Heroes Not Zombies

One of the things I like about this photo is how it captures three completely different rates of change in the world.

Most of the image is filled with the sea, which changes constantly and obviously. It’s never still (even when it looks calm). It’s always flowing, breaking into waves, surfacing water molecules and throwing them into the air, deepening others to hide them on the ocean floor. Every wave reminds us of how every individual appears distinct only for a little time, then dissolves back into the source, erasing duality, every one never really separating from the One.

Then we see a large rock. Stable and strong as a rock, we say. But rocks are constantly changing too. They are submitted to daily forces of wind, rain and sunshine. They are sculpted by the weather over thousands, even millions of years. Just as it is hard to see the minute hand move on a clock, it’s really difficult to see the changes taking place in a rock. But change is happening, all the same. Every rock reminds us of how every unique being emerges from the underlying flux of the universe to present a consistency, a transient integrity which allows them to appear as a whole, and separate individual. Just as I look back on my life after a number of years, I can see photos of myself as a baby, as a little child, as a teenager, as young adult, a parent, a maturing adult into retirement, and on, beyond the “three score years and ten”….but all those appearances, all those “selfs”, are a single self. Each photo from a different decade looks so different, but inside, they all feel like me.

We need both – the constant flow and flux of change AND the transient consistency of a structure, an ego, a self.

Thirdly, the foreground in this image is filled with plant life, an abundance of plant life. Plants change both quickly, from moment to moment, hour to hour, with the sunlight, the warmth and the wind. But also seasonly. They change in cycles. The life of a flower isn’t linear, it’s more like a spiral, looping round and round through the four seasons of the year, each season revealing its particular characteristics, of growth, blossoming, reproduction, fruition, then a winter of quiet and apparent inactivity.

We need this third energy too….the cyclical, seasonal, rhythmic change.

Constant flowing change, a certain resistance manifesting as consistency, and spiralling rhythms of reality.