A Vortexing We Shall Go

“The candle that burns at both ends burns half as long, and you have burned so very brightly, Roy.” – Dr. Eldon Tyrel to Replicant Roy Blatty in the movie “Blade Runner.”

It’s the subject of nearly all our entertainment and scrutiny: how and why some people burn so brightly they are able to attract supplicants, fans, and followers – in short, to be a high energy vortex.

Each of us is an energy vortex, a complex assembly of waveforms resonating at high and low frequencies. A high energy vortex stimulates and excites the space around it. At a human level, this manifests as charisma, bearing, gravitas, and palpable power of personality, around which others, generally lower energy vortices, fall into orbit, like moths circling a bright light in the darkness. In some essential ways, human society operates according to the laws of primary universal forces of attraction and repulsion, responding to a sacred geometry that governs the ways in which matter and energy behave, even imaginary matter, like wealth.

For people, wealth equals power, and by and large, the more you’ve got the brighter you can burn. In an analogy to the incandescent bulb, wealth is the filament, and the volume of wealth tantamount to wattage. The stronger the filament, the brighter the bulb. Sometimes, because people are not light bulbs, an individual energy vortex will burn brightly though the power of creativity or innovative talent alone, shining at the highest power. We call such people celebrities, and as energy vortices they command great attention.

Have I ever told you the tale about the electron that wanted to be an atom? If the Quantum Field Theory is correct, there are not really any individual electrons, just a single, ubiquitous electron field that fills the entire universe. Existence takes place on many simultaneous, non-obstructing levels. Paradoxically, we can be both “who” we are with our own individual name, identity, memories, and complex emotions and a high energy vortex, simultaneously. Just another thing they didn’t tell us in school.

While all that is going on, this morning‘s bowl of oatmeal is being broken down into its constituent materials, releasing nutrients and sources of energy our bodies must burn to survive. And by the way, don’t forget that simultaneously our solar system is spiraling within the gravity well of the energy vortex we call Ole’ Sol as it races at 450,000 miles per hour through the Milky Way galaxy, itself a vortex 100,000 light years across hurtling at 1,300,000 miles an hour towards the Andromeda galaxy vortex. In short, there’s a lot of vortexing going on, and we don’t even know the half of it!

At summer camp in Maine in 1962 I was awarded a plaque for “Most Improved in Canoeing.” Have you ever paddled a canoe? If you have, you’ve likely observed the little whirlpool vortices that spin off the end of the paddle as you complete a stroke. They are basically nothing but kinetic energy and water, yet at the same time, for a little while they are distinct individuals with particular characteristics. Sound familiar?

So where do we vortices go when the energy of our burning stops? Perhaps, like whirlpools at the end of a paddle, we return to a place we’ve never left. As we Buddhists say, “looks like coming, looks like going.” In a universe of sacred geometry, we have always had and will always have our place.