Everything is a Middle: An Essay on the Process of Change
This essay is Part 1 of 2 on “middles,” the first of two visionary lessons that came down the pipeline this past week. Click here for Part 2.
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For nearly a month since our fall intensive, Brad has been dreaming every night of new kinds of musical arrangements for our recorded ecstatic audio tracks. We send these musical teachings every month to people in the Guild. The exception to that stream of musical higher education was last week’s vision of Lame Deer and the pipe. That dream arrived just before we released our first recording of the season and started our new online “salon” – a virtual gathering place to host discussion of our monthly mystical experiments.
A few days ago Brad made a prayer request to be sent to another spiritual classroom, specifically to receive more of the kind of lesson that would involve words rather than only music. A vision with more concepts and language involved means we can enjoy writing up a report the next day and Hillary receives something new to draw. That night Brad dreamed he was making something with his hands that would highlight some critically important theoretical and practical principles about creation and transformation.
Here’s Brad’s report, something with enough conceptual depth and texture for you to chew on and savor:
I dreamed I was making a simple collage consisting of several written phrases on a poster-sized canvas. Above and just to the right of the center I placed the image of Ouroboros. This mythical dragon or circular serpent that tries to swallow its tail was used by one of my mentors, Heinz von Foerster, to symbolize the basic self-correcting cybernetic dynamic of change. Next to it were these words, hand painted: “The Ouroborean circularity of recursion.”
Underneath that image and its accompanying words, and further to the right, I added another image, that of a theatre stage and curtain. The following words were hand painted next to the image in a variety of colors: “Different action brings the difference that makes a difference.”
Finally, in the dream, I tore out an irregularly shaped piece of thick brown cardboard that was taken from a discarded cardboard box and laid it upon the left lower side of the collage. Before gluing it on I wrote this quotation on it: “’Honor thy error as a hidden intention,’ – Brian Eno.”
I then hesitated to attach the cardboard and its words, thinking it was a repetition of the previous directive to enact a difference. But then I realized that it was a recursion of the former statement and brought something new to the performance stage: inspiration to alleviate the inaction that comes from too much fear of making mistakes. Instead, one recognizes that what initially appears as an error may actually be a resourceful contribution arising from the unconscious — the source of more systemic wisdom. Such action only appears irregular and erroneous to the conscious mind that readily recognizes familiar fragments but often does not readily grasp the whole.
As I proceeded to attach the piece of cardboard to the collage, I realized that every image and quote was a transform of the other— a circular reentry of a previous form. Furthermore, the last quotation that came from Brian Eno did not have an image. Its form was a cardboard cutout to remind me that all things conjured by the mind are operationally nothing more than cutouts from the whole fabric of reality—their truths are partial and situational. What matters is whether these cutouts lead to another action whose difference matters, that is, keeps the creative work in progress. In this way even presumed “errors” can bring you closer to a higher purpose if they are “honored,” that is, creatively utilized. Then I heard a voice whisper,
“This circular recursive art is a balm to uncalm the norm,
an antidote to the germ that spreads the fatal disease of lineality.”
Pleased with my collage of three messages that was a variation of two messages that was, in turn, a variation of one message, I framed the creation as if it were a work of art ready to be hung on the wall.
When I came back to myself and shared the dream with Hillary, I said, “Let us remember that Ouroboros must come through us and allow differences of a different kind (‘horses of a different color,’ as I sometimes say) to link one transformed form to another, and that all of this must be set on fire – brought to life with sacred emotion and the soulful force of creation.”
Everything is a Middle
From inside the recursive circling of Ouroboros, a voice speaks:
“The beginnings, middles, and endings you experience in lineal time only exist as cutouts construed by mind, momentary punctuations in the ongoing circular stream. Like changing seasons, sunrise and sunset, and rites of passage, these marked differences are what enable you to experience the seamless circling of life.”
But the more encompassing truth is this: There is no such thing as a static beginning or final ending; there are only middles that sometimes also serve as beginnings and endings. Creation is made up of a series of middles, the dynamic movement bridges that connect one thing on its way to becoming another. Meaningful, non-trivial change requires fascinating, mysterious, and wildly alive middles that host the back and forth oscillations of creative excitation, generation, regeneration, propagation, circulation, percolation, and the vibration of jubilation.
Our lineal culture does not live by this kind of change-based, dynamically-steered wisdom. It is obsessed with static outcomes based on simple cause-and-effect thinking, only paying attention to the beginning (cause) and desired end (outcome). No matter how attractive and acceptable the notion of circularity and ecological thinking may seem to you, it is wise to assume you remain stuck in habits of lineality and most of the time cannot perceive how circles within circles organize your life.
Though we have spent years dedicated to the practical art of cybernetics, we also still witness our own relapse into action that is not guided by recursive, process-oriented wisdom. Being less certain about whether you are living in accord with the dao of circular know-how may help you act differently rather than simply claim a name while behaving the same.
Remember: Different action brings the difference that makes a difference. Every action contributes to a middle that can be used to move you to the next middle, which may bring forth a needed ending or the beginning of something new. These “middles” build the room of your life. Honor thy true blue errors as well as your presumed non-errors. Use them to inspire and guide making a more interesting, creative, mystical, n/om-filled difference that will lead to the next creation.
One More Thing…
The day before this dream, while Brad was making a musical recording in another room, Hillary was preparing an email reminder for the Sacred Ecstatics Guild about our upcoming webinar. In the Guild we are exploring the way every transformative session must move through a clear Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3 – a beginning, middle, and end – doing so through the circular dynamic of recursion.
Hillary didn’t show or tell Brad anything about the image she found on the internet to include in the email blast. Imagine her surprise when Brad reported the dream to her. It was the same quote by Brian Eno that Brad dreamed that night, depicted on a cardboard background:
– The Keeneys, December 16, 2019.