoretical graphical-analytical way to better understand how these confronted processes work, is by using vector theory; I emphasize: just to understand it better (Essay in progress on Emptiness using Vector Analysis).

So let us achieve this Western-type awareness by putting the WALK-RWD system into practice and observe its relationship to those aspects of Eastern philosophy that are locked into the Mahayana system or Nagarjuna’s school of VACUITY.

Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Dintornism. A plastic-philosophical theory of reality, EMULISA, México, 2012. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0D6C18SS9

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At the beginning of any day -talking about walking- we have the option of repeating the same routine of the previous day, or changing it, we can choose a new path, and when we reach it, we have the option of walking to the right or to the left, in one direction or the opposite, etc.

In the same way, living can be with joy or with sadness, with love or with hate, with self-criticism or approving us, with order or with disorder, with humility or with competition, with love or with contempt, with fatness or with thinness, with health or with sickness, in short, we can continue with the analogy and observe more closely both stages.

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We said in the first part that when we decide to repeat our walk along the same path, it is an analogy to our own existential behavior, since we are having the same performance within our circumstantial environment, and this should lead us to reflect on our walk in order to carry it out for the sole pleasure of doing it, that is, of accepting and loving ourselves. In this regard, I would like to comment on what three thinkers have said.

Butler says: “The introduction of subtly new elements in our way of acting gives us certain advantages: the new then merges with the old and this helps us to endure the monotony of our action. But if the new element is quite alien to us, there is no merging of the old with the new, because nature seems to be just as horrified by any too great a deviation from our ordinary practice as it is by the absence of any deviation at all.”

It is necessary to be aware that progress must be made with our own emotional and intellectual development.

Poupnel says: “The idea of progress is logically associated with the idea of resumption and repetition. The habit already possesses in itself the meaning of progress; by effect of the acquired habit, the act that is restarted is started again with greater ease and greater precision; the movements that execute it lose their excessive amplitude, their useless complication; they are simplified and shortened. Parasitic movements disappear. The act reduces the expense to the necessary minimum, to sufficient energy, to the minimum time. And at the same time that the dynamism is improved and made more precise, the work and the result are perfected”.

Finally, Bachelard, to have an opinion on what we have sometimes heard about routine, comments: “The habit is a routine simile of a novelty”. “Habit is a synthesis of novelty and routine”. “The organ is built by function, and for organs to be complex, it is enough for functions to be active and frequent [routine]. Everything is then equivalent to using an increasing number of the instants that time offers” (Future Post WALKING AND FREE TIME. PART II). “A particular habit is a sustained rhythm, where all the acts are repeated equalizing in a quite exact way their value of novelty, but without ever losing that dominant character of being a novelty”. And finally, he clarifies: “We recognize ourselves in our character because we imitate ourselves and because our personality is thus the habit of our own name”. In other words, we repeat ourselves when we are routine, because we accept ourselves with satisfaction.

Artwork # 369 MAYAN DANCE OF LIFE

We must meditate on the defenestration that we sometimes hear that routine is pathetic; for according to this thought of Bachelard’s we could say: That I repeat myself recurrently, because I accept myself as I am, and this means great mental health. In our metaphorical analogy, we would say As I love my body, that’s why I exercise it by walking; I appreciate myself as I am and that’s why I advance in life. I like to walk, ergo, I accept myself.

In another analogical scenario, we can say that when we walk we do so in the sense of “forward” never backward, and if we ever experience it that way, there must be a reason for it, for which we must be aware and careful, because we could fall or lose our way (Future Post WALKING BACKWARDS; Future Post BRAIN GYMNASTICS WHILE WALKING); in the same way it happens to us in life when our thoughts and attitudes are denials, resistances or protests. I propose that we walk in life with a positive sense, that is, with joy, love, approving ourselves, with order, with humility, with health, and throw forever out of our being, into the trash, and set fire to sadness, hate, self-criticism, disorder, competition, contempt, disease.

Let’s make our walks every day, advancing in the right direction, normal, let’s not do it in the wrong direction, because we will lose our balance and fall down (Unless it is a special exercise like what is proposed in future Post BRAIN GYMNASTICS WHILE WALKING).

