“. . . when anything reaches its maximum potential, it turns toward its opposite.”
–(translation of a principle stated in the i ching.)
On one beautiful fall morning in 2013, as I waited at a stoplight, I was considering how I had been feeling powerless of late and was reasoning my way out of it. Simultaneously, I was contemplating a tree that had partially turned a remarkable shade of burgundy, yet was still green in other sections. This gorgeous development of nature struck me as a seeming impossibility.
That is when the cure to the powerless feelings presented itself. It is in part because the tree was able to be essentially in two states at once—both verdant and fresh, yet also turning toward the demise of its foliage. This tree reminded me of one of the most basic tenets of the physical universe in which we currently reside.
Newton’s third law states that for every action, there is an equal, but opposite reaction. Forces happen in pairs, and action-reaction pairs make it possible for us and other life forms to navigate the planet. Fish swim because of action-reaction force pairs, birds fly because of them, and we breathe because of them. We exist in a world based on action and reaction—you throw a rock, you get a splash. So why would I—or any other anxiety sufferer—be such a special, uniquely cursed being that I was unable to accomplish anything if I tried? In what universe does that make any sense?
This tree taught me more about how to handle feelings of powerlessness than I had learned through many years of schooling and several therapy sessions. Nobody is ultimately powerless. This world was created and evolved over time to become a place where virtually anyone or anything can make their force known. If you try, and you are patient and you stay committed, you will get a result.
That tree taught me about more than just Newton’s Third Law. Like the popular story that claims Newton learned about gravity from an apple that hit him on the head, this particular tree’s beauty opened up a world of insight while I drove. I was compelled that day to refresh my memory and research which factors provoke a tree to change color in the fall. As one would expect, a tree does turn colors every year because a specific set of factors line up to produce a predictable result. Plants turn carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar in a process called photosynthesis. Breaking this word down, we get the words “photo”—light—and “synthesis”—combination.
Essentially, the word photosynthesis means “combining with light.” As winter moves in, trees no longer have the water or light they require to make their food. The tree I saw had essentially begun to hibernate, and his green chlorophyll was disappearing from his leaves, because there was not enough light or water for him to exist as he had previously. This tree was doing exactly what I was at that point in my life—he was going into hibernation from lack of light.
One day, several months ago, I thought of that tree again, as I was considering the concept of the tipping point and how cycles perpetuate through a series of rise, tip, fall, repeat. All of the media I came in contact that day seemed to blend one into the other in a stream of meaning, until I realized that the Universe was trying to tell me something.
I started reading about the Fibonacci Sequence and the concept of maximum potential. Have you heard of the Fibonacci Sequence? It’s basically a mathematical roadmap to thriving and dying on Planet Earth. The Fibonacci Sequence is a series of numbers in which a number is identified by adding up the two numbers before it.
As the synchronicities built that day, I began to do some research. I encountered an article about how market crashes can be predicted using Fibonacci number levels, and I considered the idea that heads of corporations expect failures along with losses, to build an empire, sell it, and begin anew.
Deceptively simple, the Fibonacci sequence is found throughout nature, designating the method, for example, by which plants arrange their petals to maximize their potential for receiving nutrients. According to the website http://www.livescience.com/37470-fibonacci-sequence.html,
Fibonacci numbers do actually appear in nature, from sunflowers to hurricanes to galaxies. Sunflowers’ seeds, for example, are arranged in a Fibonacci spiral, keeping the seeds uniformly distributed no matter how large the seed head may be.
One of the most significant formulas associated with the Fibonacci sequence is Phi, or “The Golden Number”: ~1.618. The DNA molecule, that which dictates how life itself unfolds, is based on the golden section (https://www.goldennumber.net/dna/).
On that day of synchronicity, when I was thinking about rising and falling, cycles and Fibonacci’s magical digits, I pulled a card of the day from my Enchanted Map deck that I at first did not link to the idea permeating my consciousness:
This is the Bone Collector card from Colette Baron Reid’s Enchanted Map Oracle deck, which I highly recommend. On the back, the card offers plenty of wisdom, but the statement that clicked into place for me was:
Anything is possible. With awareness, the wounds of the past need not define you.
The wounds of the past need not define you. Of course the wounds of the past need not define you. Because life is change. Life is based on a sequence of numbers that constantly marches forward, there is no stopping it. There is no stopping the rise and fall.
