The Still Point

Some concepts are so simple we slip by them everyday – yet they are so profound that they can change our entire world view.

Dualism: Yin and Yang. Dionysian and Apollonian. Brahman and Maya. 

Our dual hemispheres form our reality in two distinct ways:

— Continuous, broad, open, contextual — Right hemisphere
— Narrow, focussed, precise, categorical — Left hemisphere

“The nature of the human world can be illuminated by an understanding that there are two fundamentally different ‘versions’ delivered to us by the two hemispheres, both of which can have a ring of authenticity about them, and both of which are hugely valuable; but that they stand in opposition to one another, and need to be kept apart from one another.”

— Dr. Iain McGilchrist

Like time that we perceive through either continuous, unbounded flow via embodied sensation — or in exact, sequential, measurable units via a mechanism — you will find these two concepts everywhere.

So simple and yet strangely difficult to summarise. It’s poetry (a right hemisphere gift) that places words in right order for the meeting place between these two concepts.  

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

— T.S. Eliot