In normal life it is more difficult to be guided by the right sense, we go astray and return, again and again, to negative thoughts and attitudes; but let us think that walking on our feet, in the natural sense, forward, has no problem in orienting us, and so must be our acting, thinking and feeling for life by having attitudes and thoughts always positive, always in the right sense. Let’s do it this way, let’s try and observe that everything is composed, accommodates and renews us. Let’s remember that even behaving in a routine, repetitive way is to advance and progress in life. I can be myself by accepting myself, because every moment of my existence can be an opportunity to be reborn with my own being, with my own self, with our approval and our acceptance of ourselves. Let us be guided by our own sense of life.

Artwork # 669 CONSPIRACY OF LIFE

Now, let’s keep on walking on the path, trail that we choose, avoiding the stones and obstacles that we encounter along the way. Many times we recognize some stretches where we can imagine some problems, so we must be more careful where we step. In the same way, we must observe very carefully in order to make as few mistakes as possible.

Every nook, cranny or sinuousness in your walk is a new source of knowledge, observation, contemplation, admiration. The new replaces what was seen in the previous bend. Every day is a rebirth, even when we choose the same path of the previous day, we must not look back and if we do it will be to feed the new options and decisions. You don’t have to look for what others have found or achieved, and you don’t need anyone’s approval to move forward.

When you walk you can do it accompanied, in solitude (Post WALKING AND THE ELECTION OF LONELINESS. PART I, and post WALKING IN SOLITUDE, AN ANALOGY OF LIFE), by singing, in silence, reading aloud (Post WALKING AND READING IN LOUD VOICE); you are master of your time (Post THE WALK AND THE LACK OF TIME), you are free to do as you please (Post WALKING AND FREEDOM, future Post WALKING AND THE PATHS OF FREEDOM, and future Post WALKING AND INNER FREEDOM. THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AS LIBERATION). In the same way you can realize it in the path of existential life.

Now, if you continue to walk on the chosen path, the experiences about the pitfalls that you observed during the journey, you must keep them as what they are, simple experiences and never assimilate them in a traumatic way, because you could become paralyzed and not be able to continue walking, or you would do it in a zigzag or with fears; unless you have suffered a very strong fall. (Future Post THE CONCEPT OF EXPERIENCE AND WALKING). Always remember: you have chosen the path yourself and you will continue to do so! In everyday life with no one you have to look good, nor do you have to ask anyone for their approval. In work activities it’s different (Future Post WALKING AND FREE TIME. PART II). Your experiences are yours alone and no one is to blame for your steps, good or bad, right or wrong. All your past decisions serve to shape the meaning of your life, consciously or unconsciously; but no negative experience should inhibit your next decision making.

Artwork # 952 INNOCENCE IS LIFE

You want to stay on your chosen path, Good! No one is forcing you to walk in any way, nor are you required to take a certain speed, you have dressed as you have decided, and if it gets dark it is for your own pleasure. You can’t blame anyone if you get lost on the path.

Every decision that we make, from adolescence onwards, is and will be self-conscious. The accumulation of them allows us to advance in our existence and we always wish to break down our physical and intellectual limitations with the purpose, conscious or unconscious, of transcending in life. (Post THE WALK AND THE INSTINCT TO LEAVE THE PLACE OF ORIGIN).

Let’s go for a walk imagining that this 30 minutes walk will be a representation of what we will be able to experience vitally during the day that begins.

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There are many researchers who have dedicated themselves to investigating into totemism. The following list falls short: Sigmund Freud, James George Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Andrew Lang, John Ferguson McLennan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, Franz Uri Boas, J. Long, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Alexander A. Goldenweiser, Wilhelm Stekel, and as one might expect, there are discrepancies between some of their hypothetical considerations and the conclusions they reached; however, I must thank them all for their efforts and intense work, because they allowed me to outline a new perspective that has contact with their research. The central part of my thesis lies in the origin of Totemism and the observation (contemplation) that the Totem was a spiritual effect that was generated in the transition from nomadism to sedentary life; in other words, I consider that this representation was related to the natural activity of the human being’s journey, an exposition (hypothesis) that I will present below, in this first part which is a study of this relationship, in its anthropological aspects, and later, to complement it with a second part, which is analyzed from a psychological perspective and interpretation.

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To address our project, I would like to say a few words about the difference between the spiritual and religion, as far as I am concerned. In several past posts I have conveyed what I have personally experienced as I walk. Its effects are far-reaching and I believe it is no longer necessary to repeat them; if not of the knowledge of all humanity, then of a significant part.

However, I have failed to clarify some ideas about what I have been able to ascertain about the soul and the spiritual, for it also exerts a relevant stimulus, and perhaps the most important, for it produces a generalization, in turn, about all the other functions of the human being.

