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Day Two
The Growing Period
Remember, last week we mentioned four circles - circle one, two, three and four. Everything that exists can be described using four circles. Also how things work can be described that way.
The avid reader of Unification Thought will undoubtedly associate the indentity maintaining quadrupol and the identity generating quadrupol. I love complicated terms especially if they are easy to understand, but they tend to turn off children and teenagers who are more pragmatically oriented: So what? What can I do with that?
Now something more interesting, hopefully: The Growing Process.
Everything grows. Sometimes growth is strong and obvious, sometimes not. Take a cat or a dog for example: In the beginning they grow quickly. Then less, then apparently not at all. Just lie around and wait for the food to come - especially if they are sterilized.
Other things don’t seem to grow at all. Cars for example. Or trees.
Most people will agree that cars don’t grow. But living things, like trees. Why don’t they grow? The answer, obvious to people who read a lot: They do, they just grow slower. People who don’t read might ask: Did you ever see a tree grow? Very few people who read will consider that an intelligent question, but it’s challenging. Isn’t it?
Well, it’s easy to prove that trees grow. Let’s make an experiment: Go into nature, into an area where few people live and where no major construction project will interfere with the natural development over the next 50 years or so. Pick a small tree and mark it with a red cross. Or a blue, elastic ribbon tied around the trunk - or a yellow one around a young oak tree - or a white arrow fixed to a pole beside it and pointing unequivocally, directly and bluntly at it. Or something else, be creative.
Then you sit down and wait for say... 25 years. (Children might disagree here - but I thinks it’s better than watching TV all that time.) After 25 years you will notice an obvious difference in the size of the marked tree, which might be emphasized by comparison to a static object, like the arrow that bluntly points at it. (Arrows don’t grow. )That difference in size is the result of growth. Of course, it’s a matter of definition. So there is plenty of room left for argument.
This reminds me of a very unbiased and open minded cartoon series that I used to be a fan of: ‘Asterix, the Gaul’.
One of these episodes describes how the Gauls (good guys) sabotage a Roman (bad guys) construction project by reforestation right in the middle of the construction site. All they do is to simply take one of these magic, tree growing nuts - developed by their druid Miraculix - throw them on the ground in a freshly deforested area and wooops .... there stands a massive tree. Do that all night and there no sign of deforestation remains.
All but two of the Gauls are genuinely impressed by what’s happening. One who isn’t surprised is, of course, Miraculix, who cooks up miracles and does that all the time. The other one is Obelix, a.k.a the big guy who fell into a miracle brew as a baby and since then is clearly overweight and in possession of continuous super powers.
But back to the story. When Obelix is asked why he doesn’t find the sudden appearance of trees - massive, huge, tall trees - at all surprising, he answers that ‘he never saw a tree grow before, so may be that’s the way they grow.’
I find that very open minded. However, the discussion gets a bit heated. I don’t recall the details, but it reminded me a bit of those creationism/evolutionism quagmires.
Anyway, there are things that grow and when they grow one can speak of a ‘growing process’. Processes take time.
Now, the Divine Principle talks about three stages in that process. It may right now not seem overly important that there are three stages rather than four or ten or none at all, but other concepts later build on that number so let’s keep the number three in the loop.
A simple drawing proves it all:
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