How to Work the Law of Rhythm - Hermetic Studies with Ariel Gatoga

Let's start out with a brief meditation.

If you're in a place where it is appropriate for you to do so, please close your eyes and take some slow, deep, relaxing breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. With every inhale, feel more light and peace entering your body and mind. And with each exhale, feel like all tension is draining from the body and mind. Inhaling peace and letting go of all tension with every exhale.

We picture ourselves on top of a beautiful mountain in the center of a circular grove of trees. In the center of the circle, a bonfire blazes forth, lighting us and the grove up with a sacred golden light. We recognize that this is the light of perfect love and perfect trust, and it easily burns away everything that is not like itself.

Into this sacred space, we invoke the presence of our Divine Creator. To many of us, this appears to us as a mother and father, a god and goddess. Into this space, we also invoke and invite the presence of our angels and our teachers. We dedicate the time that we spend together to them and to each other, and we ask that we be guided and led as we walk upon the way. We ask that we become happier, more peaceful, more joyous, more prosperous, and more loving people.

Thank you very much, and if it's appropriate, out loud you can say the words, blessed be.

Today we are talking about the Hermetic principle of rhythm. When we talked about the principle of polarity, we talked about how in three-dimensional reality, things are always in opposites, they're always dual. The principle of polarity talks about the activity that occurs between those polarities. And you can see it all throughout nature. There's nothing in the physical world that is not subject to the law of rhythm.

We have seasons that wax and wane, that go back and forth between winter and summer. The moon, which waxes and wanes rhythmically, goes back and forth between the dark moon and the full moon. Our breathing goes in and out, inhales to exhales. Whatever we throw up in the air comes back down. Whenever there's a pendulum of a clock, it ticks left and then right. Rhythm is a constant in this world.

It's very important to recognize that, as we talked about with the law of polarity, when we are involved within what we call this illusion of polarity, part of what keeps us involved in this illusion is the rhythm of going back and forth between two poles. That's why it appears as though you can't have pleasure without pain, you can't have light without darkness. The laws of rhythm are such that to the degree that the pendulum swings one way is the degree the pendulum will swing the other way.

That's why a lot of people exist in a state of fear because they have the experience that if they are experiencing extreme joy, that extreme sadness is on its way. Extreme prosperity means that extreme poverty may be on its way. And that's what we've trained ourselves to expect and to experience in this world, because we are at the effect of the law of rhythm.

There's always an esoteric understanding of things, and there's always a magical way out of any problem. Many of the problems that we experience here are the problems of being banged about by the law of rhythm, going back and forth between pole to pole to pole. There is a secret to escaping the constant dance between poles, and that is simply to envision the law of rhythm as a pendulum. Just look at it as a pendulum, going back and forth and back and forth.

The lower on the pendulum that somebody happens to find themselves, the more extreme the swing is from pole to pole. The higher on the pendulum that someone is, the less extreme the poles seem to be experienced in regards to rhythm. If you can get yourself right at the place where the pendulum is attached, there is virtually no swing. There's no movement whatsoever.

Now, as a reminder, when we were talking about the principle of polarity, in the experience of three-dimensional reality, it looks like there are two different principles being expressed. For instance, on the polarity of love and hate, it looks like there's a principle of hate on one side and a principle of love on the other side. Through the principle of rhythm, we go back and forth between those two to some degree or another, to varying levels of extremity. So the higher on the pendulum you are, the less extreme that is. But as you get to the top of the pendulum in consciousness, you recognize, as we discovered with the law of polarity, there aren't two principles. There's a single principle and then something that's being shadowed in order for there to be polarity.

One of the ways that you can rise above not only the swinging between the poles, but rising above the polarity itself, is to rise up that pendulum, rise up to the top of that pendulum. You'll recognize that the variations between two poles are but another illusion, because those two poles don't actually exist except for in this world of illusion. The reason why is because this world's illusion must be maintained in order for us to have the types of experiences that we have here.

You cannot have three-dimensional experiences without those laws, without the laws of polarity and then the laws of rhythm. There's no way that you could have life on Earth without seasons, or without tides, or without breathing, or without blood moving through your veins, and the pumping of your heart, and all of the other things that rhythm govern. So when we are living and existing in three-dimensional reality, we must honor that polarity and rhythm are the norm here.