I would like to mention at this point, on this level of the blog, that when I use the word “spiritual” I am not referring exclusively to the religious concept; of course they are intimately related, but they are not equivalent. Religion is an evolved phase of Magic and Totemism, as James George Frazer rightly mentions, and spirituality is the sensitive and dynamic force, which escapes the rational and the senses for its quantification, dimensions and power, through which the human being develops certain forms and religious aspects, but also dozens of other functions and soul operations, which we can only achieve with this ethereal energy, which constitutes the being.

On the other hand, the soul, like the other intangible forms of being, is always in motion, not to mention the body and other physical and material parts of the human being. Everything indicates that the soul does not die when the body dies, and the spirit remains in a latent state; however, these last two statements belong to matters that have not yet been scientifically proven.

After these clarifications, I continue with our central theme. The Totem is a “material” representation of an animal, vegetable or thing, which is the object of veneration by a primitive group of human beings. It can be a three-dimensional or two-dimensional figure, which bears a resemblance to what it represents or can bear no resemblance at all. The Totem is not a fetish because it is not a unique object, but is widespread in the species of animal or vegetable or was selected as such; nor is it an idol because it does not represent a god or goddess.

The socio-anthropological conception of totem is the image of an animal, vegetable or thing, which a group of people, large or small, be it a tribe, clan, etc., value and venerate for various characteristics, and it is linked in an almathetic or spiritual way with all the members of that human group. Different categories of Totems have been defined, but the one that should really interest us is the one that belongs to a whole social group (Tribe, Clan, etc.), with the Totem by Sex and the Individual coming second in the present exhibition.

In primitive peoples, two characteristics, among others, are important: one, the totem is considered the progenitor of the group, and two, the soul relationship makes it, for all individual cases, that if something happens to the totem, the same thing will happen to the person; that is, if the animal dies, the person will die soon after, and conversely also, if the person dies, the animal will die. In certain specific cases this relationship is also extrapolated to the entire human group on the totem pole.

Totemism in its historical development has manifested itself in 3 cultural spheres: spiritual, social and religious, the latter being the last phase of it. From our approach, its spiritual practice was the most important, giving rise to the other two human manifestations.

From the point of view of its configuration, both social and religious, Totemism is a socio-religious cultural institution that has left its primitive traces in the later universal religious formations and organisations (institutions) within its rituals and dogmatic forms, so that even today, we find social customs and rituals that are reliable – or at least have a relationship that is easily identified as being correlated – to both the social and religious environment, in our day. There is an analogy between the gifts and gifts obtained by the totemic relationship (animal, vegetable or thing) in remote times, and those granted by the gods in the current religions, in full force: the cure of diseases, the achievement of divine help in dozens of human activities, positive and negative omens, etc.

There are also other definitions, according to the disciplinary specialty, which maintain elements common to the former, but which have other approaches and perspectives, for analysis.

One such element in common with these other definitions is that the social group invariably adopts the name of the chosen animal. Thus we have the “Wolf”, “Deer”, “Eagle”, “Hawk”, “Beaver” tribe, etc. One way of observing the spiritual impact that this animal imitation brought with it, is the adoption of the name of the animal to that of the human group. There is no doubt that the name we bear – either because it was given to us or because we chose it voluntarily – implies part of the essence of our being, for we identify ourselves fully in the course of time, intrinsically with it, we form a unity, a unity of the self with our name, a conscious but fundamentally subliminal identity, which is none other than the union of the soul with the self. The name is part of the human soul. This is analysed by Stekel and described as the “Compulsion of (the) Name”: The crucial and determining importance of a person’s name in their unconscious inclinations and behavior.

Everything indicates that Totemism is a universal stage of evolution through which the human being has passed, so this system is found in a very wide diversity of peoples, from the most remote times, so it is considered an archaic (pristine) institution, generalized in humanity, and for the same reason, Psychology considers it as part of the collective unconscious. (Future PostTHE WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPES-THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS). Surely several archetypes emanate from it – which we could not analyze here – or it is built within the archetype “Magic” (Post WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPE “MAGIC”. PART I) as a human-spiritual need (perhaps also as a reminiscence) and other elements of an unconscious and instinctive kind.

Thus, totemism is a purely spiritual institution -or system- through which early human groups revered a totem (animal, vegetable or thing), usually engendering a social organization around that totem, and which very subsequently led to religion.

