pausing between order and chaos

(an excerpt from 'Personal Tao Musings')


With Chaos, many people become overwhelmed by what is by definition unpredictable.

The unpredictability of Chaos creates the illusion of events around one speeding up. It's not that events are speeding up as much as unpredictable actions are destroying the predictable order of normal day to day operations. One random event cascades into a hundred unforeseen activities. In orderly situations, we don't see much of the action since people purposely created the order to hide away most actions from our view.

Chaos forces you to deal with everything at once...

Most people handle this by trying to block out changes (resisting change).

• To resist change is slowly face erosion of your soul.
  (This often leads to depression that reinforces erosion)

Some people get overwhelmed and give up

• To be swept away by the events and lose your uniqueness in life

Ironically the times that appear most chaotic are not in times of chaos, but in the times when Order is breaking down to Chaos or Chaos is being reorganized into Order.

This is the in-between blink of transition, the unknown moment: that anyone feels in real change...

So the most dangerous time is not within times of order (more specifically times of negative order) and not within chaos (unpredictability), rather the most dangerous time of all:

Is in the blink between times of chaos and order.

When the system of flow is in turbulence between chaos and order.

 In Taoism we teach to pause between changing states, to allow awareness to be part of our process to better flow with what will be.
This isn't about gathering all the information you need. In fact to try to figure it all out, will just cause paralysis rather than pause.

Discover this is about pause, true pause, an active state when our essence is open to everything around us. Not categorizing everything with knowledge, but accepting the connections around us with awareness.

It then becomes possible to select the connections that reinforce our essence and release any connections that diminish ourselves. Then as the situation evolves into either order or chaos, it become possible to change your personal state to act accordingly.