I would like to be a straight up and honest about my thoughts on essentialism and a spirituality that posits the existence of any supreme being that can think and communicate in whichever manner. In many ways I think it takes away from the importance of humiin interaction. What we do, what we say, where come from compose our worlds in every aspect. Using the spiritual when wanting to dissect humiin issues, social, political, economic, ability, racial/ethnic, it borrows from the anti-virtue, the model that creates no space for what someone considers to be their reality. Essentialist language is a part the hegemony that religions and some forms of spirituality can embody. A world filled with dogma where la muxer is only 1 and 2, cuando ella es todos lxs numeros. I’d like to think like my maestro Galeano, who always would say that we should be en un mundo en donde quepen muchos mundos. The worlds we create within ourselves, inner world, the world we create with others, the outer world. To me the inner and outer, both centre the body as the place of knowing. Yet, this separation then allows for the building of individuality that be misguided into creating essentialised beings by creating differences that may not exist. Existence is something that differs in how we feel we are alive. We know we are alive because we think but also, we are happier and much more loving people when we create a collective memory. Even within collectives the same repeats. Language becomes a conduit of what is and is a tool of construction. Language too can be a tool to decolonise, to unlearn, to burn, the pasts that still today breaks us up into individuals in search of autonomy. Yet, in order to build autonomous communities a different epistemology can be used. We not only centre the body at the main frame to understand the way politics affects our personal being. El Corazon can also be a centre of knowing how to build our individuality and create an autonomy that is supportive of the personal as political. The heart encompasses our physical and corporeal reality. It is the place of centre, a place that is also physical, that manifest itself in our uniqueness.