Any definition of a cultural institution, such as the Totem, must consider in part the explanation of its origin and the causes of its genesis. The definitions we have given previously – taking into account the disciplinary (socio-anthropological) approach – incorporate some of this; however, I would like to be more explicit, since this will allow us to find and understand its own process of evolution in order to accept it as an important phase of personal and group development, which will allow us to glimpse part of its hereditary images (transitive, transmissible through inheritance), both in behavior and in current customs, in all of humanity.

The totem is a collective projection and starts as an imitation and results in the “entrenchment” of the archetype “Magic”, when the human being starts to transform from a nomadic to a sedentary being. The spirituality projected on the chosen totem allows the community that worships and values it to overcome certain habits rooted in its being, such as the eternal need – like others – for nomadism. This is a natural – or forced – transition from nomadism to sedentarism, which inclines him to the practice of totemism, imitating the chosen totem animal, and mainly in his posture and walk. In this respect, we must bear in mind, for this consideration, that in its pristine origins of totemism, the Totems that were selected (chosen and used) in a totemic way, were only animals; This was the 1st phase of totemism, the Totem-animal, and later – in the following phases – vegetables were incorporated (Post WALKING AND CAPSICUM; Future Post THE WALKING OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR TOTEM “CHILE”; Future Post HE WALKING OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR TOTEM “CORN”) and “inanimate” things, in general. We commented in Post THE WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPE “MAGIC” that: “The displacement that is achieved through the archetype Magic, the soul or spirit of the individual – or group – that is involved in the process of archetypal images, usually participated disguising itself with animal or vegetable clothing, with or without a mask, and with (dance) rhythms and movements that resembled the animals that he wanted and needed to be present in the ceremony or magic ritual, for this reason there is always a relationship between the clothing (or the cave painting we mentioned earlier) which is generally called totemism and the archetype of ‘Magic'”.

Totemism is a spiritual system that originated from the need and transformation that human beings had in their transition from nomadism to sedentary life. A thesis that no one has analyzed… at least I think so.

The element that we are interested in analyzing as part of that archetypal genesis, is the innate walk in the human being, and that places us in a perspective that starts two million years ago (Post HOMO-ITER : MAN WALKER, PART I, Post HOMO-ITER: MAN WALKER. PART II) when HOMO SAPIENS stood up and started that innate process, walking only on his 2 lower extremities.

Totemism is not only important for the knowledge of the history of primitive man, but also for the understanding of the present history of present day man, and above all for “programming” the history through which the man of the future will have to pass, walking on foot; it is an intermediate step that the human being takes from the stage of Magic to that of Religion; it is the magical ascendant that, in different regions of the world, transforms to give entrance to most of his spiritual needs.

Totemism, without becoming a religion, laid the foundation for the conformation of all the religions of the world, as their spiritual preamble. It was one of the institutions, in addition to magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, and others, into which animism (belief in the soul) was projected, and into which it took shape and structure to lead to religion, the animistic form in which humanity now finds itself. Belief in the soul and in the devil is still in force, and these are still its main characteristics, which have prevailed up to the present. Each of these characteristics, however, and others, represent attempts by the human capacity for spirituality – the human spirit – to substitute acts, activities, actions, practices, manifestations and functions of being that have diminished over time, or have been disrupted by factors external to it (physical and social environment,) or by repetitive acts of human consciousness itself, which have been suppressed in lifeless forms and which need to be recovered by means of other substitute representations (forms, practices, arts, ceremonies), which are usually not analogous, however, others are imitations that have similarity or equivalence, or are supported by homologous expressive manifestations in parallel.

So, Totemism is that period of transition, where one of its main structural components that make it up, gives an answer to the decline of nomadism in the human being, encouraging it spiritually in its great loss, replacing its pedestrian development, by other spiritual and movement manifestations and actions, which were combined with percussive and rhythmic sounds, structured with music and dance. As a fundamental complement, as we have mentioned, was the imitation of different sacred animals in their ways of walking and in their ritual and action movements, using stems, branches and hollow trunks from trees and bushes selected as sacred to produce music (drums and flutes).

Specifically, it was the imitation of the walking of their sacred animals and the dance that flourished with the spiritual development of the Totem, which could reach that stage of animism.

The walking allows us, in that historical totemist stage, an interpretation of the anthropological behavior of the human being; that function played as a spiritual mechanism in the primitive groups, as a fundamental basis of Totemism.

