The spiral is the material representation of the movement of the universe.
We can find it in the configuration of genes as well as in human morphology, or in the photographs of galaxies.
It is made up of open circles that, for being continually interlinked, become cycles that evolve around a time of their own, and this time serves as their axis.
The entire Universe evolves according to the configuration described above.
Thus, our “self”, or the set of “selves” that surrounds us, is just one of these cycles produced by the universe.
When we are able to accompany these movements, this movement of continuous cycles, our self harmonizes with what surrounds it here and now.
Sometimes, however, we are not able to follow some turns of the spiral of our life, at the moment when these turns correspond to other situations badly experienced by us in the past.
This fact leads us to the verification of a maintenance, as far as the “self” goes, of a past configuration that, unconsciously, continues influencing the present action, thus distorting the perception of what is happening exactly at the moment.
the sensation of being divided, in conflict between two decisions, a situation that generates anxiety in the present, and insecurity concerning the future.
In such cases, our thought is lost in the labyrinth of a purely subjective reality, in a purely subjective time.
However, our body, like all matter, follows the cosmic time, and this generates a series of reciprocal malfunctions, that is, isolated from the cosmic time, far from the physical time where the body exists, the “self” does not have any support any more.
In order for it to move in the subjective space, the “self” needs first to learn to do it in the physical space, in the space of the here-now.
Only when it can move freely in the present, in the concrete, can it equally make it in the subjective, in the abstract.
Otherwise, it will be a mere victim of its own illusions.
As long as the “self” does not understand how it inflicts suffering on itself due to the interference of its old forms in the present, it will feel an unpleasant delay between the subjective and the cosmic, it will fall victim to the illusion that somebody, life, destiny, or bad luck are harming it, instead of learning to take decisions and to assume them.
And as the subjective does not follow the cosmic any more, life will be sensed as a series of mishaps.
This sensation generates another illusion: an opposition between presence and absence, life and death.
This illusion prevents us from seeing that these phenomena do not exist separately, but that they simply represent the two faces of the same reality.
These mishaps or oppositions that make us suffer so much, besides being inevitable in each human being’s existence, are the way whereby life reveals to us the nature of our “self”, which, before the physical death, will have to go through countless deaths and subjective rebirths.
During all our existence we have the illusion that we talk about the same person when we refer to ourselves.
However, this “self” is not the same.
It is just a reflection of successive subjective states.
Inasmuch as the “self” that we were when we were children barely corresponds to the desires, ambitions or fears of the “self” that we are nowadays.
Mythology makes allusion to this unique being, and at the same time multiple, which is our “self”, through the figure of the Phoenix, this mythological bird that dies and is born again from its own ashes.
“I am not ashamed of changing my mind, because I am not ashamed of thinking”.
Then, only when we accept the possibility of losing everything to which our “self” is attached, only when we accept the fact that we can always change our mind, only then are we prepared to become aware of what is really happening “here and now” in the present, in spite of our fears and desires.
To be like this in the present is to be in eternity, because what is thus present is never past or future.
Then, what prevents us from being in communion with the present are the ghosts of our past “selves”, still in confrontation with the fear of paternal authority or maternal lack of love, which confuse in our head what was with what is, soon leading us to the formulation of false suppositions about what will be.
However, when we accept our “Phoenix nature”, the only thing that dies in us is what was no longer living, and each one of these “deaths” surely takes us to a more authentic life.