Heroes Not Zombies

This is my favourite stone. I keep it in my cabinet of curiosities. I don’t know what type of stone it is or how it came to look like this. It’s completely smooth and delightful to touch.

This idea of duality which is never separated into two really appeals to me and has done for most of my life. I’ve worn a Yin Yang symbol around my neck for decades.

The dualities which can never be separated include the classic yin and yang energies, but also masculine and feminine, the divine forms of both. And also light and dark, day and night, hot and cold, north and south and east and west. There isn’t a single one of those which makes any sense other than in relation to the other. They are bound, inextricably, permanently together.

It also works for the neuroscience view of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, as elucidated and developed by Iain McGilchrist. Those two ways of approaching the world, of focusing and of engaging with reality give us our unique abilities as human beings.

This symbol also represents balance of a very particular kind – dynamic, flowing, constantly moving balance. In doing so, for me, it captures the idea of the Life Force, of Life itself.