Things fall apart; the center does not hold (W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919). And as it falls apart, beautiful and even kaleidoscopic patterns show. As the center lets go, the falling apart reveals some of its core colorfulness. Its secrets stand out. Because nothing falls apart chaotically, it falls fractally into new patterns of participation. Picked up by different beings, transformed by them in different ways, as the center loosens its grip. Hold a shard up to the sky and see.
There’s so much fear in holding things together, almost as if fear itself is the center of it all. For why else would you hold yourself together but to have control over your face and what it shows? And why would you want control anyway – other than because of fear and its demands, the demand to first and foremost, “Be someone!†Because we can’t just trust in being human, we can’t just trust that we come up with the right word at the right time without any interference by an “Iâ€.
What if we just let all our selves go? Let them propel themselves, if need be erratically. Then the writing of this and the reading by you gains a new depth, not visible before. You’re unconcerned with holding on to your center and the results you want to have, you enjoy effortlessly being here and “doing yar thang!†… what’s up, that you feel the need to bring down with your grip? When simply being here, in peace and trustful, things can fall apart whichever way they like. Sentences are free to form, just as meanings come. It’s all welcome, and so are the multifarious eddies and streamings that we take to be the self, acting as if “I†was something permanent, not subject to falling apart as everything always will, and it doesn’t even matter if it had a center or not.
Imagine, if you will, what it would really mean if there actually was no center at all, nothing and no-one that holds things together. What if things aren’t held together by a center but by all parts participating passionately with each other? What if we do not need to hold together ourselves, or rather our self, at all? What if all the voices and feelings and spirits so strongly participate with each other inside our psyche that the only way that we in our cultures can “see†this is by calling that passionate and embodied participation ‘self.’ Then, if the imaginary center doesn’t hold, what falls apart is just the construct of a permanent self that needs to be in control and everything that comes with that.