The Pillars of Stability:

You've probably heard the saying, "Change is the only thing that stays the same."   Well, perhaps that's not completely correct.   There are certain physical laws that seem the same today as they were thousands of years ago.   One example of this is the law of gravity.   

If laws, such as the law of gravity, do change, they change so slowly that, for our lives here on Earth at the present time, we can, for all practical purposes, consider them constant and without change.   Understanding the law of gravity and understanding how to apply it to your life gives you two things:  a powerful tool to use in making your life easier and a warning regarding the consequences of ignoring/violating the law.  

The Seven Principles of Hermes and The Three Universal Laws also fall into the category of the immutable and the un-changeable.   They, too,  are powerful tools you can use to make your life easier,  and like the law of gravity, they have serious consequences for those who defy or ignore them.   

The following discussion is for those who use knowledge to create wisdom.

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6)  Cause and Effect -- "Every cause has its effect;   
       every effect has its cause;  everything happens
        according to the law;  chance is but the name for
        a law not recognized;  there are many planes of
        causation, but nothing escapes the law."

7)  Gender --  "Gender is in everything;  everything has its
      masculine and feminine principles;  gender manifests 
      on all planes."

The above principles are quoted from a book describing the ancient wisdom taught by Hermes Trismegistus.    The modern-day book is titled,  "The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy."     

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4)   Polarity / Duality    

"Everything is dual; everything has poles;  everything has its pair of opposites;  opposites are  identical in nature, but different in degree;  extremes  meet; all truths are but half truths."  

How many opposites can you think of?   Here a partial list:

Most dualities have a middle ground where the opposite ends blend.   For example, hot and cold have warm in the middle.   However, opposites like pregnant/not pregnant have no middle ground.  

Is there anything in life that has only one side?   Can you know left without right; hard without soft; or beauty without ugliness?  

Think of all those things that, at first glance, seem to be so different.   Are they actually different, or do they, like wet and dry, meet and blend somewhere in the middle?   Where does night end and day begin?   Is there a dividing line hiding somewhere between high and low?   When hot meets cold, how does one become the other?  

Are these things really different or are they merely opposites poles of the same thing?   Their differences are real.   So is their unity.  They're both different and the same thing.    Notice that we could only see their unity by expanding our consciousness to see things like hot and cold from a bigger / more-inclusive  vantage point.  

What would life be like if we expanded our perspectives, and expanded our belief systems?   What if we let go of knowing everything?   What if we shifted from being close-minded to being open to infinite possibilities?   If we approached the world from this expanded perspective, what other seeming opposites would also show up as also a unity?  

As an exercise, begin looking for things, situations, and   circumstances that seem to be opposites or completely unrelated.   Pick two seemingly completely unrelated things and find out how and why they're both part of the same thing.  

Here's an example:   The game called football and light bulbs seem to be totally unrelated, but are they really separate or is their intimate relationship something we are simply not yet aware of?   Lets examine some of the evidence.

Without light bulbs, football, as we know it, would not exist.   Without light bulbs, there would be no huge football stadiums, no TV broadcasted games, no videos about football to watch, no nighttime football.   The only people who could see a football game would be the people sitting on the sidelines in daytime games.   Without light bulbs, the only football games you could watch would be those you could reach the playing field by walking or on horseback.   

The bottom line here
is that everything
is intimately interconnected to everything else.  
Everything, including you and me are all part of a grand unified whole.  

Imagine for a moment that your mother arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and you were born in America in 1622.   What would your life have been like?   Compare that to your life today.   Your life today is a function of the creations of billions of humans dating all the way to back before the birth of the grandmother of the person who invented the wheel.  

In the world of duality, nothing is as it appears to be.  
(Everything is in a context, but that's another story for another day.)  
Everything always exist in relation to it's opposite,
an opposite that we are often unaware of.  
For example, is any man completely masculine?  
Is any woman completely feminine?  
Where is big without little?  Where is up without down?   

Are all truths actually only partial truths? 
Is anything ever complete, or is there always more to every story? 
What about all those things you are so sure about? 
 Are you certain that you know the whole truth?  

Imaginary Train Ride      ...

Let's look at the concept of perspective (one's point of view) for a moment and see if the truth we believe in could have an opposite pole -- to see if there could be more than one version of something that appears to us to be the complete truth.   For example, from how many points of view can can you see something as simple as a dot of light?  You look at the dot and say, "One!  I see it plainly right here in front of me.   It's a dot of light and only a dot of light."   

Well, is it?   There are usually several different mental points of view (beliefs about something) that give the same thing (or event) several different meanings, and there are countless  different physical perspectives (different places from which to look at a physical object)  Let's take a physical ride and see what differences one's viewing position can have upon the perception of something that seems to be a simple dot of light.   

