Around we go! Stillness, motion and cycles within cycles
PRINT PAGE
Around we go! Stillness, motion and cycles within cycles
Have you ever considered our cycle of movement through the universe, the path we take, and the speed we are going?
For example, how fast are we going when we’re sitting still?
Let’s do some sums . . .
Earth is about 43,200 kilometres around at the equator.
The Earth spins one complete rotation on its axis every 24 hours.
So if we are sitting still on the equator, we are therefore travelling around in a circle at: 43,200 ÷ 24 = 1,800 km per hour!
Of course the Earth is also travelling around the Sun each year while we're doing our daily spin, so our 'circle' is actually a helix (spiralling movement of circles within circles) winding through space. To someone sitting out in space watching the Earth approach them, it would look as if it's going in a widening spiral, and if they were watching Earth recede into the distance, it would look as if it were spiralling smaller and smaller.
OK, what about our speed if we include our trip around the Sun?
Well the Earth is about 149 million km from the Sun, so it's going around in a circle 298 million km across (i.e. its diameter).
The circumference of that circle, the Earth’s orbit, is π X d (pi, 3.1415, times the diameter) = 3.1415 X 298 million = about 936 million km.
It’s actually bigger, as our orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse 940 million km around. We do that distance in one year.
So our total travelling speed is around 107,306 km per hour! Of course that's never in a straight line, it's really a complicated sum of vectors – in any case, we're going pretty fast!
But are we still going around in a helical spiralling circle?
Well no, actually, because the sun is travelling too, around Sirius. And Sirius is travelling around the centre of the galaxy, and maybe the galaxy is going around something even bigger in the universe. So our trail is a circle spiralling in a helix in a bigger circle spiralling in a bigger helix, in an even bigger circle spiralling in an even bigger helix. . . at greater and greater speeds, and so on ad infinitum (perhaps).
Fun mathematics aside, it gives us a direct sense of constantly moving cycles within cycles at every scale and level. It makes us re-evaluate what we mean by ‘motion’ and 'stillness', e.g. when we are sitting still, are we really still? If we are sitting still, we are nonetheless part of the amazing motion of the universe.
And even though our body may be physically still relative to our immediate surroundings, there is motion going on inside us; atoms and cells and physiological processes vibrating, flowing, pumping, moving all the time. Not only are we a collection of busy tissues inside a skin envelope however, we are also vehicles of energy, which we are moving through us all the time. This energy may be moving in line with the rhythm and flow of the cycles of the universe, or not.
We might be ‘stressing out’, ‘spinning out’ or 'going around in circles' in a chaotic, emotional life, pushing against our natural cycles by reacting to people and situations and trying to get everything done. Like in the classic movie ‘Groundhog Day’, we keep going around and around in the same cycle as we develop increasing awareness of our choices and their consequences, and change them.
Meanwhile the universe is already carrying us on all the cycles from the smallest to the greatest, of which our lives are part.
So there's not really much point in rushing or thinking we have to go somewhere . . . it makes much more sense to surrender. All we have to do is stop, tune in and reconnect to the living stillness within our bodies.
A way to do this is to let go of worrying about time, drop our expectations, let go of things that rev up our nervous systems (sugar, caffeine, emotions, etc) and take plenty of moments to feel our breath and all of our body – in other words, ‘coming back to ourselves’ and ‘being present’.
True stillness is not lack of movement. It is a quality of movement that enables us to sense the pulse that makes everything happen. From there we can move much more in harmony with nature’s flow instead of from the chaotic motion of driven-ness, reacting, and emotional ‘spins’.
And what an awesome ride inner stillness can be!
"The Divine impulse that flows within is that which is found to be the same as that of the animal and plant kingdom. In the ‘fluidic pulse of life,’ the science of oneness shall be known."
The Master K.H. via Serge Benhayon A Treatise on Consciousness
Filed under
Time, Stillness, Stress, Mathematics, Cycles, Astronomy