But once we recognize that ultimately those things don't exist the way they appear to, that's the only reason they appear to be that way, so that illusion can be maintained in order for us to have these experiences here. That's when we can start to experience the desire to rise above the illusion and to experience this world from a different so-called plane. That's where people rise up on the planes, for instance, in the Kabbalah. What we're doing is we're rising up that pendulum so that we can experience the world in a new way. Once you experience the world in a new way, you see the illusions for what they are, and they no longer have any power over you. In fact, it's the opposite. Now you have power over them because you're at the top of that pendulum. So you're not subject to those swings. You're not subject to emotional swings. You're not subject to fortune swings back and forth between fortune and misfortune. You're not subject to any swings because you're recognizing the world as what it is. The world is not something that you are subject to from that plane of existence that's above the world, above the world as you know it.

So how do you do that? How do you climb up that pendulum? It's actually simpler than most people want to believe. And since it's so simple, most people ignore it. If you understand that the pendulum swing represents inside of you all extremes—anger to peace, happiness to sadness, joy to terror, all of those things—once you can start understanding where you are in regards to rhythm and polarity and where you're swinging back and forth, it's easy for you to rise up that pendulum by simply closing your eyes, relaxing your body, and being present in the moment. You'll understand that the pendulum swings can only happen in time, but they don't happen in eternity. In eternity, the pendulum doesn't move because there is no polarity for it to move across. In eternity, there's only the principle. There's no shadow of a principle. So there isn't a polarity of love and hate. There's only the love. There's nothing to shadow it. Because in the present moment, shadows can't exist. Shadows only exist in time. Time and space is something that occurs in three-dimensional reality, not in eternity.

Eternity can only be approached in this world through the present moment. That old idea of "be here now." Being here now is a very powerful and magical exercise to rise above any moment, rhythmic polarity experience. Any rhythm that you're experiencing between two polarities can be stopped in its tracks by simply entering eternity and exiting linear time. That can only be done in the present moment. Can only be done in the present moment. And so that takes what? Practice. That takes practice. It's a daily practice of learning how to quiet the mind and quiet the body and not thinking, not making decisions, not deciding that you understand what's happening, not deciding for yourself that you understand the meaning of anything that you see.

If you are letting the laws of polarity and rhythm themselves inform you and teach you, you'll never understand how to get above them because the laws and the principles of this three-dimensional reality are then your teacher. You want something in the realm of eternity to teach you how to escape the laws of time and space. The only way that you can do that is by looking at everything with fresh eyes. The way you look at things with fresh eyes is by deciding for yourself that you don't know. I don't know what this is. I don't know what it means. I know what I think it is. I know what the world has taught me. But I don't know what eternity thinks of this. I don't know how spirit sees this. I only know how I see this and how I've been trained to see this by other people and by other experiences within this world.

So I understand that there's a way to rise above this world and to see this world from a different vantage point if I'm capable of rising up that pendulum swing. But I also understand that I can't do that by myself. The only way I can do that is by relinquishing my investment, even for a moment, in thinking that I know what anything looks like or how anything is. If you can do that, then you're just for a moment in a place of listening, in a place of receptivity, of no thought, where spirit can say, "Here you go, let me take you and rise up. Rise up into the next plane and I can show you what things really look like. I can show you where the top of that pendulum is. I can show you that you can be part of a principle without being part of a polarity, be part of a principle without rhythmically getting banged back and forth between two polarities."

The ego mind is the arrogant part of ourselves. Again, it's not an entity. It's not like Satan. It's not like a devil that you have to war against. The ego mind is simply a habit of thinking where we say, "What I see with my eyes and what I experience with my senses is real. And so I already know what everything looks like. I already know what everything means. And I already know how to interact with everything." Well, that keeps you in the soup of it all, the soup of that polarity and rhythm. It keeps you involved in that. You never have an opportunity to take a break from that and look at it from a higher perspective because you've been poorly taught.

You wouldn't know. If somebody's only taught you English and everybody around you starts speaking some foreign language that you've never heard before, you don't know what they're saying. But if you assume that you understand what those words mean, then you're stuck. But once you realize, "Oh, I don't understand that language. I don't know what those words mean. I could be completely wrong," well, then you're in a position where your own higher mind, which will oftentimes present itself to you as a guide or a guardian angel, because it's so different than the you that you think you are, can say, "Here we go. Let's rise above the planes. Let's rise above the planes, and I'm going to show you what things really look like. I'm going to show you where you actually live. And you live on top of this pendulum, not on the bottom of it. You're not swinging back and forth between two polarities. That's happening in the world of illusion. And that world of illusion is where you've been lost in a dream, thinking that that's who you are. But I'm going to show you who you really are. Who you really are is way above it."

That way, you learn how to be in the world, but not of it. You learn that you're not part of this world like you think you are, but you can interact with this world. You can actually be successful in this world. You can actually have successful relationships in this world, and you can be a help to others in this world from that point of view, because you realize, "I'm not really subject to the polarities anymore here, because I know how to rise up those pendulums when I find myself there, simply by quieting my mind and my body and asking for another perspective, asking for a wiser part of my mind to show me the truth instead of what I'm seeing."

