Expansion

This garden was the first I had built in this specific location.. However in the distance of the camera frame is a much more familiar location, which I visited several times last summer.  The background location came into my current awareness during Day 3′s placement of two rocks back there.  It looked rather dead in the distance compared to my immediate cluster of balance.

Sunset Day 4

Today I simply realized the potential to create another focus for my garden in the distant background.  My goal was waves in my overall perspective, and I grew increasingly joyful in realizing the expansion.  Although in the distant background, all those rocks held quite a distinct energy in close vicinity.  On fractal scales, each garden; foreground and background, can be viewed as their own individual balances… each balanced in themselves down to individual rocks… but then can combine into a greater balance collectively up the scale.  Similar to galactic clusters in a sense… There is a spike in energy among the height of these gardens.. I LOVE sitting with them and walking among them..

“An experienced practitioner of the discipline works spontaneously while intuitively placing each stack at location where there is corruption of the energy fields of our world. The underlying science is best described as acupuncture for the earth and bio-system. Stone balancing = shamanic healing practice.”

~ Jim Needham (“The Rockstacker“)

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

~ Dale Carnegie

This balance came into being only after a necessary collapse of another orb I was building. I was placing the last rocks to finalize my orb and one tiny rock unexpectedly collapsed the whole glob of rocks. The collapse was unfortunate but a blessing in disguise. I spent all afternoon highly tuned into my orb construction. rock after rock after rock. silence. Collapse was late in the day so I had little time left to balance something. PLAY TIME.

I love how this counterbalance spirals up toward a singularity of weight.  The nature of balancing in this style involves fractal thinking.  The whole system above the first/biggest horizontal block must be enough weight to balance it.  The pattern continues up toward the singular top rock.  It’s placement does not require any counterbalancing AND is the crucial component in stabilizing the whole system.  It balances ALL levels.

As long as the levels alternate back and forth like this the rocks appear to naturally seek the system’s center of gravity and balance.  The first and heaviest level is way off to the left extreme of balance.  Then the next level up in both distance and mass shows the right extreme of balance. Then back to the left, but this time it narrows closer to the “limit”, which is where balance takes over.  Then back again to the right but narrows even further toward balance.  The pattern can continue, and would approach a more precise center of the system with each level going up… I feel like this has Phi and Fibonacci written all over it..

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions.

-When did you stop dancing?

-

When did you stop singing?

-When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

-When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul.
Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.”

- Gabrielle Roth

Photo courtesy of L.B.

This picture was taken in Pembina River, Alberta, Canada (just outside the town of Entwistle) during my first Fall of rock balancing… just over 4 years ago… Pembina is a sacred place for me. It was a frequently visited spot with family almost every summer of my childhood. I think being exposed to this kind of scenery so much as a kid had an effect on my attraction to Boulder Creek … and my familiarity to silence.

First thing I notice when I look back on old pictures like this is the evolution of experience and style.  Ha.. this was just after graduating from College. In some ways I feel as if I’ve learned more while rock balancing than in my college career.  However, one would not have happened without the experience of the other.  Every day led me one step closer to being in a specific time and place with a specific person.. to uncover a new found passion.

Most valuable lesson so far…? It’s all there inside you. happiness. Love. everything. some might say that there is a very small point inside the heart muscle that is actually a microscopic black hole, generating the magnetic fields of our bodies. Perhaps death is simply the inevitable collapse that black hole. Not sure about facts but I’ve also heard that the body loses “21 grams” of mass upon death (google it!, also wiki this guy: Duncan Macdougall). This loss is theoretically the mass of the soul. (..a black hole?).  It can make sense that a black hole might exist here and therefore be our active link with the infinite fractal nature.  Just some interesting food for thought.. :)

“Size matters not.” ~Yoda

Of course this statement is relative… In meditation, size does not matter because one can experience the unity of all, which by nature is infinitely small and infinitely large. Consciousness, therefore, can exist on the smallest and largest of scales. Boundless.

Theoretically, any balance is possible on any scale if the threshold of one’s sensitivity and strength can match that scale.  Because we are finite in a physical sense, we have a condition where size does matter regarding rock balance and technical difficulty… there are so many variables to consider with technical difficulty… a really small balance like this one is actually incredibly difficult because it requires such a magnified degree of sensitivity on the balancers part. Yes it takes less strength, less physical strain, but often much more patience and focus as it is much more difficult to feel the smaller contact vibrations.  When teaching others I often encourage trying bigger rocks at first because a heavier weighted rock will transmit more noticeable contact vibrations (not too big of a rock, one that is still easily liftable with one hand). I will often have the student touch the rock as I rock it back and forth over the balance point.  In this way it makes obvious the feeling of the vibrations I am referring to. A comparable feeling is when you can feel your heartbeat in your fingertips.

Regardless of the size of rocks I am working with, the infinite can be felt through my entire consciousness at the moment when the zero point (or balance point) is reached… especially in more difficult balances where much focus is required.  The zero point can be felt at any scale because it is the the nature of the fractal, and therefore is ALL scales.. The degree to which I perceive the fractal is related to the degree of technical difficulty, or the degree of focus I must reach to realize the balance..