Class 8 – Law of Rhythm

The principles underlying this law are defined as the movements of the in-breath and the out-breath of God.  Life moves in cycles and is constantly renewing itself, first from the highs and then from the lows, next from within and then from without.  These rhythms connect the two extremes revealed in the Law of Polarity.  These rhythmic motions are what constitute the heartbeat and the pulse of Life itself. [1]

                                   The Light Shall Set You Free, Dr. Norma Milanovich and Dr. Shirley McCune

 

The Law or Principle of Rhythm is the Universes response to the Law or Principle of Polarity, providing a vehicle to navigate within the Polarity continuum – between the negative and positive poles.  The Law of Rhythm allows for a natural flow between our experiences of day and night, Love and fear, joy and sadness, etc…  These Laws exist and function in all planes of existence, including the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realms.  Though the laws of physics validate the Law of Rhythm on the physical plane (cycles of the moon, tides, seasons, women’s menstrual cycles), validation of these rhythmic patterns are less obvious on the emotional, mental and spiritual planes.  We see this in the physical world most easily with the flow of birth and death, and the rise and fall of nations, businesses and buildings; in the emotional world, with the constant birthing and dying away (ebb and flow) of emotions; in the mental world with the birth of new thoughts, ideas, creations, and the dying away (forgetting) of the same; and, we see this in the spiritual world, with the Inbreath and the Outbreath of Life itself.  We see it with the birthing, growth and death of suns, planets, galaxies, and universes.  We experience this continual rhythmic ebb and flow in our spiritual awareness, our faith in a power greater than ourselves, and our willingness to recognize and embrace our Oneness with all Life.

We see rhythms throughout the natural world.  As stated in the quotation above, these rhythms are the breath or the “heartbeat and the pulse of life itself.”  When we disregard or become oblivious to these rhythms that are so vital to life, we separate ourselves from the Essence of that Life, both around us and within us.  As I mentioned in the chapter “Symbolism,” the cycles of the moon, the tides, the seasons, the rhythms in our own bodies, are all reminders that Life does not separate itself into different forms.  That separation occurs only in our own minds.  Life is life no matter what form it takes and all Life is interconnected and interdependent because all Life has just one Source – the same Source.  Rhythm is the mechanism by which the polar opposites are joined, as it is the movement from the negative pole to the positive pole and back again, that creates and sustains all Life.

“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”                                                                    -The Kybalion

 

The rhythms of Life in all its forms move like a pendulum, from one side to the other side in an equidistant fashion, perfectly balanced.  Rhythms are what allow us to remain in balance, despite the fact that when we find ourselves sometimes on an uncomfortable side of the pendulum, we feel out of balance.  You have heard the term, “This too shall pass.”?  Well, thanks to the Law of Rhythm, this is a guarantee – it is the Law!  Since energy is always in motion, we can always be certain that nothing can stay the same for very long.  In the same way, we can always be certain that the tides will come in and the tides will go out.

Because it is through the contrast of seeming polar opposites and the rhythmic movement between these seemingly opposite poles that we learn to navigate our lives, it is important to understand how the Law of Polarity and the Law of Rhythm work in harmony for our benefit.   As mentioned when we used the color spectrum to better understand the Polarity continuum, every color or aspect along the continuum, is simply a different hue or variation of the same energy.  When we find ourselves on a continuum point that does not feel good, all we have to do is slide our awareness onto another point along the same energy spectrum that feels better.  The more we come to know any one point on one side of the continuum, (because all is part of the whole and all is One) the more we come to know the associated (opposite) point on the other end of this continuum, merely through the experience of the “other”.

For example, by experiencing despair, I learn what it is like not to feel joy.  When I experience conditional love, I learn more about the nature of unconditional love.  The more familiar we become with each point along any given continuum, the more easily we can make the choice to move from a point that does not feel good, to a point that does feel good.  In the process, we increase our capacity to feel compassion when others experience despair or conditional love, because we know how very difficult it is to experience those lower frequencies.  Once we understand this concept, there is no longer the same sense of “opposites”, but a more congruent sense of the ultimate perfection in Oneness.

