Seven views of one moment
8.1
What you will learn
You can look at a single moment of your life through all seven principles, and you experience them as seven ways of seeing one reality.
You have walked through seven principles, one after another. Now they come together. Not as seven separate teachings, but as seven ways of seeing the same life.
The seven, once more
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◎︎ Mentalism
Everything is held in one mind, and your mind is part of it.
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⧖︎ Correspondence
The small and the large are woven from the same thread.
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≋︎ Vibration
Nothing rests. Body, soul and spirit are one movement at different rates.
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◐︎ Polarity
Opposites are two ends of one thing, and the scale can be walked.
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∿︎ Rhythm
Everything swings, and there is a still point at the centre.
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∴︎ Cause and Effect
Nothing merely happens, and the nearer the centre, the freer.
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✿︎ Gender
Something new comes into being when a clear direction meets a living ground.
How they belong together
The Kybalion says little about this directly, but it shows it everywhere. The planes of correspondence are distinguished by vibration. Every vibration moves between two poles. The movement between the poles is rhythm. The art of changing a state is polarisation, and polarisation is also how rhythm is neutralised. Every change has its causes on many planes. And every creation needs both creative qualities. All of it takes place in the one mind of THE ALL.
We understand this as the deepest learning of the course: the seven principles do not describe seven separate worlds. They are seven views of one living reality, and you can look at any moment of your life through all of them at once.
Exercise: one moment, seven views, about 15 minutes
- Choose one moment from the past few days that stayed with you.
- Mentalism: what meaning did I give it, and what was simply there?
- Correspondence: where do I know this pattern from, in the small or in the large?
- Vibration: what moved in my body, my feelings and my thoughts?
- Polarity: which two poles were at work, and where was I on the scale?
- Rhythm: was this part of a swing, and where was the still point?
- Cause and Effect: what led to it, and what did it set in motion?
- Gender: what could come into being from it?
The same thought, elsewhere
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."
Matthew 6:22, King James Version (1611)
The philosopher Plotinus taught that all things come from the One and long to return to it, and that the soul finds its way back by gathering itself from the many into the one.
A moment of stillness
Close your eyes. Let the seven principles pass through your mind once, like seven notes. Then let them fall silent together, and rest in the one sound that remains.
To take with you
Seven principles. Seven ways of looking at one reality. And the one who looks is part of it.
Questions for reflection
- Which of the seven views showed you the most about your moment?
- Where did you feel the principles working together?