"The middle-despite the common use of that word-is not halfway between here and there, beginning and end, birth and death, right and wrong. The middle is no place at all, but an undecided space that lingers between our illusion of polarities, containing them both and being empty of both, at once uniting and separating." - From Thus Spoke the Plant by Monica Gagliano, PhD.
It is often remarked that our environment creates who we are. But what do we mean by that, really? If we take it literally, it means that if we live near a mountain or river, over time we accumulate the actual physicality of this place within our cells. Air, water, soil, pollen, dust, and the chemical ingredients of the scents of the flora become the pieces that build and make us anew. How many different people do we become over the course of our lives? You might even call this animism as symbiosis.
Or should we measure our changing selves by the turning seasons instead? And yet, seasons don't really exist as far as the earth is concerned. The earth does not divide its time into four sections. It is us humans who do that. Instead, the earth moves through a fluid cyclical change that seems to repeat over years but, in fact, as our own solar system moves on its own vast cycle, we sail through different parts of the universe to be infused and bathed with light from billions of different stars and galaxies. We move though macroscopic fields of space-dust, sometimes hundreds of times larger than our own solar system, then out into clear space before we push on to even further distances. And all that we pass through also becomes part of the earth, much like our own local environment becomes part of us. As above, so below.
And on the grand scale of things who can say which is more important or affecting? Is it our earthly cycle as we orbit the sun, or the changes caused by these almost abstract time scales of which we are not even aware of?
And all of those ideas concerning change and environment are part of the much more intimate examination of local lore and observations regarding landscape and sacred places. Because, as the quote at the start of this piece reminds us, "The middle is no place at all." It is in this way that our megalithic sites and sacred places of ancient stone circles and dolmens are the sentinels and beacons to mark our arrival at the many milestones on our stellar pilgrimage. They stand for thousands of years, like antenna reaching up through ever changing skies, acting as watchtowers for new stars and constellations.
And when star and stone align, the monuments speak, like birdsong announcing that a new day is here.
But ancient texts and wisdom also tell us that the old stones frame something more subtle yet just as profound.
Might the dawning light of new nebulae and constellations awaken parts of ourselves that hibernate for thousands of years like secret flowers in the earth?
Hindu cosmology speaks of the grand cycle of The Yugas which say that our consciousness expands and contracts depending upon our closeness to certain constellations and starlight. This allows us to access the unseen spectrum of life that has always been existing around us, yet outside of our perception until that moment.
As our entire solar system moves through its own seasons, wider senses within us are beckoned to become reborn. And the wheel turns again. (C.) David Halpin.