V. Cycles…
flux between poles.
"All things have their ends and cycles. And when they have reached their highest point, they are in their lowest ruin, for they cannot last for long in such a state. Such is the end for those who cannot moderate their fortune and prosperity with reason and temperance."
< Francois Rabelais
CYCLES exist as the fluctuations between dualities. Accordingly, the last chapter and this one are intricately linked. For as we briefly explained, one polar extreme tends toward the other polar extreme. In a fluctuating system, no lasting balance will ever be reached, only an ongoing un-balance. Therefore, knowledge of the cycles that occur between poles becomes exceptionally important if we want to understand all things.
Cycles exist within every system- from something as ingrained in our minds as the 24-hour night-and-day cycle, created by the Earth's rotation, to something a little more obscure like the hydrologic cycle, which yields the interplay between rainfall and evaporation; From one of the briefest cycles, involving an electron's orbit around its nucleus, which takes a fraction of a second, to one of the longest possible cycles, existing in theoretical form the universe's expansion and contraction.
The well-known quotation from Ecclesiastes, familiar from the Pete Seeger melody and, especially, the recording by the folk-rock group the Byrds, expresses the inherent necessity of cycles in the scheme of life:
To everything there is a season
And a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to reap;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh . . .
The System is set up so t<