Heraclitus was a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught by a process of “open ended inquiry.”  Diogenes relates that as a boy Heraclitus had said he “knew nothing” but later claimed to “know everything”,and that Heraclitus had a poor opinion of human affairs.

Panta rhei, “everything flows”

The interpretation of Logos understood by Heraclitus is as an applied term for a principle of order as an understanding of a Divine animating principle pervading the Universe. To Heraclitus all things come to pass in accordance with Logos and that Logos is common.

Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on the ever-present change in the universe, as stated in the famous saying, “No man ever steps in the same river twice”. He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that “the path up and down are one and the same”, all existing entities being characterized by pairs of contrary properties. His cryptic utterance that “all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos” – “the account which governs everything,”

This Logos remain but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like “the inexperienced” when they experience, as they fail to notice the space (Fire of Origin) which  life flow from, which they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.

A Dialectic Unity

Logos to Heraclitus was never rational… it was and remain dialectical!   The Logos Heraclitus refers to is rarely recognized and realized.  When this Logos is fully integrated nothing is rejected! All is received! Logos is seen everywhere! All previous mental maps of reality are dropped as they are seen as an incomplete reflection of the animating principle that is pervading all.

This Logos he refers to is most clearly seen when you allow silence to pervade you, and you live fully engaged in the river of life as you meet and receive the seemingly opposite on the level of being. Logos fully embodied and integrated into form becomes a united totality, a vertical expansion as union & mystery!

What fuels the “Blind-spot’ to Logos is the ideas, values, maps and beliefs that have been imprinted and programmed into us. We are a species impressionable and susceptible to conditioning. From the moment we are born, we disassociate from our birthright. We are lions that have become sheep,  as we have been conditioned to think and feel we need and must become something ‘extraordinary’ to prove our “birthright” perceived inherent value. In the process we do not recognize the beauty of what is common, ordinary and inherent to us all.

The perceived need to accumulate an identity to be set apart from others is an oxymoron hiding in plain sight.   We are conditioned to pursue specialness and privileges, and we substitute our birthright as ‘one unified wholeness’ to external measures, evaluation and approval.

We abdicate our fire of origin to live by a conceptual understanding of reality, rather than surrendering to the flow as it.  Through our seeking for identity, as we attempt to prove our adequacy and sufficiency, an already given, we subsequently become a cog in a systemic machine.

We have individually and collectively abdicated our direct and intimate ‘free, clear and aware’ connection to our fire of origin. We have substituted our birthright for a conceptual understanding of justice as attunement and alignment. We have Logos for a conceptual map ‘disconnected from the attuned and always aligned unified fire of Origin.  Individually and collectively we have replaced it with a conceptual system of ideas of self and others, living disconnected in a conceptual self and submitted to collective policing, abandoning and abdicating our opportunity to be in connection with our fire of Origin.

Most humans are never able to see this. The perceived ‘idea of being a separate self’ ID is an oxymoron of imprinted values informing mental and emotional maps of self; an idea of a separate ‘self’ that is hiding in plane sight.

Humanity is driven by a never ending thirst to satisfy an idea of themselves that require that they feed into proving themselves, that they are enough i.e.; adequate, sufficient, loveable, worthy, seen etc..

We individually and collectively dialogue about sustainable and efficient practices, but how can we ever connect the dots to Logos as long as we abdicate and deny the connection to the obvious in ourselves.

Life simply evolves in and through form, there is nothing personal about it at all…and thinking and feeling it is, is simply paralyzing real ‘conscious ‘engagement with the unified Logos at our core, a clear fire of Origin in thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Life is simply most beautiful when we meet face to face in the ordinary as we receive our birthright. You never have lived until you realize your connection to your fire of Origin, as “Pure-empty–Being” a paradox you are,   “a unified  thunderbolt that steers the course of all things’ whether you know it or not!

OM