Spirals: The Connection

PROLOGUE

   Even as a child I wanted to know everything. I was and am insatiably curious. Afraid of dying and horrified by all the contradictions in human behavior with which I was expected to live, I had many questions but no answers. How could it be that innocent children could get sick and die, but villains could survive and prosper? What made it possible for a man like Hitler to gain the power to destroy so many millions? Why did human beings never seem to agree about anything? What was all the fighting about?  Why was peace so rare and misery so common? And, if there was a God, and He was all-knowing and all-powerful, how could anyone but He be responsible for the state of the world and the state of my consciousness?

   One day, at the age of sixteen I sat at the back of the school bus asking myself questions like these. Suddenly, the clamor of the other students faded out and the clamor in my head was perfectly still. In that timeless moment I understood everything. I saw it all and it all made perfect sense. Everything, all the contradictions of life, related so simply, a tapestry woven of a million colors and textures.  All of life, everything I had ever experienced, learned, and seen, fit together into a cohesive whole, and there were no more questions. Underlying all the confusion, I saw, was a simple form, a structure deeply embedded in nature, which pulled everything into place. The universe, I realized, has design and purpose that we sometimes miss in all the seething turmoil.

   It was as if I had seen God. I understood the number of creation, the rhythm of the cosmos, the Art of Life. I was awestruck. If the universe were a million disconnected words, I had seen the grammar that gave them meaning. If the world were a mass of random colors, I had seen the design that turned it into a painting. If all of creation could be described as music, I had seen the one sustaining rhythm that gave it unity and purpose. If Life were a story, I had seen the intention that made it live.

   In that moment I became an artist. Of what kind I had no idea, for I had no particular talent. All I knew was that it was my purpose in life to find a way to express what I had seen, to pass along the understanding I had gained. I was only sixteen and didn't know how much pain I would suffer before I could even attempt to do that, so I was filled with hope and a kind of incandescent joy.

   Everywhere I went and everything I did was ultimately focused on finding my way back to that original experience, on putting it into words so that I could explain it to others and to myself and, hopefully, to experience it again. Yet a secondhand telling could not recreate the moment, could not make it happen again. In fact, words seemed to make it smaller, to pull it down to earth, and that was not my intention. I wanted to share it; I wanted others to know it with me. I tried music; I tried painting and sculpture; I tried drama.

   I was filled with more questions than ever. What had happened to me? What was this experience all about? Where had it come from? Where had it gone?  Why, when I tried to express it, did it become so small? What was it about words that was so limiting? Was I the only one who'd ever seen it, or did other people know it as well? Was it possible to relate it in a way that would open it up for others?

   Though I wanted to write this book since the day it happened, it has taken me over twenty-five years to acquire the knowledge and wisdom needed to do so. I found the insight and inspiration at the age of sixteen, but it took years of living and learning, years of research, to reach the point where it has all come together in my life as it once came together, momentarily, in my head.

   My study was conducted under the 'try it and see' theory of life. That is, I tried everything, gave myself over to every experience.  I did everything I wanted to do and suffered the consequences. I have been a child, a wife, a businesswoman, a student, an artist, a worker, a thief, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a sexual slave, a victim, and a victor. I have been irresponsible and selfish, and responsible and kind. I have been disciplined and impulsive. I have been a worker and a boss, a giver and a taker, a student and a teacher. I've been rich and I've been poor. I've been in love and I've been alone.

   I began my unorthodox college career in the '70's with an interest in science and medicine, and went from there to psychology and sociology to theatre, and finally, twenty years later to communication, getting a bachelor's with thirty-four credits more than I needed, and a master's on top of that. In between I must have read four or five thousand books. Though I never realized until afterward, everything I did, every feeling I felt, every person I met, every lesson I learned was grist for the mill, ground up and assimilated into the whole that I'd glimpsed that day on the bus.

   I had seen, ever so briefly, that everything fit into the tapestry of life, that the universe—and therefore our lives as part of the universe—made sense and had meaning. Thus I knew that I could reject nothing. I had no standards, and every choice I made through the years was intended, simply, to keep my choices open. When I suffered it was usually because I felt stuck in some way, as if I'd spiraled down into some place where I had no choices. Bereft upon this shore, I would cry out at my fate, at the darkness inside me, and set out to free myself again. Or sometimes I would just cry helplessly until someone else came along and set me free.

   I discovered that I was not alone, that there were many others who had had an experience like I'd had. I found and read voraciously the work of other writers who admitted to having been inspired by a vision. I came to know that the universe does make sense, that contradictions are not really contradictions, but just extremes of Truth. I understood that we are all adventurers on this world, all intent on reaching the place I'd glimpsed so fortuitously so many years ago. Every epiphany, every grace, every vision, and every dream ever experienced by anyone which transcends the little mainstream reality we usually accept as Reality, is an open door into Truth and a pathway to Joy. We are all mystics opening doors to heaven. This book, I hope, will help you open yours.

   Recently—coincidentally, some might say—I discovered Chaos[1], a mathematical theory that is already changing the world. While reading about this new science, I discovered that I too have been writing about chaos, the difference being that I have been forced by my lack of mathematical expertise to use words rather than numbers to describe it. Chaos—a misnomer, if there ever was one—is the science of wholeness, of order beneath disorder; it pulls the universe together and looks at it globally, not as bits and pieces, and recognizes that it makes sense. This is what I've tried to do here, and although words have their limits, I believe I have succeeded.

   My purpose has been to create a picture of the underlying order beneath the confusion we see everywhere, examining science, the natural world, human nature, and mysticism in this context. I have organized this work into eight chapters, each looking at the tension between a pair of opposites, which I have defined as the foundation of reality as we know it. The first chapter paints a picture of this fundamental process and each subsequent chapter explains how this opposition is reiterated over and over again in different areas of life. Taken altogether, as a whole in itself, the book pulls in on itself and returns us to the beginning. If you can see this at the end, then I have succeeded.

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