typedef void satori;

[kickaha]

As I was walking across campus yesterday to catch the bus back home before the ice storm got *too* much worse, I began trying to figure out exactly why, at the ripe old age of 13, I decided that Doe Bay, Orcas Island, was the place to which I wanted to retire. No questions about it, that was it.

I began thinking of the various pieces and elements that made the area... elements... water, wind, rock... could be onto something here. Where's fire? Easy, that's the hearth at home. Ah, so now I have the four elements, all bundled together into one collective whole... wait. Four?

Aren't there five?

Void. It occurred to me that while I'd always intellectually accepted void as an element, it didn't fit in with my current mental context of what I can only describe as spiritual. I had a concept of void as physical space, the framework on which to hang the other four, but I had never integrated it into an *emotional* belief system, as with the others.

What is void, spiritually? Is it the dark abyss? The absence of light? The representation of all that is cold, bad, evil and waiting at the periphery of our consciousness to prey on our minds as Lovecraft would have us believe?

This didn't seem right... so why a *void*? What could possibly be spiritual about a complete lack of anything to observe?

And then it hit me. We observe our external environment. If there's nothing left to observe, then there's nothing left outside of ourselves.

Void is what you see when you are in concordance with all of existance.

And that is precisely what Doe Bay invokes in my spirit... concordance, alignment, peace.

Void.

Comments

[coyotegirl.livejournal.com]

I've always though of spirit as the fifth, and void as the sixth. Spirit is what binds it all together, void is what gives everything definition by its absence. Well, that's a rather simplistic set of definitions, but I'm at work, so...

Have you ever looked at some of the Eastern elemental systems? They tend to separate out earth-that-is-alive-and-growing, and earth-that-is-mineral. I like that; it feels right to me.

Eastern systems

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say, I think there's an Asian system (maybe Chinese?) that classifies wood as the 5th element. I do like the idea of void as being the 5th, though. :)

But if...

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

But if spirit is the presence of life (okay, my personal bias and belief) then earth-that-is-alive is subsumed within spirit, and earth-that-is-mineral is left as 'earth'. :)

I just love simplifying things away... :D

Re: But if...

[coyotegirl.livejournal.com]

*heh* Well, then, what about the mystical "energy" that is in all the elements, in some belief systems? As in, crystals having healing energy, for example. Some folks think that is spirit.

Ack, too many belief systems... crushing me... the weight of it all...

I'll just go along with my five. Or six. Or is it seven...?

[songhawk.livejournal.com]

the Legends of the 5 Rings tabletop game does Earth-Air-Fire-Water-Void and has a great deal of fun with it thereby :-)

(waves in passing at jinasphinx. *blinks* at all the UWBB folks cropping up on LJ...)