Welcome to a new era. Who would have ever known 3 months ago that our world would transform the way that it has, and yet, that is exactly what it has done. Trans-form. It has so drastically altered from what it once was that its form, shape, and energy are no longer the same. The economic engine steered by a patriarchal world order spanning millennia has halted, and what has taken its place? Absolutely nothing. And yet transformation requires exactly that, a void. Birth and death- the ultimate in the material transformation cycle moves from one energy to the other and what we are left with is a void. The mother, pregnant with life inside of her births a child- a literal change of form takes place, leaving her with a void. Death is similar; there is a being full of energy and life and then that life is gone, leaving a void, a dark space. We know that energy never dies; it simply changes form, yet through that alchemical process there must be places of darkness, of stillness, of nothingness in order for a new energy to emerge.
We are all inside of the void, the empty space that was once filled with people, things, and work- whatever kind of work we were doing. But most of that work has relented, and we are left with a void. Voids are dark, they are silent, and they are uniquely empty. And this has created a crisis on a collective and personal level. For a culture that has created its identity around being full, consuming, and always needing more- to have nothing ‘to do’ is creating a profound existential crisis. What are we left with if we are not busying our days and nights, chased by the incessant need for more? Even bigger, what happens when we begin to realize that our sense of purpose is wrapped up in that need for more?
Now, more than ever, we are meeting our shadows. These are the parts of our internal world that we have kept at bay through the constant churning of work. For so many years doing has been our identity, so much so that being has been seen as being lazy, indulgent, and just ‘bad’. When one is still, there is no escaping the internal world. The saying, “Still waters run deep” directly applies here, for even if you are a mother or father having to deal with children all day- the collective hum of man and machine has all but stopped, giving us time to breathe, look around, and most importantly...feel.
‘Doing’ unless it is balanced and checked by ‘being’ throws us off, and if continued for too long displays itself as a disease. The word dis-ease, is exactly that, being ill at ease. Dis-ease is created by imbalance. There must be a level of ‘being’ that is counterbalanced by ‘doing’, they must be in balance in order to be whole. This is what the Tao has taught us with its yang symbol representing light, action, ‘doing’, and the masculine. Its opposite, the yin symbol- is the state of ‘being’. It is dark, internal, absorbing of the void, and most importantly- the feminine.