Of all the paths that we have travelled to analyze, investigate and obtain knowledge of the things that surround us, the one that we have left behind is the human activity of walking. The analysis of its performance – of walking – in Totemism leads us to reveal certain religious behaviors in today’s society. The renunciation of nomadism (or turning away from it) is the germ of the human need to “communicate” -spiritually- with the spirits and later with divinities.

The question must be asked: Did this spiritual need create sedentarism or did the renunciation of nomadism create this spiritual need?

Walking was preserved analogically as a spiritual practice within the Totemist system. This imperative need to walk in a wandering way, which started 2 million years ago, was spiritually satisfied by imitating the animals in their walk and with the dance; a rhythmic and cadenced dance, which communicates with a percussive beat to the body with the external natural environment, in a spiritual and somatic (corporal) way: Spiritual Walking. The more sedentary we become, the greater the need to ask for help from the spirits, from our inner spirituality. The primitive man of those times, is inclined to invoke the spirits – his spirituality – because of his new sedentary state that reduces his capacity to have contact with his unconscious and with other mental functions. How much does it prevent us? We will leave the answer to this question, because of its high complexity in its scientific demonstration, to the researchers of the generations to come.

During nomadism the soul of each individual, man or woman, walked alongside him; in the beginning of sedentarism, and specifically in totemism, the soul flows from the being to identify itself with the totem animals, takes possession of that totem and “learns” to walk like the animal itself; that is, it walks spiritually. The representation of the soul, in those totemic origins, was the soul of the animal selected as the personal totem. That totemic soul was an image – and replacement – unconscious – and also conscious – that flowed from one personification and incarnation, from one body to another, with an absolute and complete mobility, leaving one body and entering the other, and this totemic mobility conferred sustenance to the unconscious of the individual, urgently in need of it, because it had diminished – almost eliminated – its motor function of walking, and therefore its spirituality (Future Post WALKING: AN ANIMIC-SPIRITUAL “MOTOR”    or   WALKING: AN ANIMIC-SPIRITUAL “MECHANISM”). From here is born, but above all flourishes, a new way of invoking human spirituality, and perhaps also, is the genesis of the conscious repression of certain stimuli from the external environment, with which belief in the natural environment – to trust in that objective reality – begins to be replaced by the spirits and very later, by the gods (religion).

A relevant aspect that we observe in Totemism – from our perspective – is that in the performance of some rituals, all the members of the totemic group, of a totem-animal, gather around a ceremonial center where the physical representation of the Totem is located, with the purpose of venerating it and imitating it in its movements (and gestions), fundamentally in their walk – and according to the animal selected – also in other characteristic and outstanding forms of their mobility, walk, circulation and movement (which showed their speed, slowness, dynamism, as well as the different times they use in their different activities of pre-spawning, hunting, feeding, etc. ). Surely this imitation of the Totem-animal was transformed into rhythmic movements that gave rise to the dance (Future Post THE WALKING AND THE DANCE), which was incorporated into the totemic ceremonies as an inherent part of them to the beat and musical rhythm of percussive and wind instruments. Thus, the totemic ceremonies developed into other stages of development, which were accompanied by their initial phase imitating the walking of animals and dance as an extension of that totemic mimicry. In this way, both the man and the woman, of these primitive times, were unconsciously involved in a spiritual process that gave way to the gradual transition from nomadism to sedentarism.

A spiritual need for which they surely identified with those who preserved – in their opinion and through their observations – an innate and natural way of walking, which inclined them to select them because they also maintained some forms of movement [that in the opinion of the primitive man and woman], which resembled their past behavior in various important circumstances (environments, conditions, scenarios): moving from one place to another, hunting prey for food (Future Post WALKING WITH UNCHAINED PROMETHEUS), collecting food, feeding, pre-mating, mating, defending themselves from predatory animals, fleeing from danger, etc.

To the question that has been asked by several thinkers, scholars of Totemism, of: How did it happen that primitive man adopted a Totem-Animal? The answer lies, to a great extent, in this transition from nomadism to sedentarism that I have briefly explained.

Was it a renunciation, an impediment or a natural transit from nomadism to sedentarism?

We leave the answer to part II, TOTEM AND WALKING, PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.

For the moment, let us prepare ourselves to think about this answer, while we walk.

