By Harold Boulette
“The great Fifth Hermetic Principle—the Principle of Rhythm—embodies the truth that in everything there id manifested a measured motion; a to-and-from movement; a flow and inflow; … a pendulum-like movement; … There is always an action and reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a sinking; manifested in all of the airs and phenomena of the Universe. Suns, worlds, animals plants, … mind and matter, yes, even Spirit, manifests this principle. This principle manifests in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the history of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man.” ~Three Initiates
The Need for Cycles
So many people misunderstand the principles of cycles and much of our difficulties are caused by our failure to recognize this principle. In order to breathe, you must inhale and then exhale and repeat that cycle over and over. You can’t just breath in constantly because your lungs can’t hold all that air. Even if they could, the exhale serves more than to release the used air from which most of the oxygen has been removed, The exhale is a cleansing thing that helps remove certain toxins from the body.
Back when electricity was being developed as a power source, Thomas Edison favored direct current which flows in one direction only. Tesla favored alternate current which moves in both directions in cycles. While direct current is easy to use (think batteries) its major problem is that it can’t travel far. If we had followed Edison’s plan, we would have direct current generators every few blocks supplying just a small area. Tesla say that alternating current could be used over much greater distances and it is the method we adopted.
Another cycle we see a lot of today is in physical fitness. There are some people who, when they finally decide to get fit, will do a heavy workout of some sort every day. These people usually make little progress because of it. Either you have to work only a few muscles each day, or you have to skip days. Muscles don’t grow when you are straining them. They grow during the rest part of the cycle after being stimulated to do so by the active part of that fitness cycle.
One reason why many businesses fail is because the founder(s) fail to allow for this cyclic rhythm. They plan for steady growth, and when an inevitable downswing happens, they are not prepared to handle it.
The Cycles of Matter and Spirit
We are all part matter and part spirit. There is a belief among some that we are constantly fluctuating between the spiritual world and the material. This may or may not be true, but isn’t particularly important either way.
What is important with the cycle of matter and spirit is that the pendulum has swung just about as far as it can to the side of matter and must now move the other way. Here, we are not talking about a cycle of years, or even centuries, but eons: billions of years. But even though this cycle can be considered inevitable, our participation in it is not.
Let’s look at an allegorical example to understand this. Suppose an area that was once very wet dries gradually until it becomes a desert. Many plants that once thrived there will die, but other will adapt to the changes. Now if the pendulum swings the other way, and the desert starts getting wetter, those plants must adapt once more, or die off.
We are, like those plants, at a stage when we have to make a choice. We can choose to cling to the materialistic life that we have become accustomed too, and die when the pendulum swings far enough over to spirit that we can’t handle it. Or we can choose to change with the world, perhaps even do our part to help the change happen, and survive. The choice is ours.
This post was previously published on the Solar Wind blog.