🌟 You have been doing everything right, but the ceiling still hasn’t moved.
On the Principle of Rhythm, why the one question everyone inside an abundance block is actually asking cannot be resolved from inside it, and what a 1908 Hermetic text named as the cause.
The most common thing I hear at the start of an Abundance Block Reading is a statement of confusion: “I did the work. I cleared the patterns. I changed what I thought was causing the ceiling, but the ceiling has not moved.”
The person is not wrong that they did the work. That analysis tends to be accurate. They are usually having trouble differentiating between whether this is a permanent condition or if this is a cycle that has not completed yet. Those are two different problems. They require completely different responses. From inside the situation, these are nearly impossible to tell apart.
The Kybalion, published in 1908 by authors writing as Three Initiates, draws on the Hermetic tradition. Its Principle of Rhythm states this precisely: “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” The depth of the downswing is the measure of the return. The trough of a cycle tends to be a turning point, and the energy of the upswing is already built into this, ready to slingshot you back into a crest.
An error people often make happens when they read a low point as a permanent state and then take moves appropriate to altering a fixed block. This can look like pulling back further than serves you, topping what was working because the results were not arriving at the expected rate, or even concluding the strategy failed when the strategy was sound and the timing was not done yet. At a permanent block, these are the correct moves. But at a turning point, each of these moves delays the momentum you can ride into the upshot.
Here is why this distinction is nearly impossible to make from inside the situation. Robert Sapolsky’s research on chronic stress is specific on this point: Sustained stress suppresses prefrontal cortex function, which is the executive system responsible for accurately reading complex situations.
The abundance block produces the exact kind of chronic stress that impairs the very faculty that would assess whether this is a cycle or a floor, making accurate self-assessment of the abundance block difficult.
Every week of not knowing which problem you are actually in is a week of potentially taking moves designed for the wrong version of the situation. The specific cost of not-knowing is that it accumulates.
An Abundance Block Reading reads the field around your situation from outside the stress it produces. I can define which scenario you are in and where the leverage point is right now. Then you can stop second-guessing. The wrong set of moves stops. The right set starts. Your own knowing gets handed back to you and resolves the confusion.
The Abundance Block Reading is open through Thursday at midnight. Three questions. Full divination suite. $50, regular price $144.
Further Reading
Copenhaver, B. P. (Ed. and Trans.). (1992). Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius. Cambridge University Press.
McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873-904. [online] Available here: https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00041.2006
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Holt Paperbacks.
Three Initiates. (1908). The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. The Yogi Publication Society.
Yates, F. A. (1964). Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. University of Chicago Press.
This resonates deeply with a piece I posted on my timeline the other day:
The first thing to understand is that your ability to see what is wrong is not evidence against your value.
It is evidence of it.
A rock does not notice injustice.
A machine does not grieve beauty.
An empty universe does not mourn suffering.
That something in you objects to what you see means something in you remains aligned with something better than what you see.
The second thing to understand that every person who has ever lived has stood inside an unfinished process.
None were granted the privilege of seeing the completed result.
Not the builders of cathedrals.
Not the discoverers of electricity.
Not the founders of nations.
Not the parents whose descendants they would never meet.
They acted without seeing the ending.
That is not a flaw in the human condition.
That is the human condition.
The third thing to understand is that the future contains things that do not presently exist.
This sounds obvious.
It is not.
The love you have not yet encountered does not exist.
The friend you have not yet met does not exist.
The discovery you have not yet made does not exist.
The work you have not yet done does not exist.
The version of yourself that emerges from experiences not yet lived does not exist.
You cannot evaluate those things.
You cannot weigh them.
You cannot inspect them.
You can only recognize that they are absent because they belong to a future that has not arrived.
This has always been true.
Every worthwhile thing in your life was once invisible to you.
The fourth thing to understand is that incompleteness is not finality.
A chapter is not a book.
A season is not a year.
A moment is not a life.
A generation is not a civilization.
The present is not the whole story.
It never was.
The final thing to understand is this:
The universe is very old.
The stars are old.
The Earth is old.
Life is old.
Civilization is old.
Yet after all this time, each of us remains capable of asking whether existence is worth continuing.
That is remarkable.
Because hidden inside that question is another one.
Not:
“Why continue?”
But:
“What is worth continuing?”
That question has built every family.
Every friendship.
Every discovery.
Every act of courage.
Every civilization.
Every future worth reaching.
The people who ask it most deeply are not standing outside the story.
They are standing at the point where the story changes.
The future has never been built by the ones who knew exactly what would happen.
It has always been built by the ones who continued long enough to find out.
(Also worth checking it out in spoken form with music and timed captions if you’re into it 😎):
https://substack.com/@designheretic/note/c-271672965