Posted September 4, 2013

I asked my dear wife, Allee, who is the smartest person I've ever known, what it was all about. This was some few decades ago and we were sitting in some barbecue joint in Texas. She looked up and said, offhandedly, "It's all mush. You can do anything you want with it." This struck me as a deep truth! Of course! Right underneath the surface of my seemingly orderly mind there was mush, a swirling, bubbling cauldron of not-too-hot but still cooking ideas, swirling and not altogether distinct. Here's a hint, in mandala form: .
Now you may notice, as has been true in other pictures in this series, that there is both order and disorder mixed. That's as it should be, as it really is---some order, some disorder. Nor is this disorder static. What's misleading in this picture is that the sub-designes are often a bit wiggly---that means that they really do wiggle in time, they transform, and they won't be in that configuration long. It's all more like a slowly revolving kaleidoscope.

At the center of this is the Hebrew letter Aleph, which corresponds with the Greek letter alpha---but also it is more. It's a letter that suggests an open vowel, the possibility of taking many sound-vowels as it transforms.

This core, which acknowledges the mysterious, more-than-full no-thing-ness beyond form, the source of energy that itself is beyond vibration, surrounded by seven points that has yet to become nine. As it expands it becomes 14! These are non-symmetric numbers that symbolize becoming, not rest. Yet their symmetry does suggest some degree of rest or balance. That's indeed the way it all is, though. (Note that this approach differs in a number of ways from the overall tendency to represent mandala-forms as symmetrical. Those have some aesthetic appeal, because the full dynamism of individual differences is quite overwhelming to human minds.)

Our lives, our universe, time, does imply a becomingness. I am not suggesting that the whole of all possible universes or god or whatever is adequately depicted this way---I'm sure I have no ability to ever know. But I relate more to a Becoming-Everything and those parts of the cosmos that are clearly in process rather than static. More than that, though I know I'm choosing my archetypes, I like becoming, the future, what it's heading towards. I want to help it in whatever small way I can.