Chaos
It’s no big news that there’s change afoot. We can all feel it, we all see it, and
lots of us are talking about it - from Russell Brand to Al Gore. It’s clear that
we’re in chaos in terms of just about any yardstick you care to choose. We’ve
been driving full tilt towards a cliff, and there’s a good argument for saying
that we’re already off the edge and falling.
That’s scary stuff for anyone with their feet on the ground and eyes open.
But what if we’ve misjudged chaos? What if our fear and
prejudices about it are based on old-paradigm thinking that may
not be the whole story?
My meditation practice, the 5Rhythms™, takes one through a ‘wave’ of
improvised movement, made up of five stages or rhythms, the central one of
which we call Chaos.
The experience of this practice gives us some insights into the nature of
change and evolution, and chaos itself as a phenomenon that helps make
sense of a world that seems to be going crazy.
Patriarchy
We’ve got several thousand years of patriarchy behind us. One could say
around 10,000, since the dawn of agriculture. During this time, the masculine
principle gained an ever increasing foothold, with the rise and rise of
hierarchical power structures, domination of the natural world, the ownership
and fencing in of land and women, and male gods the ultimate authority, ruling
from the skies. Before this we had - who knows how many - millennia of
matriarchal cultures wherein the divine was experienced as feminine, rooted in
the earth, and we lived in small tribal polyamorous circles, constantly on the
move as nomadic hunter-gatherers.1
The shapes of change
Now it just so happens that the first two rhythms of the five are Flowing and
Staccato, which are feminine and masculine by nature too.
One of the central teachings of the rhythms is that change tends to happen in
the same way that ocean waves break2 - in a set sequence of patterns - they
always begin way out at sea, rounded flowing shapes rolling in to the shore,
being very feminine in style. Then as transformation begins, the wave begins
to rise up and push out, eventually forming a sharp line that actually pushes
out forwards over its own base - masculine style.
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