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I have already mentioned in several posts that the word WALK is used as a metaphor and with different derivations and synonyms. One of them is LEAVE. Undoubtedly I mean in this Post to leave the place where we are from. It is a goodbye to that place (environment) but that will surely return after an indispensable and peremptory time, although it is not vital or mandatory. It has a fairly broad and deep significance, and likewise, of the results it generates in the formation of the personality of the individual who does so.

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Going for a walk is not only a physical impulse to exercise the body and give movement to the mind, but it is closely related to something much deeper in the soul: going out to strengthen the individual personality. That going out for a walk is a metaphor of the unconscious that seeks the healthy awakening of the personality of the being.

I have also mentioned the following aphorism in one or two previous posts, I will use it in this as an epigraph that clearly defines a part of what I will expose regarding the need that human beings manifest to leave their place of origin (city, parental home , school) to be able to develop fully with its own personality: “The human body withers when it does not seek and does not find the way or the path to WALK, in the same way it happens to waters that have no exit and do not move, they transform into a swamp ” (Future Post NOT WALKING IS LIKE TURNING INTO A SWAMP). This thought is quite strong, but it is better to say it in this way than to consider that it is not very important for the development of the being in several aspects.

Using the word “walk” literally and a bit as an allegory, I would like to underline the importance for every human being to leave their place of origin, their “paternal” house, their neighborhood, their block, their town or city, where they have lived –all regularly- the first years of life. We say on some occasion and at some time in our childhood or adolescence: “I would never want to leave my friends”; however, the time always comes to leave them, to abandon them, due to various reasons. The truth is that some do not carry it out and stay the rest of their lives in the same town or in the same city, although not in the same neighborhood. We move house but we remain under the guardianship of our family group, and not only of our parents, but of the rest of the family group: grandparents and grandmothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, etc. We cannot abandon those brotherhoods. But neither do we want to abandon our playmates, our schoolmates, our teachers, themselves, anyone who has participated in the composition of our social environment. Leaving the place of origin in a timely manner – at a certain age – allows them to function better and to seek their own personality. This is not a mere recommendation on my part, but this is a natural human need to achieve his own personality and not be frustrated, in his immediate future, for not making that exit with opportunity. (Future Post THE WALK AND THE INSTINCTS). However, seeking to obtain a re-integration of the personality that is lost by living comfortably within the family, after a certain age: After having passed our youth, where the interference of the participation of the paternal house – the parents, the family and educators – who have avoided a healthy development of the personality, it is quite complicated from the psychic and behavioral point of view. Many times, experiences are generated in the paternal center, during childhood and adolescence, that if a stage of self-help is not initiated in a timely manner, they do not allow the construction of one’s own intellectual and character identity. This self-help is achieved when we move away from our place of origin, at an acceptable age.

Definitely this is an action that every human being –man and woman- must carry out by themselves, as their own decision and encouraged by their parents. Leaving the parental home at a certain age, in a timely manner, surely we will have positive but also negative experiences, which will reinforce our position of forgetfulness and denial of our own experiences. Something that could help us to better understand this is a question that we carry out in Future Post THE CONCEPT OF EXPERIENCE AND WALKING: “What correlation exists between these 2 scenarios, that of forgetting or denying the experience and the footprints that our feet have left in the journeys along different paths or with staying in the parental home?” This phrase should not be understood that we should abandon our loved ones. For obvious reasons, we must stay away from pathological needs and inclinations to travel (Future Post DROMOMANIA). Of course, this exit should not be carried out before a certain age when the being cannot support itself; nor after a certain age, where the personality already suffers distortions, preventing its autonomous development, and the unconscious work that must be carried out through this departure (evasion, absence), is lacerating for the person who cannot do it in a timely manner.

Adolescence presents in all human beings – men and women – certain drownings that force the individual to make various unconscious decisions; at this age, it is said: “the hormones become turbulent”, and the young person (man or woman) who experiences it does not know or understand why this happens to him. One of these agitated needs is precisely that he needs to leave his place of origin, whatever the definition of origin may be: school environment, friendly setting, home environment, social environment, work space, etc., the sum of some or all of these. The reality is that his temperament spurs him on to develop his own personality, and that is the path: a distance from that which gave him training and strength to develop from birth to this age – between 11 and 15. That separation which must be undertaken in this period will strengthen your personality development: by strengthening your personality you will find your destiny.

