Is it possible to maintain the balance in our society? Not to deviate to far from the middle, so that (civil) war is spared us? Maybe it will work for a short or longer period of time, but then the law of the wallowing wheel comes into effect again. Rising and shining are irrevocably followed by perishing. The balance is always shaky; systems in which we are involved always are pulled out of the middle again: the cycle never stops.
While we would like everything in our lives to remain as it is – yes, some rest for a while now… – something is broken over and over again. Why? Why me? Otherwise we learn nothing, we fall into sluggishness, into petrification. That’s how we are hunted across the sea of life.
Is the conclusion then that the reality of the middle does not exist? Or is it the art of accepting the natural rhythm of variety, of making it as harmonious as possible, not seeking the extremes, but dealing detachedly with what happens to you? To understand its inevitability and then looking for insight into what the middle really means. And perhaps the most important question is: the middle of which?!
Well, why is the middle so important to people? In every village the church locates (or was located) in the middle; all primitive tribes make a circle in which there is dancing in the middle or a ritual performed. The labyrinth on the church floor leads to the middle. In a garden or park or on a square there is a well in the middle.
The magic of the center is connected to that of the circle. A cryptic statement: God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere and the middle is everywhere. A striking paradox. The circle is the great symbol of humanity, from rose window to mandala, from sun wheel to halo, from witch circle to Irish cross, from Place d’Étoile to Stonehenge. From the sun in the middle of the solar system with the planets around, to the UFOs (unidentified flying objects) or crop circles, they are always round.
According to Jung, a real symbol always occurs when it is necessary to express something that the mind cannot think or that can only be guessed or felt. The symbol of the circle, of turning around a center, is therefore about that Middle.
In Taoism, Tao is the middle, from which everything is manifested and to which everything must return. Tao is unthinkable, unknowable, remains hidden. The effect of Tao, the Teh, can be experienced though. The Teh is a stilling miracle [1].
Creation is the emergence of movement, of vibration, always around a middle. The great center of creation that we know is the sun, without sun no life (= vibration) on earth. And without a nucleus there is no vibration of the atom, no life in the cell: the big equals the small.
The Taoist creation story: from Tao the One arose, from the One the two and from there the ten thousand things. In Christianity there was “in the beginning the Word.” Two is movement, is vibration, Word is the beginning of movement, of vibration. Creation = vibration.
The two created primal forces [2], the movement from the middle and towards the middle, came into effect. With the two, the movement began around the middle: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, with the possibility that synthesis will again become the thesis for the next cycle. The yin and yang arose with the yong in the middle, while in the middle of the yang the yin principle is present, and in the middle of the yin the yang principle, both increasing and decreasing again, in a continuous movement. The lemniscate, the symbol of infinity in mathematics, also gives an image of movement, always rotating through the middle, always looking for the center, but also moving away from it again and again.
Thus the two primal forces created dynamics between two poles, a constant alternation around the connecting center. Which brings us back to the above question: ‘The middle of what?’
A center is the primary organizing principle in all creation. It brings unity and coherence. Everything that rotates necessarily has a center around which it rotates. And everything at every level is rotating, so everything has a center point. A center holds together the system of which it is the center by the vibration or energy it emits. (…) Each of us also has a center, a soul, a heart. [3]
If that heart coincides with the heart of creation, if we live according to the divine idea, there is harmony between mankind and cosmos, then we live from the middle and return there again and again, as co-creators.
But when a false center, the ego, assigns itself the role of being the center of everything, chaos arises and the order intended by God is released. Then the structure falls apart, man can no longer maintain himself in the spiritual area and ends up in matter. That’s where the pendulum starts moving, where it goes ‘to the extreme’, to where matter calls him to order and the pendulum swings the other way again. That is a law: if the pendulum swings all the way to the left, it must also swing all the way to the right. The idea of ‘all just run to be good’ solves duality, is not correct. We are stuck in the inevitable pendulum swing.
That is the situation of humanity on earth now. But: things are starting to change. The awareness grows that the middle is indispensable to take a new step. For the middle is not only surrounded by a circle, a ring-not-further that man encounters again and again, as if he will always have to stay in the flat plane to be reflected back again. No, the middle is also the place where the pendulum can come to rest, where silence reigns. In that silence we can seek the connection with a higher middle, a transcending center. Now there is no longer the image of the point and the circle, but there is the image of an axis, a tree of life, an opportunity for the soul to ascend. The awareness is growing that we have to go back to that middle: to be able to make a quantum leap in consciousness by raising vibrations, as is said. Then the circle becomes the transition to a higher spiral, transcending polarity and duality.
Everything takes place in a large field of consciousness, a field of energy, light and love that we can also call the All-One. Consciousness can be seen as another name for God, the All-One. Creation is an ongoing process: where consciousness evolves, creation evolves. Creation is aimed at increasing consciousness eternally. Creation has one purpose: arisen from consciousness, it only wants to let consciousness grow, to expand itself eternally. This is the Law of Love [4].
Sources:
[1] Elly Nooyen, Weg in Tao [Way in Tao], Rozekruis Pers, Haarlem 2019
[2] William Glaudemans, Book of the Universal Laws, AnkhHermes, 2015, ch. 6, The two primal forces
[3] Ditto, ch. 4, The Law of Center
[4] Ditto, ch. 3, The Law of Love