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A Not-So-Simple Train Ride:   

Imagine yourself riding in the caboose (the last car) of a train with two friends.  You are lying on the floor looking up when you notice a dot of light above you.   You point to the dot and say to your friend who is sitting with his (her) back against the side of the train car,  "What's that?"  He looks to where you are pointing and says it's a vertical line with a dot moving up and down from one end to the other.   

At first you think he's crazy because you see only a dot, but he sounds so sure of himself that you roll over to him,  sit up beside him,  and look at the dot from his perspective.   Sure enough, you see the line and the dot just as he described it to you.  

Now let's add a second line and dot to our imaginary journey.  Pretend that you and your friend are now sitting at the side of the railcar looking at two vertical lines, each line with a dot in it that is moving up and down along the line from one end of the line  to the other.  

Your curiosity inspires you to move back to the place on the floor where you were lying when you saw the first dot of light.   You look again at the two lines.   The one you first noticed, looks like the dot you saw before, but the other one looks like a horizontal line with a dot in it.   The dot appears to be moving along the line, first toward one side of the rail car and then toward the other in a rhythmic pattern.   You wonder, how a vertical line could became a horizontal line?  You move back to the side of the car and look again.   From there, you see the image as two vertical lines and the two dots.  

Meanwhile, your other friend, has been standing looking out the back of the train watching the scenery.   You call to him, and as he turns, you  point to the two lines and ask,  "What do you see?"  He says, "I see a circle  with a dot moving around the circle.   Beneath the circle there's a  straight, vertical line with a dot moving up and down along the line."  

"How can that be?" you say.  "We see only two vertical lines."  After a moment, you both get up and go to the back of the car, and from there you see exactly what your friend described.   

At this point, you hear the sound of the engineer's whistle and feel the train slowing down.   All three of you look out the window wondering what caused the change of speed.    The circle, the line and the two moving dots are temporarily out of mind as you focus on what's outside the train.    

Although you don't see anything out there worth blowing a whistle for, you soon begin to notice that, as the railcar moves, what you see inside the car stays pretty much the same, but the view outside is a dynamic, ever-changing picture.   You also notice that the rate at which the exterior scene changes is directly proportional to the speed of the train.   Try as you may to grab and hold onto a pleasing scene, it's unreachable, intangible, un-grabbable, and almost unreal as it fades into the distance only to be replaced by still another scene.   The scene outside appears to you as an ever flowing cycle which  seems to have neither a beginning nor an end.   At least, there's no beginning or end anywhere in sight.   The scenery you've passed is gone and no longer visible.  You wonder if it's still there.  That which lies ahead is equally as un-seeable.  

The saying of a famous philosopher pops into your mind.   You don't remember her name, but you do remember her words:   "When I finally got there, I realized there was no there there."   You know that she was talking about a state of being and not something physical, but just for a moment, you wonder if what lies ahead of you along the railroad tracks will be there when you get there.   And since it, too, is continually moving and changing, you know that when you do get there it will be different from what it is right now.  

At the moment, the only outside-the-train-scene that is visible to you  is the scene that's right-here right-now, and that, too, is continually changing.   

As the train rolls along the tracks, you look out and see a field in which a boy, sitting on a haystack, is waving at the train.   You wave back and then wonder what the circle, the line, and two moving dots might look like from the perspective of someone watching the train go by.  To the boy, the outside-scene is not moving past him.  It's more static, like the scene you are seeing inside the train.  From the boy's perspective,  the train, the dot, the line and the circle would all appear to be  moving.  

To an observer watching the train go by, the vertical line is not a line at all.  It's as if the dot were riding a wave.  Those who know mathematics would say it's making a perfect sine curve as it moves along above the tracks.   And the circle is not a circle either.  It appears to be a spiral, like the coils of a stretched  spring.  One could even take the analogy further by viewing the two dots from off the Earth, but we won't go there, because I'm sure you've already gotten the message.  

After you've gotten off the train and are walking away, you notice that your perspective of the scene around you  is still changing.  The change is occurring much more slowly, but nonetheless, it's still changing.    Then it occurs to you that it's always been like that, it's that way now, and in all likelihood, it will always continue to be that way.   You realize that everything in the entire physical world can be seen from an infinite number  of different points of view.   

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We've just looked at a simple dot of light from several different perspectives.  We've seen it as if it were a dot, a line, a circle, a sign curve, and a spiral,.   All five of these perspectives are accurate.   So, how about something as complex as your belief system and what your belief system means to you.   Could that too, have multiple points of view?   Could there be a different meanings and different perspectives that are equally as correct as yours is?   Perhaps the Law of Correspondence could assist us in looking into our minds, both personally and collectively.   