Are you at your lowest point right now? Get ready, because that means you are about to be at the tipping point to move your way to the top. Are you on top of the world, nothing can stop you? Just stay humble and know that if you are not innovating, if you are not welcoming each day and what it brings and adapting to that, you are stagnating.
The bottom of the darkness well is a powerful place, because the potential for growth is maximized and the wheel of the Universe is ready to turn. You have nowhere to go but up, you are a tree in hibernation preparing for his time in the sun. The top of the mountain is a dangerous, but exhilarating place, where you can stay but for a moment–but it teaches you the path and you will well be on your way once again after descending.
One of my favorite meditations is with a card from a “Meditations” app I use on my phone. The card is a blue and brown (water and sand) yin/yang symbol, and the first time I meditated with it, I witnessed a Universal truth come to life in front of me. As I drifted into the meditation, I focused on the line of the symbol where the blue and brown met, and soon I could see water and sand instead of just colors. I could see the liminal threshold where water gives over to sand and vice versa, in a constantly moving cycle. I saw that change was what drove the sine wave at the center of the symbol forward, the differences between the water and the sand.
I saw the tipping point of life. Every minute that passes is a tipping point, has us on the edge of that sine wave, moving forward into the next incarnation.
There is a translation from the i Ching that sums up what I witnessed in that meditation:.
“. . . when anything reaches its maximum potential, it turns toward its opposite.”
The Fibonacci Sequence and the i Ching are sources of wisdom telling us that as we reach our maximum potential, we inevitably turn toward our opposite. I also found a description in a book titled Fundamentals of Horticulture (http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/emat6680/parveen/fib_nature.htm) stating that leaf arrangements are designed in the pattern and numerical sequence known as the “Fibonacci sequence” in order to allow plants to photosynthesize to their “maximum potential.”
See what I’m getting at here? There is a Universal truth at play in this concept.
“. . . when anything reaches its maximum potential, it turns toward its opposite.”
The Universe is driving plants toward their inevitable death and rebirth. We are being driven toward our inevitable deaths and rebirths. The law of our world is reincarnation, to begin anew, to die and be reborn and die again, ad infinitum.
In any situation, it is love as the light toward which we bend and twist like the limbs of a tree. It is love from which we hide for fear that wanting it too much again will cause us more pain. It is love that ultimately drives every process, from murder and addiction to selfless sacrifice and joyous celebration.
The law of conservation of energy, at the foundation of our knowledge of physics, holds that in a closed system, the sum energy must be constant. Energy, in our physical world, is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
Only. Do you feel the resonance when you put these pieces of wisdom together? Our physical and spiritual worlds, they are one. Our souls are energy, just like our bodies. We are in a closed system, and we never die, we transform into spirit. We tip back into our spiritual state, then we descend once more into the human body, and we repeat.
As you connect with Spirit, you learn more about the lessons you set out to experience on Earth when you decided to come here with your soul group. Think of it as a college curriculum that you chose with the help of your advisers before you embarked. You headed to Earth along with your classmates–your soul group–and you are doing your best to learn and excel. There are extra-curricular activities along the way as well, but ultimately, all of it changes you, transforms you to another level of existence. We come to Earth to deepen our spirits, to strengthen our connections, to remember what we are. Earth is not the end game. It is only the beginning of this current journey.
Redemption is such a grand, bombastic word for something that often comes to you soft and slow, creeping in small bursts of change and insight. Redemption for us physical humans works in a similar way to the pattern of life evident all around us, because it is, at its core, evolution. Webster’s dictionary defines redemption as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil,” “a thing that saves someone from error or evil” and “the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.”
Redemption is having the opportunity to do it again, differently, as many times as your Spirit will have it.
Redemption can also take the form of release from a self-imposed prison. My redemption from depression came through working with spiritual guardians as well as the slow process of regaining control over my life. Redemption is like springtime for that tree that changed my perspective so utterly—it comes in increments, gently increasing the amount of light the tree takes in every day, inching the heat of the tree’s world up a bit with every day that winter fades back. Redemption comes in small actions and changes and it ultimately requires patience. You need to be willing to wait for winter to pass.
Like the tree, you cannot make winter pass faster, but you can be ready as soon as springtime starts again. You can make small changes all throughout the winter, little adjustments to prepare for the springtime that you know is coming, because that is how our world works—in rises and falls, in ebbs and flows, like a sine wave, like a steady heartbeat.
In love and light,
Erica