This impulse is an instinct of the human being, however there are other incitements that impel the individual to perform acts by which he tries to break the monotony (Future Post THE CORRECT MANAGEMENT OF THE FLOATING TIME IN THE DECISION TO WALK). For example, the IMPULSE TO TRAVEL or the ONLY WANTING TO CHANGE PLACES by going to another place, just by leaving that place where he has stayed for long hours or months; MODIFYING A STYLE OF ANY ACTIVITY, for example, the style that a painter uses in his works, there comes a moment that bothers him and he needs to create with another artistic style; CHANGE THE RHYTHM; MODIFY THE WORK ACTIVITIES, for example, if an individual is acting in a play, there comes a time when he gets bored and tired of performing the same performance and saying the same parliaments; BREAK THE BALANCE AT ANY TIME; ANNULL THE SIMETRY; THE ASSOCIATION IS INQUIRED, and so on. Most of these impulses or inclinations are sought and incorporated after long periods of being in a MONOTONY, situation very different from the process we have described, because, apart from being instinctive and congenital, this is a teleological need, recorded in the individual unconscious of the human being, in order to develop his personality, without which he cannot reach his goals in life, the meaning and destiny of his life, being that it has no direct relation with monotony.

“Strengthen your personality and you will find the way, when you find the way you will find your destination” [or DISCOVER AND WALK YOUR OWN PATH, IT WILL LEAD YOU TO FIND YOUR DESTINATION]. (Future Post THE HOMO SOCIABILI versus HOMO SOLITARIUS).

Let’s see what a character in one of my novels “Dialogues in a place of La Mancha” (*) says about this: “-The journey, symbolically means the intrinsic need to free oneself, like the search for an initiating experience, of change. It is a symbol of transcendence. Trying to break with the social status that surrounds you: friends, colleagues, family, work, studies, etc. Journeys on pilgrimage or in solitude. It is a ‘going out’ with the desire to take the first steps in life. Searching to face new experiences and discoveries, liberation, renunciation, atonement. It is generated by a natural state of discontent with oneself and with the environment around us. Search for change, search for knowledge of the nature of life and death; to know what to do with one’s existence. Depending on the individual, it can be a journey around the world, leaving one’s village or simply moving house. To transcend internally towards a new way of living and dying“.

This simply means starting a life for yourself, no matter if you are still financially dependent on your parents. What you should not allow yourself to do is to depend on them completely.

To paraphrase Lincoln, with respect to our topic, we would say: We can depend on the economic, we can depend for some time, but what we can’t afford is to depend on them in every way, all the time.

So: let’s walk!, because every walk we take can metaphorically and symbolically induce us to leave that “place” that our instinct points out to us.

(*) Loya Lopátegui, Carlos, Dialogues in a place of La Mancha, EMULISA, Mexico, 2019: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ3BW1T1.

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The concrete proposal is to walk in any street, which we have previously selected for some aspects that we wish to observe and enjoy directly and personally.

Ortega y Gasset used a lot the concept of “FORESHORTEN” and because of his special inclination towards philosophy he generally referred -I consider it- to the intellectual or intellectualized foreshortening that things presented in their aesthetic, metaphysical and doctrinal forms.

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Ortega y Gasset writes something about this, although he does not exactly call it INTELLECTUAL FORESHORTENING. The concept of foreshortening was an ideal means for a model of perspective in which the Spanish philosopher tried to highlight a certain detail (or several of them) in his analysis of some subject, even using it to contrast some element (or several) of it, and he stated: “foreshortening is the organ of visual depth; in it we find a borderline case where simple vision is fused with a purely intellectual act”. (Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote). I very much agree that it occurs in the sensitive intellectual limit, senses and mind of the plastic creator.

With this I only wish to emphasize that we can make some walks with the purpose of observing, during them, some elements that conform the streets. That is to say, to put into practice that orteguian foreshortening when we are walking within the perspective of a street. To obtain several positions, during our walk, to observe different perspectives by which we will be able to have other (dissimilar) “city-planning, artistic and aesthetic expressions”, and thus to capture different impressions and sensations from a same street by which we have decided to transit.

Once we have selected the street, let’s get ready to walk on either of its two sidewalks, being aware of its cardinal directions. According to its orientation we will know, at the time we make the tour, which of them will be sunny or shady. Let’s choose the one that interests us on that day (Future Post WALKING AND THE CARDINAL POINTS).

The fundamental purpose is to recommend an inter-environmental “Metaphoric dialogue” with the elements that call our attention to the passage of our walk, in the street, the sidewalk, the sense, as well as all the environment that has been chosen to develop the walk; same that will be endorsed by other specific sub-objectives such as the artistic motive (plastic, urban, etc.), or that of aesthetics: beauty, ugliness, attraction or repugnance.