And then what happens then is... Once you are no longer subject to the abuse, basically, of this world of polarity and this world of rhythm, you can use those laws in your favor because you're not any more victimized by them. They are then tools. You can have them be tools that you use. What happens is we move through the world in a different way when we're no longer subject to being victims of the law of polarity and thus the law of rhythm. We're no longer bruised by being banged about back and forth, back and forth between two polarities. We are immune to that because we know how to rise above it. When we do that, our very presence inspires others to do the same.

It's not like you have to become a teacher even for that to happen. You don't have to go show people how to do it or teach people how to do it. You just do it yourself and people learn by example. People learn by example. The more you rise up those planes, the more you are above the manifestations of the law of rhythm, the more other people are inspired to rise above the manifestations of the law of rhythm.

The law of rhythm is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It's just that it's part of an illusion, as is the law of polarity. If we understand that the illusion itself isn't bad, it's just not real, then you're no longer victimized by it. You can actually work within it. You can actually operate within it. That's, again, what is meant by being in the world, but not of it. You recognize that you're a spiritual, eternal being who is having experiences within a time-space continuum throughout linear time, but you're not subject to the laws of that because you understand and you experience daily who you are as a timeless being, as an eternal being that is not polarized, that is part of that ancient hermetic operation of transmutation.

Transmuting yourself by rising up the poles, instead of seeing everything as dualism that you have to flop back and forth with, you are allowing yourself to be shown eternity in place of that. The present moment from that point of view looks very different than what you think of as the present moment when you're coming from the point of view of the law of rhythm and the law of polarity. The law of rhythm and the law of polarity, you're basically constantly either anticipating something good or anticipating something bad. And it goes back and forth. Everything looks like, "Oh, I got to pay for it. I got to pay for it. If I'm having this much fun, I'm going to pay for it by having that much not fun on the other side." Whereas if you notice that you're involved in that, and you take a moment to find eternity and rise up that pendulum, you recognize that the principle itself is still there for you, the principle of joy. But the shadowing of that principle is happening beneath you, and you literally escape that by being above the battlefield, by being above the field of experience wherein that pendulum swings so violently.

So it's worth just practicing every single day saying, "I'm going to rise up the pendulum today. I'm going to relax my body, relax my mind, close my eyes, and allow myself to experience what eternity is." The way I do that is by simply saying, "I don't know what eternity looks or feels like because I've never seen or felt it before. In this world, I don't remember it. All I know is what I've taught myself or what other people in this world have taught me. And I don't want more of that right now. I want to see things differently." Then you just open your mind and start to listen. Instead of telling the universe what things are, you start listening. That listening, in and of itself, gives you the impetus to drop the weight that's holding your hot air balloon down. You drop the weight and you just naturally rise above where you live already, where you're already abiding above that pendulum swing. That's where you're already existing. That's where your soul lives.

So when you drop the weight of your addiction to time and space, your addiction to linear time for just a moment and let go and say, "I don't know. I don't know what anything means. I don't know what it feels like. I don't know what it looks like, but I'm willing to find out. I'm willing to be shown." Then that hot air balloon can rise straight up, right? Straight up to where you already exist above that pendulum swing. Once you find your home, then it's just simply a matter of getting back there every single day. Remember, it's extremely tempting to get back into the soup, to get back into that back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, because it's what everybody but you is doing in that moment. Every single person is doing that, except for you if you're deciding to have a moment in eternity rather than a moment in time.

So when you return back to your normal waking state, it's very simple and very easy for you to go right straight back into that law of rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. If you practice, just like practicing the piano or practicing ballet or whatever, if you practice that skill every single day of opening your mind to listen and allowing yourself to drop those weights so that your hot air balloon can rise up that pole and up into eternity and out of linear time, just for a moment, maybe once or twice a day, you get into a new habit where you go for eternity rather than time, and it becomes what you naturally reach for. Then you're released, you're released. Ultimately, you can be, according to the ancient teachings, completely released from the wheel of birth and death. That's the whole goal, according to the ancient teachings, to be released from the need to reincarnate anymore, because you're no longer preoccupied with this world of extreme polarity and this world of extreme rhythm.

So it's a day-to-day, moment-by-moment choice that you can have. But when you notice that you're being banged about by the law of polarity, you have always a way out. That comes from finding just a moment of eternity in place of where you are in linear time.

Thank you so much for spending a little time with me. I so appreciate you. Until next time, blessed be.