Figures of eight

The problem with circles is precisely their flatness – no "emotional content" – no real energy. They constantly skirt around – beating about the bush – and generally fail to penetrate to the heart of anything. This is fine for handling long flat energy that is drifting towards you, assuming it hasn't already bitten into your soul, but useless for making meaningful (transforming) connexions. For that you need to activate the heart (the connector) first, and the waist (the encirlcer) second. The shape that best describes and best encourages the heart is the figure of eight. The figure of eight encircles but then draws what it contains into the centre – into the heart – squeezing, mangling and transforming as it does so. Describing a figure of eight with a part of the body is difficult – it requires effort, not just muscular but emotional as well. If the circle has almost zero emotional content then the figure of eight has almost 100% as it passes through extremes of engulfing openness to extremes of compressed closedness, from fore and aft, in just one passage. That emotional content is our humanity – our personal energy imprinting upon and in turn being imprinted upon by the universal image of man – a general, though ready to become specific in the blink of an eye, compassionate feeling for one's fellows. It is an openness, but not the nice, comfortable, contained and containing openness of the circle, but the churning, consuming, empassioned openness of the emotional engine we call the figure of eight – rhythmically taking us beyond ourselves into realms of intensity and involvement that our humanity cries out for but our fear – in fact all our social mores – decries and would far rather avoid, seeing any instability as a threat. But true yielding is not maintaining balance under threat but being so unafraid of imbalance that you willingly and unconditionally draw both your company and yourself into the energetic maelstrom of real life. This wont make you popular – in fact most who come across you will run for the hills a little singed – but it will make you a force to behold – engaged with life, energy and reality to a degree that is unimaginable.