Is it the left and right brain functioning, intuition and intellect?
Are they literally darkness and light?
Is it the struggle and reconciliation of the human and animal natures?
Or is it the division between the earthly and spiritual realms?
Perhaps chaos and order are archetypal forces that reside in our consciousness - toys or tools with which to play with and learn about who we are. The theme of chaos and order has been coming up in my life at the moment, and I feel inspired to explore it.
Dualities can be paradoxical and inaccurate, yet sometimes they offer deep explorations and amazing insight. I hope that the following article leans more to the latter 😂😅😉
I will start by giving my own intuitive definition of both Order and Chaos, then talking in depth about them. Finally we will move on to talk about how they are part of the same whole - Yin and Yang.
It could be a computer program or a well regimented kitchen. It could also be a sterile doctors surgery, or perhaps a military operation. The basic connotation is that things are kept to a system, and operate within a set of instructions or according to certain rules.
In my life order means working professionally as a cook and a baker. It means keeping a certain intensity about you - so that things don't get missed. For me order is holding the standards to a certain level, regardless of how we feel or if we are tired. In this sense order has a certain coldness to it, it makes sure things get done and it doesn't yield to emotion.
Order means we 'have our shit together', and there does seem to be a spooky relationship between butthole symbolism and chaos and order 💨 Being anally retentive means an uptight attitude or a scrupulous attention to detail. Being a 'tight arse' means that we keep a strict control on our spending habits.
1 - Order is working with a system.
2 - Order is being organised.
3 - Order is being clean.
4 - Order is being methodical.
Order is having an idea about how you want things. It's having objectives and goals, and setting a structure for yourself to work within.
Order brings an amazing capacity to our lives in how to manage our selves and our resources. Order builds and structures the pieces and parts of life, taking them out of the soup and giving them names and classification. Without order of some kind we would have no language and none of the complexities of our intellectual conundrums.
It's a blessing and a curse, and comes part and parcel with the twin engine hyper dimensional brain that we are running. Some say that the ordering capacity is an extension of our survival calculation system (the reptilian and mammalian brains). I do also feel that there are higher orders, what you might call divine orders - which order things in a higher dimension, or in a more sophisticated and integrated way.
We can order things in so many ways, and it brings meaning and manageability to life. Where order seems to fail though is in becoming rigid - where flexibility would serve better. The human mind has an incredible propensity for this, due to it's many expectations and ideas about how 'things should be'. If you ask me there's a lot of room for us to relax in to life and see how fantastically ordered things are - before we impose artificiality and our ego driven madness.
One part of order which is very dear to my heart, is cleanliness, it's having a clear space - that promotes wellbeing and a enjoyable meditative state. In the centre of my bedroom/office I have maintained an open space of maybe 2 by 3 metres. It gives the space a kind of feng shui clarity, and also gives me some room to do horse stance and yoga 😁😇😋
There is a kind of magic in being well ordered and in knowing where your things are. The alchemists and weaponsmiths of old wielded the sorcery of honouring the tools and process - and in deeply embodying the work. This is the magic of order - use it well. Order can fail when it becomes disconnected. When the systems aren't adaptable and alive, they become restrictive and robotic. Our wellbeing is compromised.
Order is the vehicle for chaos, it is the furnace chamber that puts our life energies into a productive mechanism. We need an inexplicable and uncontrollable life force in order for it to work, it can't just be neat farms rows without the unpredictability of nature. Connecting with this fire sometimes means venturing into the unknown in order to experience and feel it with no pretext or constraints.
stfu noob
In a sense
chaos is a response to order, it is disassembling the systems and breaking through the constraints. From chaos comes order, and from order chaos. This is our Daoist Yin/Yang or Tai Chi Metaphor cropping up again to remind us that these things only exist in contrast.
Nature seems like chaos, but the more deeply we see it - it is order. Incredibly subtle and complex. It is a mixture of both. In terms of this conversation we could say the natural world is more chaotic than the order of our human societies. That is from the perspective of our 'ordered' human societies.
This is a lot of the struggle of our current age - in finding ways to accept chaos and the unknown. We are deeply afraid of miraculous and unexplainable things. There is a great need for us to adapt and create systems which are responsive and alive. Our governments are cold dead order, and our money is dead presidents and black magic (see Sevan Bomar). The dark side of order is the matrix, so what role does Chaos have in our lives and in response to this entrapment?
It's inexplicable and it's beautiful. And it's this very quality that brings something unmistakable yet hard to pin down in every great work of art and in every great person. It's the quality of liveliness and warmth - our inner flame. Chaos is moving through life with trust and love.
Chaos is letting go completely and it could be either the worst or the best decision of your life. There's no way to know until you do it. Most human beings die before they fully release the control of the mind and the conditioning. Most of us never know true freedom. Thinking about that brings a pang of wild emotion to my heart.
Chaos is the entropy that pulls apart our systems and disperses them to the four corners of the earth. Chaos is unplanned, intuitive, and excited. Chaos is sexual and compelling. Chaos can come from the instinct, the heart, and also the soul. It is hard to define and it is hard to embody. It changes moment to moment and is continually unfolding.
Through chaos we become the unknown, a continual joyful expression of what happens to be right now. We live it and we don't make a story.
they have a concept known as Shiva - that which is not. Shiva is the ultimate chaos - he is that which we do NOT know. Similarly Shiva is also known as the destroyer, destroying systems - and burning through our assumptions. This deity embodies the yogic process of dropping our ideas about how things work, to update then with an even higher order - one which we perceive through taking away our many biases and assumptions.
Chaos can potentially be destructive - because in the eyes of Shiva destruction and creation are both equal, they are both just phenomenon occurring in the vast emptiness of what is not. The two things are just glimmering moments that will soon fold into one another and cease to be.
Chaos means breaking systems, so think about the systems you are breaking - do they need to be broken? Careless destruction is the mark of the young soul, when we destroy thoughtlessly we fail to see how all things are interconnected - the relationships of all of the parts is far more intricate than we could ever know.
In this way, we tread carefully through the unknown - lest we tear apart many fragile spiders webs or knock over a hive of bees.
It really depends of the scale of things and how much we zoom in or out. On the mega-macro cosmic scale of things, it seems to just be a bunch of very disparate burning orbs which creates a stunning dot painting for us to look at.
Zooming in further we see that each dot of light has a mathematical system of spinning orbs, and further again - we see the chaos and order of the natural and cultural systems of these worlds. The biology of each organism has a certain structure, yet in its organic nature it tends toward uniqueness and individuality.
Going in further to the atoms and molecules there is the same solar orbiting system - and then further again it's mostly empty space and the deep black hole of nothingness that all things are spawned from.
Chaos is born from order, and order is born from chaos. They need each other to live, and these two forces must find a mutual respect and balance to create growth and expansion. This is Tai Chi, it is the moving of heavy and light to achieve effortless power. To balance order and chaos, and to see beyond them is to become a powerful sorcerer indeed. Balance is one of the greatest powers and achievements in the human kingdom.
Some times life asks us to be spontaneous and intuitive, and some times we stick to the routine and the plan. You have your own way of operating within this dynamic. We trust our sense of things and take responsibility (or release responsibility) for our lives.
We face the uncertainty of the unknown each day, and build our orders in the face of it. On rare moments we drop the facade and release into that not knowingness - it is an infinite well spring to draw from, bringing meaning and interpretation into the universe once more.
