Human experience resembles the battered moon that tracks us in cycles of light and darkness, of life and death, now seeking out and now stealing away from the sun that gives it light and symbolizes eternity.
-Eugene Kennedy
The rising tide of life happens in cycles, countered with the ebbing tide. Cycles in life are the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the peaks and the valleys, that all peoples experience over a lifetime. These cycles are evident in the natural world as days and nights, waking and sleeping, the passage of seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon. Many cycles are so long as to be unrecognizable as a cycle, and some so short as to also be undetectable. Every breath is a cycle. Every heartbeat is a cycle. Life is a circus of cycles.
Cycle is a word that can easily and reasonably be linked to ‘circle.’ Life is a circle; or, if you will, a circus. Both circle and circus share the same root and related to words ‘ring,’ ‘hoop’ and ‘orbit.’ Life as an orbit. Round and round, up and down, like a merry-go-round ride at a circus. The planet is a circus, and all creatures, great and small, upon the planet comprise the menagerie of animated teleological life. Teleological earth life includes both telluric and aquatic lifeforms. The word ‘telluric,’ and the word ‘terrestrial,’ refer to dry land life, i.e., ‘earth.’ Aquatic refers to wet water life. Land life and water life co-exist on a planet which is not just dry land. As a mostly water planet, Earth, is a very lopsided name for the planet as a whole.
Each planet in the solar system has a Greek or Roman name and so then as should ‘Earth.’ The name most commonly recognized over extended periods of human time is ‘Gaia.’ In Greek mythology, Gaia is the spouse of Uranus. The Greek word for Uranus is ‘Ouranos’ and translates as heaven or sky. Gaia is the land-sea ‘wife’ of the sky. In mythology, the union of the two, Ouranos and Gaia, bore The 12 Titans. Although Titans are represented as physical giants, as ‘gods (not without human traits as is common with Greek gods),’ the metaphorical symbolism can also represent enormous intrinsic telluric human capacity and ability, i.e., giants of the mind more so than the body on land. The arts of science, sound, music, mathematics, architecture, agriculture, technology and, generally speaking, development of potentials, is intrinsic to all animated teleological life residing on, within and around, Gaia. An ant, a plant, an elephant or a seal, even microbial life, employs sounds, math, architecture and techniques to advance their life towards their own specialized species potentials, which for humans has no upper limit.
The development of potentials occurs through cyclic motion, round and round, up and down, up and down in much the same way walking to a specific location requires muscle contraction, and muscle expansion, tightening and loosening. Any activities when awake (contraction) is predicated on previous sleep (expansion.) The intrinsic intelligence within the contradictory motions of life transforms repetitive cycles into natural spirals. To walk in a spiral makes the return a new beginning with a broader vision. Perhaps the Titans of long ago Gaia, exhibited excessively broad, big, giant, godlike, Vision. After all, each of the gods or goddesses of the twelve represented high, noble truths of life: Time, Light, Intellect, Foresight, Memory, Justice, Death, Fertility, and more.
Development of potentials is both a singular, individual activity and a total collective activity. Collective development occurs through large spans of cyclic time which spirals upwards and downwards through curved space. Individual development too occurs in cyclic spirals. Season after season, year after year, decade after decade, personal life unfolds in a generally upward forward direction, though not without periodic backward downward movement, not unlike a stock market graph over time. The civilization of raw life energies occurs over evolutionary time scales much larger than that of a stock market. Civilizations rise and fall through cycles of time; and, yet, there is a trend towards a rising tide.
One of the potentials of ‘mankind’ and one which influences the direction of ‘civilization’ is an amplified ‘volition.’ That is, one can volitionally, consciously, intentionally, walk fast or slow; one can skip or run; one can race, or stroll. One can, in a collective sense, descend to the bottom of the ocean and ascend to beyond the waxing and waning moon. Evolution and devolution, regeneration, and degeneration, development and stagnation are on the table of options. It all depends upon volition, both individual and collective. The ultimate highest destination is ever on the horizon regardless of rate or frequency of cyclo-spiralic motion. It is represented in numerous varieties of myths, aphorisms, scripts and symbols throughout the world conveying a message about the ever present potential of a rising tide, an emergence of titan-like understanding, collaboration and ‘enlightenment.’
Enlightenment is a loosely used word which may represent relative illuminations such as the experience of grasping a complex concept, or the shift from a geocentric world view to a heliocentric one, or the triumph of reason over emotion, clarity over confusion.
The Age of Enlightenment was an important time in the history of the world and modern western societies. The Age of Enlightenment, or just the Enlightenment, occurred during the 18th century and is known as a time period of great change and new ideas. Specifically, the Enlightenment involved an intellectual movement, in which famous thinkers and philosophers challenged some of the basic foundations of society, including: role of the government, basic human nature, sources of authority and ideas centered on liberty.
The Enlightenment built on the earlier work of the Scientific Revolution which occurred in the centuries before the Enlightenment. The Scientific Revolution involved a movement in society towards modern science based on using logic and reason to come to informed conclusions. Enlightenment thinkers would then apply these same values to society and authority and begin to question all aspects of societal structure. (historycrunch.com)
Absolute enlightenment is of a different caliber within a much larger time frame as the rising tide of submerged raw radiant energies at the root of all telluric and aquatic life flower within the sky-like Mind of Man exuding the fragrance of genuine civilization. The vast spiraling path forward is the ultimate adventure not of gaining anything, but of loosing impediments which obstruct that rising tide of radiance. Every day in many ways, as best you can wherever you are, let it shine.
Perhaps grief is not about empty, but full. The full breath of life that includes death. The completeness, the cycles, the depth, the richness, the process, the continuity and the treasure of the moment that is gone the second you are aware of it.
-Alysia Reiner
