Macrobiotics is saving my life, again. Back to beans, rice and stir fried veggies with occasional bits of locally sourced proteins as condiments - In season and local. Organic. Almost vegan. This sounds like a chef's best presentation.
I learned Yin and Yang from Macrobiotics in 1975. It was all about the food then. Now it is all about the everything. The walk, the touch, mastication and presence and the stirring of the pot. The wife stirs the pot in a spiral motion to activate chi. Clockwise is Yang chi. Counter clockwise is Yin chi. She is Yin, mostly. He is Yang, mostly. And so it goes.
After that came Anthropology. Then Psychology. Psychology stuck for years. But then, lightning struck. It was 1992. My son met a kid at the 7-Eleven. They were 17. They played the machines at the 7-Eleven, across the street from a multiplex apartment complex, where the other kid's dad owned the whole shooting match. High roller.
One day my kid and that kid said to each of us,
"Parent, you should get married to these other people because you both need a person." So we did. After that, all hell broke loose. He was a rageaholic; I, a victim of life itself. It was ugly for me, but the prize was in there all along and I knew it. This complicated wounded warrior was and astrologer who fostered my education like a grandmother. He had the best books about the subject. He knew all the aspects and definitions. He was a 30 year veteran at this subject, and determined to let me in on it. I leaped in and studied for a year. That was all.
It was either leave him, or die. I wasn't ready to die yet. I still had a few good looking years left and wasn't about to waste them! No. So we divorced. He gave me a settlement. Thoughtful and generous, he was at times. That was what made him so mad all the time - his own generosity.
Yin and Yang continued to prompt my attentions and after another year passed, I ran headlong into Kabbalah, ancient spiritism and all inclusive Yin/Yang Machine. Except with a twist. The third leg. The Tao. The Tao is the Two halves combined into a circle. Observed from a bird's eye view, it looks like this...
Observed from the side it looks like this...
I looked at this Tree of Life and said,
"Yin on the left, Yang on the right! What's that in the middle?"
You have arrived. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. This is paradise. You will not like it "out there" in the storm. Middle is the Wife, Stirring with a boy-child on her hip. The middle is the lovers "doing it". The middle is the love that pours from a mysterious fountain called the heart. The middle is the cauldron where Alchemists create new from old and old from new. The middle is "where it's at". It is the Vortex. The Eye of the storm. A bedspring. A tornado tearing creation apart all around us, but not exactly in the very center where we are standing, sitting, sleeping and eating. A gentle swirl in the coffee cup. It is quiet here.
Yin and Yang are extremes of Creation/God/Divinity/Whatever. We, on the Cutting Edge of Creation, are sliding down the spiral of life in relative comfort. My message today...
Don't rock the boat, baby. Don't turn the boat over! Yin and Yang are not to be messed with. Settle for a bit of each with a large portion of middle. Creation - humuns included - is the hermaphrodite child of The Two. God is not The One. God is The Two and is actually the Gods. We Are The One. The Two Into One. Yin and Yang makes Creation in an ongoing process quite similar to stirring in a spiral pattern.
Life is more meaningful if you just stir gently, in a circle.