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The second principle or law Greer examines is the Law of Flow. Before I get to it, a word about spiritual or natural laws. In my experience, we tend to think of laws, if we think of them at all, in their human variety. I break a law every time I drive over the speed limit, and most of us have broken this or some other human law more than once in our lives. We may or may not get caught and penalized by the human institutions we’ve set up to enforce the laws we’ve established, though the majority of human laws also have some common sense built in. Driving too fast, for example, can lead to its own inherent penalties, like accidents, and besides, it wastes gas.
But spiritual or natural law can’t be “broken,” any more than the law of gravity or inertia can be “broken.” Other higher laws may come into play which subsume lower ones, and essentially transform them, but that’s a different thing. A spiritual law exists as an observation of how reality tends to work, not as an arbitrary human agreement or compromise like the legal drinking age, or monogamy, or sales tax. Another way to say it: real laws or natural patterns are what make existence possible. We can’t veto the Law of Flow, or vote it down, or amend it, just because it’s inconvenient or annoying or makes anyone’s life easier or more difficult. There are, thank God, no high-powered lawyers or special-interest groups lobbying to change reality — not that they’d succeed. Properly understood, spiritual or natural law provides a guide for how to live harmoniously with life, rather than in stress, conflict or tension with it. How do I know this? The way any of us do: I’ve learned it the hard way, and seen it work the easy way — and both of these in my life and in others’ lives. Once it clicks and I “get” it, it’s more and more a no-brainer. Until then, my life seems to conspire to make everything as tough and painful as possible. Afterwards, it’s remarkable how much more smoothly things can go. Funny how that works.
OK, so on to the Law of Flow:
“Everything that exists is created and sustained by flows of matter, energy and information that come from the whole system to which it belongs and return to that whole system. Participating in these flows, without interfering with them, brings health and wholeness; blocking them, in an attempt to turn flows into accumulations, brings suffering and disruption to the whole system and its parts.”*
“Participating in these flows, without interfering with them,” can be a life-long quest. Lots of folks have pieces of this principle, and some of the more easily-marketed ones are available at slickly-designed websites and at New Age workshops happening near you. But note that the goal is not to accumulate wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. (As Greer points out, if the so-called “Law of Attraction” really worked as advertized, the whole planet would be a single immense palace of pleasure and ease. Though who would wait on us hand and foot, wash our clothes, make our high-priced toys, or grow and cook our food, remains unclear.) Flow means drawing from system, contributing to it, and passing along its energy. “Pay it forward” wouldn’t be out of place here.
If all this sounds faintly Socialist, well, remember that as Stephen Colbert remarked, “Reality has well-known liberal bias.” It means sharing, like most of us were taught as toddlers — probably shortly after we first discovered the power and seduction of “mine!” But it could just as easily and accurately be claimed that reality has a conservative bias. After all, these are not new principles, but age-old patterns and tendencies and natural dynamics, firmly in place for eons before humans happened on the scene. To know them, and cooperate with them, is in a certain sense the ultimate conservative act. The natural world moves toward equilibrium. Anything out of balance, anything extreme, is moved back into harmony with the larger system. The flows that sustain us also shape us and link us to the system. The system is self-repairing, like the human body, and ultimately fixes itself, or attempts to, unless too much damage has occurred.
Ignorance of this law lies behind various fatuous political and economic proposals now afloat in Europe and America. Of course, what’s necessary and what’s politically possible are running further and further apart these days, and will bring their own correction and rebalancing. We just may not like it very much, until we change course and “go with the flow.” That doesn’t mean passivity, or doing it because “everybody else is doing it.” Going with the flow in the stupid sense means ignoring the current and letting ourselves be swept over the waterfall. Going with the flow in the smart sense means watching and learning from the flow, using the current to generate electricity, or mill our grain, while relying on the nature of water to buoy us up, using the flow to help carry us toward our destination. Flow is not static but dynamic, the same force that not only sustains the system, but always find the easier, quicker, optimum path: if one is not available, flow carves a new one. The Grand Canyon is flow at work over time, as are the shapes of our bodies, the curve of a bird’s wing, the curl of waves, the whorls of a seashell, the spiral arms of galaxies, the pulse of the blood in our veins. Flow is the “zone” most of us have experienced at some point, that energy state where we are balanced and in tune, able to create more easily and smoothly than at other times. Hours pass, and they seem like minutes. Praised be flow forever!
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Images: river.
*Greer, John Michael. Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth. Weiser, 2012.
A Druid Way 