”When I heal myself, I heal the world, and when I know myself, I know the world. “

Excerpt from the Documentary, Down to Earth, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWgEOxoQy4&feature=youtu.be

Remember a time when you felt very concerned about an issue when you went to bed, and awoke the next morning feeling much better about it?   The pendulum just moved to the other side of the continuum while you were sleeping.  It may not always work out this way for us, but when it does happen, it is such a relief!  We can set this shift in motion more often by surrendering our concern before we go to sleep.  When we release our resistance to our own natural rhythmic shift, the shift will happen on its own, with no effort required.  Remember that when energy moves, it is constantly shifting in frequency – either moving from high to low or low to high.  We can always count on this rhythmic movement, and in our certainty, we can learn to use the constantly shifting flow and momentum of the energy within and around us to not only minimize our suffering, but to actually mitigate it altogether.

When was the last time you just stopped and listened to your own heartbeat or your own breath?  Time as we know it, has unwittingly increased our sense of separation from the Oneness to be found in Nature.  Indigenous tribes and Original Peoples all over the world once knew the sacredness of their connection to Nature’s rhythms because their survival depended upon being tuned in to environmental changes and rhythms.  Knowing the time of day or the time of year, understanding weather patterns, finding food and water sources, the moon cycles and stars were all functions of tuning in to Nature and communicating with their surroundings.

Nature is Vital to Vitality

In our modern cultures, all we have to do is to look at a clock to know what time it is or listen to a weather forecast to know what the weather will be.  We go to a supermarket for our food with little or no thought about where it came from or how it came to be on the shelf.  We have no obvious reason to remember how vital our connection really is to Nature and to all of Life.  Thus, we have no idea why we feel like something is missing in our lives.  We have no idea why we feel disconnected, from what exactly we have become disconnected, or why we feel disjointed from each other, let alone from Nature.  We have come to rely on machines to do our calculating and “figuring” for us and as a result, we have set aside our potential, putting it on the back burner and in some cases, we have completely forgotten it.  We have forgotten that our potential with Nature is far greater than it is when we believe we are separate from Nature.

To illustrate this point, let’s look at the example of the tsunami that decimated parts of Indonesia, Thailand and India in December of 2003.  Approximately two hundred thousand people died in a literal wave of human devastation, causing grief, untold suffering, and hardships for all in its wake.  From all accounts that I have read, however, not one animal was found dead in the aftermath of human death and destruction.  Two hundred thousand human deaths, and not one animal died in this technologically unpredictable natural disaster!  With all of the highly advanced technology that money can buy, so typical of our times, we could not predict what every single animal already, effortlessly and instinctively knew because of its profound and innate connection with Nature.

When we are connected to the Greater Whole, we do not need machinery and technology to know, understand, and prepare for the inevitable and natural rhythms of Nature.  It is the retrieval of our forgotten, but not lost, connection to this Greater Whole that is all that is required to align with and literally to rise above the natural rhythms of the Earth.  The animals saved themselves by showing us that the only way to transcend the Natural Laws of the Universe, is to rise above them – not by controlling them.  We do this first by raising our level of understanding of this connection, which instantly enhances our connection.  The wildlife, “tuned in” to the obvious warnings that they understood through their connection and Oneness with Nature, knew instinctively to move to higher ground in order to rise above the pending, imminent disaster.  Having lost our connection to the natural world, humans did not receive these same warnings, that could have communicated to us to find safety and refuge by moving to higher ground.  Humans too, could have transcended this wave of destruction, had they only remembered and honored their Oneness with Nature.

