I live my life in growing orbits,

which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years.

And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,

or a storm or a great song.   – Rilke

Evolution is not linear from primitive to advanced, but is, in fact, cyclic.  -The Great Cosmic Mother

It is clear that our abstract (linear) system of conceptual thinking can never describe or understand this reality (nature and its non-linear being) completely. All rational knowledge is therefore necessarily limited.   – Tao of Physics

Each of these quotes points to the same fact, that life is a process. We are impatient and want to get straight to the point of it, but this is not how life works. Every moment we are right in the middle of a sacred spiral of learning. When we take the time to look more closely we solve a small mystery, we collect another clue to the greater whole that ultimately never completely reveals itself. This coming into consciousness isn’t linear, we never begin at point A and arrive in a straight line at point B. And once we have a realization, it doesn’t guarantee we won’t forget it again, often the truths we uncover are hard to live with. Sometimes the best we can do is live side by side with the mystery, orbiting the truth, constantly reevaluating it and ourselves. What we do know is that it’s difficult to grasp the realities right in front of us, let alone the mysteries hiding within us. The mistake always comes in thinking that what we know is the whole truth, when in fact it’s only a part of a larger whole.

What physics tells us is the way we think of matter as a solid block, a table, a car, a piano, doesn’t fundamentally exist the way it appears. In fact everything is fast moving energy, constantly shape-shifting, unseen in its smallest components. Inert materials such as stone or metal are really active particles if we look on a subatomic level. We think we can trust what we see, but this doesn’t always lead us to the truth. In a way, our assumptions of what is true and determined are really just manufactured, it helps us understand complicated realities we can’t really see or touch. All the knowledge we are familiar with is really just an approximation of what’s true. What’s ironic is that the more irrational aspects of feeling and intuition play a crucial role in leading us closer to grasping the actual world we live in.

Attempting to decipher the inner mysteries becomes exponentially more difficult because there’s even less to see or quantify. It’s all feeling, hunches, emotions, which seem tangled from the beginning. It’s just the opposite of the linear thinking we so rely on to ground us. What seems closer to the truth is that life happens in glimpses, we live and grow in cycles layered within cycles, endlessly readjusting to each new discovery. In one way or another we are always in the process of knowing, rather than knowing it all. Just as the quotes suggest we are always coming around again to see more, the reality remains the same, but we come with different eyes, different insights. These inner and outer secrets are never revealed easily, we have to search them out in unusual and unexpected ways. But if we listen, our hunches and languid day dreaming will point us to what we’ve been missing, they’re the science of the soul.

Perhaps all this change – this constant movement – makes us uneasy and uncertain. We may want a firm grip on the nature of our reality, but that’s not the truth of the world we live in. Even our control over our lives is an illusion. We know everything can change in an instant, a market crash, a car crash, a relationships crash. Let’s not mistake life for what it really is: ceaseless change that asks us to continually grow. We are asked to constantly evolve, we let go and move forward, slide back down, begin again with greater insight and awareness. We orbit the mystery perhaps never really being able to fully understand it, but cultivating a more harmonious way of living alongside it.

We go on our journey, honor our process, and let the mystery slowly reveal itself.

kb