There are multitudes of colors, shapes, and directions.   Perhaps in our mental universe, too, there are multiple perceptions and  countless planes of being, for it has been said:

"In my father's house, there are many mansions." (Jesus)

"Everything is mental;  the Universe is  a mental creation of the All."  (Hermes)

If these quotations  are true, then each perception, each plane, each mansion may very well have its own unique interpretation and application of The Seven Principles of Hermes.   

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Applying the Law:  

From this broader view of life, the inevitable question arises:   Who can say with anything but ignorance or arrogance,  "I'm right.   You're wrong.   My way is the one and only way."   

The next time someone tells you that he/she knows better than you or that he/she knows what's right for you, or that he/she knows what God wants  you to do, you can smile and say, "No, thank you.  I walk my own path.  I walk in the light of the truth which bows to no authority other than itself."

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2)   Correspondence --  "

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6)  Cause and Effect --

"Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause;  everything happens according to the law;  chance is but the name for a law not recognized;  there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law."

The relationship between cause and effect is often immediate and clearly visible.   For example, if you drop a rock on your toe, you immediately feel the effect.   

Reaping the consequences of one's action may also take some time and not be so obvious.   For example, cigarette smoking and cancer have a cause and effect relationship.    As another example, overpopulation is having a serious detrimental effect on our Earthly environment, and yet, there are some people who are still denying that that relationship even exists.

Reaping the consequences of one's action may also take a very long time, and the relationship between cause and its result may be all but impossible to prove.   For example, if Christian, religious-one-life-ism is correct, going to heaven or hell after death is the-consequences-the effect of one's life on Earth.   If reincarnation and karma are correct, then the consequences could be lifetimes away.   We can't prove with absolute certainty the truth or falseness of either of those two possibilities.   Environmental changes are another example.   For years, warnings that humans were altering our Earthly environment were cast off a the ranting of hippie tree-huggers.  Even in the face of denial, cause has its effect.

APPLYING THE LAW:   This leaves us with a  very significant problem.   How can we know with certainty, what is causing the effects we are presently experiencing?   The best answer that we have yet come up with is:  1)  Study and understand The Seven Principles of Hermes,  2)  Study and understand the Three Universal Laws,  3)  Examine your own life using these laws as your working hypotheses,  and 4)  Examine what the evidence indicates, and then adjust your attitude and your behavior accordingly.   .

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7)   Gender --  "Gender is in everything;  everything has its masculine and feminine principles;  gender manifests  on all planes."

As you are about to see, The Seven Principles of Hermes are infinitely intertwined.   Gender is one place where that interaction is obvious.   The constant masculine/feminine interplay, which we take so much for granted, can easily be seen as both polarity and gender.   Think of gender as the urge to create, the urge to to produce, to generate, to reproduce itself in one form or another.   For example, I have reproduced my ideal self image as the characters in the stories in my books. 

Humans have been mis-trained to see things as separate.  

The urge to merge in a much bigger sense than sexually.   It's about re-blending with Source/Creator/ God.      

What is gender?   The most obvious answer is sexual attraction.   Sex is gender in action, but is there more to gender than the hunger for sexual union?  

Perhaps we could look at gender as the inevitable attraction that everything has to everything else.   In that light, gravity could be viewed as an aspect of gender.   And what about love?   Love is  far more than sexual attraction.   And then, there's the desire for Faah-Zzuumm  (the feel good feelings) that pulls at us in every waking moment?  

What about our constant striving for balance --  the pull to center that we feel whenever we are near either end of one of the polarities  such as hot/cold, or fast and slow?  

Gender can be thought of as the draw for union, the urge to merge, the striving for balance.   In that sense, electricity and magnetism are gender in motion -- motion seeking a point of union -- a point of stillness, where the urge to do, have, express, and experience goes away, at least for a few minutes.   It's the point of complete contentment where simply being is all that is.    

Masculine is drawn toward feminine.   Feminine is drawn toward masculine.   Heat is compelled to move toward cold.   When wet and dry meet, there is an inevitable struggle to balance -- the wet moves toward dry and the dry moves toward wet.   It's another universal  law in motion.   And all things function according to these laws.  

Perhaps gender is the core of all creation.   Gender certainly is a central player in the act of creation, for when opposite poles meet, a creation occurs which transforms both poles and produces something that neither could ever become by itself.  

APPLYING THE LAW:   How can you apply this principle to your life?   First, by remembering that gender is present within you and is present in everything you come in contact with.   Second, by conducting a self examination to determine where, when, and how the compulsion called gender controls your life.   Third, by remembering that everyone you meet has motivations, incentives, a energy within them that is pushing or pulling them into action.   You may not know what those motivations are, but you can be certain that it's there.   By seeking and finding their basic motivations, (what drives them) you can short-circuit those whose intentions are malevolent, and you can move into harmony with others and co-create genuine win-win interactions.

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