Our technology, no matter how advanced it becomes, can never replace our connection with Nature and the re-membering of our Oneness.  Having relied solely (rather than soul-ly) on our technology for information that that very technology was incapable of providing, human beings became the victims of the natural and inevitable rhythms of Nature, instead of tapping in to our knowing, and rising above or transcending the imminent danger, to ride it out in safety.  The fact that we still experience loss and suffering at all, only serves as information that we have not yet embraced that which we need to know in order to rise above it altogether.  Our failure to tune in to this “information” is also an indication that we have lost touch with our Oneness in the Greater Whole that connects us all to each other and to all of Life.  We have lost touch with the part of us that is and has always been one with Nature and the part of Nature that is one with us.  This reconnection is vital to the sustainability and continuance of all Life on this planet.

No matter how technologically and scientifically advanced we become, we will never succeed in controlling the Law of Rhythm, because the advancement of our species does not depend on controlling Nature, as we have believed since Newtonian times.  On the contrary, the key is to understand that there is a natural rhythm to everything that exists, has ever existed, and will ever exist.  This understanding must embrace our own inclusion in the greater scheme of things with our recognition of these greater rhythms and how they affect, synchronize, and ultimately unify with our own individual rhythms.

Personal Rhythms

Gaining an understanding of our own individual rhythms may be the best place to start.  Whenever the Greater Whole feels too overwhelming to comprehend, we can always take our focus to the personal level. Focusing our attention on our own microcosm, we can gain an understanding of our personal rhythms, while at the same time, acknowledging, even if only on an intellectual level, our connection to and interdependence with something larger than ourselves.  As we come to understand ourselves on deeper and deeper levels, self-acceptance and self-love tend to come more naturally and we have less resistance to allowing that level of healing.  As we not only allow, but invite our deepest level of healing, we expand into remembrance.

Moreover, it is time to remember through our expanded awareness, that we are vitally connected within the Web of Life, affecting the quality of every natural rhythm and movement within that Web with every thought, word, and action either for better, or for worse. This will aid us in expanding our personal understanding out to the Greater Whole, thus expanding our understanding of our sacred relationship to the Whole.  As we chose to reconnect and re-member this sacred participatory relationship with all of Life, our reclaimed relationship with Nature plugs us back in to working with the forces of Nature rather than against them.

Consciously tuning in to better understand ourselves has the added benefit of increasing our awareness of our emotional responses to our daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and yearly rhythms.  The more we are able to increase our awareness of our emotional responses to these rhythms, the less likely we are to react with fear or to allow negative emotions to control our thoughts, words and actions. When we cultivate negative thoughts (seeds), we produce or reap negative fruit!  With awareness and a conscious choice to understand and master our use of all our senses, we can use intelligent Love and Wisdom in choosing our responses to the ups and downs – rhythms – of life.

There is a rhythm in the universe, which rightly understood would resolve all conflict.  There is a peace in the universe, a freedom from confusion, which rightly understood would heal all troubles.  There is an all-encompassing love in the universe, which rightly understood would heal all emotional difficulties.  There is a creativity in the universe, which rightly understood would keep us whole and vitally active in expressing it. [2]

“The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

 

Questions for Contemplation:

  1. ”When we disregard or become oblivious to these rhythms that are so vital to Life, we separate ourselves from the Essence of that Life, both around us and within us.”

Do you see any correlation between this statement and the unrest we are currently                     experiencing in our world?

  1. How can listening to your own heartbeat and/or becoming more aware of your breath support you in remembering your vital connection to the Web of Life?
  2. How might your new understanding of the Law of Polarity and its relationship to the Law of Rhythm support you in more easily shifting out of judgment into compassion?
  3. What tangible ways can you turn back the clock in your own microcosm, making a choice to live more in harmony with Nature’s Rhythms?

 

 

 

©2020 Debra Emmanuelle. All rights reserved.

[1] McCune, Dr. Norma Milanovich and Dr. Shirley. The Light Shall Set You Free. Scottsdale, AZ: Athena Publishing, 1996. p.236

 

[2] Holmes, Ernest. A New Design for Living. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989 . p. 198