Control Systems & PLC's

Starter Nib

The ‘Dirt' on ... the Straight Line [part 1/2]

"Dear god," I imagine a little dot's prayer to the god of such things as she begins her existence under the nib of my pen. "If it is my destiny to be stretched into a line, please, make me into one that comes full circle. Or at least make me into a squiggly one or into a zigzag line for there is nothing sinister about them."

What can possibly be any more innocuous than the humble straight line? In our mind, probably nothing except perhaps the dot. There is, however, more to the straight line than meets the eye.

For starters, the straight line is reputed to be shortest distance from A to B. Next, the straight line is usually assumed to travel in a constant direction and have zero curvature and, yet, in Euclidean geometry, a line is a straight curve.

Cool stuff, no doubt, but moving away from abstract concepts to the ‘real' world in which we breathe, straight lines have taken over our lives and have an agenda of their own. Lines exist in our world to make us toe the line.

It can be argued that the invention of the straight line might have been borne out of a visceral compulsion to  reproduce the straight lines of the human skeleton such as the spine, the tibia and the femur, the humerus and the radius -all essential body parts, particularly many thousands of years ago, before the invention of prosthetics. The early stylus and the pen appear as obvious extension of the metacarpal bones.

Straight lines make grids and many grids create gridlocks of one sort or another. In cities, we all live under the heavy shadows of straight-lined towers that block the sun, detain the breeze and constrict the wind. The unassuming straight line could easily become the symbol of the voluntary house arrest – a state of being in which we enclose ourselves 24/7.

Whether we are locked inside the block of straight lines we call home or office or whether we are closed up inside a straight-lined coffin, we are enclosed by hard straight lines that do not have a corollary in nature. There are no straight lines in the cosmos. There are no straight lines in nature. Rivers meander. Mountains do not make straight hard lines. Trees, though straight-ish are not straight, hard lines either.

Straight lines make squares, rectangles - cubes even - as easily as they make prison bars and cells. Big, sprawling cells that have mere security grills on doors and windows are our habitats. Each habitat is made up of a dizzying number of straight, hard-edged lines.

Toddlers are quick to learn that straight lines meet in sharp angles, hence our primal yearning for all that is soft, contoured and nature-made. Hence, too, the incessant search of unconventional artists, architects and designers for alternative patterns that echo nature's forms for these are the shapes that appeal to our senses just as they appeal to our soul.

Even our big screens, our windows to the modern world, are rectangular. Ah, yes, of course, straight lines make packing and packaging a lot easier than odd or rounded shapes. In truth, all is only ever a matter of habit and familiarity and convenience is not necessarily what our soul yearns for.

Tribal villages anywhere in the world tend to confirm that circle facing inward towards the communal area is the way to build – and bond. Even in our culture of personal space and straight lines, when people are left to their own devices and sit somewhere within a group, any group, anywhere on the planet, they seldom choose to arrange themselves in lines, one behind the other. Imagine sitting in front of a camp fire as we do, in rows, at the movies!

About the Author

Naked Spirituality - A Soul's Quest

By day, a teacher, by night, an explorer - I began to search for life's meaning, initially through writing fiction and more recently through learning, practicing, and writing about spiritual philosophy.

A couple of years after my last set of back-to-back novels, "Far From Maddy" and "Morgan in the Mirror", my writing took an entirely different tack.

Home, Sweet Home

Inspired by the teachings of my Spiritual Guide – and pushed along by my soul's whispers - in 2009, I embarked on Late But *IN Time*, a collection of spiritual articles inspired by my inner-most thoughts on all Matters of the Heart and Soul.

The series began with twelve articles complete with illustrations. It deals with what I consider uncompromising, hardcore spirituality and is an ongoing *live* project.

My next creative endeavour lead me to making my own podcasts. Each of the

These clips are conveniently set out on Magnify.net - from last to first, so work your way up from page 3 to page 1

That was followed by blogs as series - some 5 to 10 blogs per topic - plenty of space and enough words through which to properly unpack each topic from a spiritual perspective.

Together and separately, these articles, blogs and podcasts amount to a *free* guide to what I have  decided to call Naked Spirituality, the only approach to spirituality that, I believe, if practised with an open heart and diligently, can truly set us on The Path of spiritual evolution.

FYI, I am not selling anything; no workshops; no massages; no seminars; no retreats; no crystals and no books on the Law of Attraction.

There is nothing here, there or anywhere that I have written on the topic of Spiritual Philosophy that seeks to be marketed, but there is plenty that can/should be/ought to be practiced ... daily

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