For example, through one of the streets within the city: the units that make up the urban equipment: a fountain, a monument, a streetlamp; all of which could awaken or stimulate the imagination; or the natural elements that it finds in its path. In any of these cases, it will always be possible to initiate a dialogue -in figurative language- with them. Asking yourself what you might be questioning and/or answering; a window with the curtains in the air, or that winding staircase, or the slabs (tiles) on the floor.

What you perceive in this imaginative (fictitious) dialogue could give way to a certain type of literary narrative. If it is not your intention to write it, in any case, the exercise will be orienting you to awaken and develop your sensibility, by granting -imaginatively- communication or fictitious life to the inanimate material elements -which of course do not have it- and to perceive the possible responses of those organisms that do have it, both from the vegetable and animal kingdom, which are found in its path.

With this, besides benefiting your imagination, awakening it or increasing it, you will be favoring your degree of consciousness regarding those things, which in general, we subtract or do not give importance to.

These advances in the levels of consciousness will lead you to a clearer and greater knowledge of yourself and your socio-natural environment, which will lead you to continue walking.

If you are walking in some streets of the city, then you will be able to notice their respective names and this could impel you to develop a dialogue – again of the fictitious type – with the character or with the concept that gives the name to the path of your walk on that day, involving concepts (such as Freedom, Spring, Canyon) or individuals (such as Washington, Lincoln, Bolivar, Gandhi, etc. ), all of them as characters within a novelized scheme that can lead us to know new psychological profiles and literary styles (Future post ANACRONIC DIALOGUE WITH LITERARY CHARACTERS WHILE WALKING).

In the following days you will be able to make the characters and concepts that name the streets talk, with the purpose of writing those allegorical dialogues (fictitious) that will arise in your imagination, every time you walk through them and you want to do it, which could constitute, why not! a small creative story, of literary type.

When I mention “Dialogue” I do not mean specifically that we should start talking to the objects, animals or plants, but that we should make an effort to think about what they mean to us, what we have thought they are or whether they have influenced our lives.

For example, we find the name of a street: Freedom; think or imagine what this concept has meant or represents for us; that “dialogue” will be done with ourselves, not with the street name tag. If, for example, we encounter a great silence, to question why this part of the street will be so silent; in itself, we can conjecture what the silence represents: Is it the absence of sound? or the presence of a void? Will the noises and silences walk together?

In an instant we look at some corner of any street: Which colors are dominant? Could colors explain our state of mind?

Can we hear the wind? This is another element that we usually overlook; let us look for its presence.

If it is raining: Does it bother us? We might question whether it is pleasant to have water falling on our faces. (Post WALKING IN THE RAIN. PART I).

We could walk on the sidewalk without shoes, but … then we’d say that’s not right; or maybe our feet would answer: You’ve never done that before! Will we feel uncomfortable or will we feel good about doing it? (Post WALKING BAREFOOT. PART I).

Any element that we observe could invite us to reflect on it or on aspects that can be related. For example: cars, bicycles, clouds, churches, parishes, taverns, canteens, street vendors of all kinds, water pipes, sewers, buttresses of light, parks, dogs, cats, any animal that we see during our walk through the streets. In my book Pueblo Quieto. Las caídas de la Libertad (Quiet Town. The falls of Liberty), I try certain metaphorical dialogues, in which several streets participate, within the literary development of the novel.

The important thing is that we enjoy our walks on the streets and do not feel that we are bored and that the next day we are encouraged to go out on a walk because we will find something else that will encourage us to put our feet, shoes or no shoes, on the pavement of the sidewalks and the streets.

Now, it is different to walk the streets of a city during the day than at night. It goes without saying that we must take certain extra care when we walk at night. Urban configurations are different when viewed with natural daylight than those that are generated with artificial light. Many times the shadows of the night show living forms that by day appear dead to our eyes.

Let’s make a foreshortening of the urban-walker type, that allows us to have several aesthetic-urbanistic positions, during our walks by (in) the streets, (Future Post WALKING IN A NEW URBANISTIC PERSPECTIVE) and let’s enjoy the creation of those individual and unrepeatable perspectives, that for the same reason are original expressions of our interiority.

Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Pueblo Quieto. Las Caídas de la Libertad, EMULISA, Mexico, 2015.

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