WHITE TRUTH CLAN
Posted by iqiyou on June 26, 2008
Photo by Rockwell Kent
Untitled (Open Book) 1938
A far more stalwart adventurer into the realm of chaos is the White Truth Clan. While White Truth can enjoy the results of Red Blood’s work as much as everyone else does, White Truth expresses its power best when it ventures into those lost and forgotten realms where neither Red Blood nor Yellow Fire dares go. Why not Yellow Fire? Because Yellow Fire finds it difficult to bring the new into existence in a chaotic place that diffuses and disrupts the birth process, often stealing or siphoning away the raw power before it can manifest. Thus, emptiness must be distinguished from chaos when considering Yellow Fire from within this framework. Red Blood is stifled in chaos by the lack of supportive structures ready to be used to knit together a larger whole. But, White Truth is equipped with precisely the tools necessary to venture into the wastelands of chaos and bring about a harmonic order suitable for Red Blood types.
The Dreamspell does define White Truth as resulting from Red Blood, and an argument can be made to support this notion, but our communication to you in establishing a functional relationship for understanding and evolution is to think of each Clan as being at home in different dynamics of function that can be found in the realms within this galaxy. Yellow Fire belongs near the geyser, Red Blood in the village that provides tourism to the geyser, and White Truth in the sparsely populated and sometimes dangerous but wonderful lands that are without any established township or village.
Like a geologist, White Truth has simple tools with which it steadfastly chips away at chaotic structures, which is to say that White Truth brings what was little understood into consciousness and develops mechanisms by which it can be used, incorporated or at least safely encountered. Both the tools and the steadfast chipping way are properties of White Truth, and can be observed as natural principles as well human dynamics. Some stars have come so close to others that the one with the greater gravitational pull sucks the matter from the other into itself. These two drastically different dynamics are becoming one new whole. White Truth is the dynamic of assimilation, chipping away at differences and developing the first harmonies. Water running off a cliff even gently, one drip at a time can be observed to be wearing away the cliff over millennia. White Truth is the power with which the water meets the rock and changes its nature in order to carry it elsewhere. In addition to these basic parameters, it is useful to consider that White Truth is not so well-suited to receiving raw Yellow Fire as is Red Blood, but White Truth is better suited to receiving and dealing with chaos than Red Blood is. Thus, both serve as protective barriers to each other in function. Red Blood without the support of nearby White Truth is bleeding to death. White Truth without the protection and nurturing of nearby Red Blood starves or burns to death.
The following section is repeated for every individual Clan blog entry. It is meant to draw together meanings from all four Clans, and understand one in relation to the others.
Of the 4 Clans, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire represent the most destructive and simultaneously most creative capacities, whereas Red Blood and White Truth represent the most constructive, and receptive.
With Yellow Fire, we explored the notion of emptiness before the newness came into being. Blue Sky is more at home in this emptiness and doesn’t try to change it. Thus, Yellow Fire which creates the new and Blue Sky have the potential to be at odds. Red Blood understands that emptiness is actually full of something; specifically, all that has ever been or ever will be. Blue Sky also understands that emptiness is full of something; specifically of infinite possibility. Thus, Red Blood and Blue Sky have the potential of being quiet harmonious with each other. However, Blue Sky appreciates the comparative cataclysm that is the new as an expression of infinite potential, while Red Blood prefers things to become quiescent and stable. Since Yellow Fire represents such possible cataclysmic newness, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire are just as likely to be natural allies as competitors, and Blue Sky and Red Blood are as likely to be at odds.
At this point, it is useful to consider the newness of Yellow Fire in more detail. It’s important not to over-define this, since newness must represent infinite potential, but Yellow Fire’s distinctness can be better understood if we relate the new to our metaphors. We have thus far introduced, in addition to newness, the ideas of emptiness, familiar patterns, chaos and potential. We’ve essentially defined emptiness as a cross-over point between the familiar patters, chaos and potential, so emptiness is only another term for reality used to help describe Yellow Fire. The reality as cross-over point should also not be considered to subsume chaos. Chaos, from the point of view of Blue Sky, is merely that which exists but which is not yet known or understood. Thus, there must be pattern in it, and its chaotic state is only a relative judgment from the standpoint of the familiar. We’re left with reality as an expression of what is (what is already understood) and what can be (what may already be but isn’t yet understood. If we fold time over and consider all this reality rumbling to be not only past events but future ones as well, then the concept of something springing into being is negated. It already existed in one way or another and has, at best changed forms.
Yellow Fire and White Truth represent the dynamics of reality changing forms. Yellow Fire transforms the low rumble of possibility that is natural to all reality into something identifiable, observable and dynamic. However, its dynamic is new, in that it still hasn’t been assimilated into harmonic structures. Its dynamic is singular, individual, and to some degree self-sustaining. It has to be, because it hasn’t yet been plugged in to sustaining structures. From the perspective of Red Blood and White Truth, then, Yellow Fire is raw and untamed. It is an active dynamic that lacks specificity and interrelations. It lacks the complexity necessary to interact harmoniously. It is change that moves and eats the old, like Pacman eats all the dots it encounters. White Truth also transforms the low rumble of possibility that is natural to all reality into something identifiable and observable, but not dynamic. White Truth adjusts the fabric of the known to make place for the unknown, adding complexity and flexibility. Its dynamic is multitudinous, universal, but also self-sustaining. It has to be, because it swims in the waters of chaos. White Truth is Yellow Fire in microcosm, and the raw power of Yellow Fire can disrupt White Truth. The tools and complexities of White Truth can only create harmony for Yellow Fire with a certain amount of distance and time; a buffer zone created by Red Blood and Blue Sky.
To White Truth, then Blue Sky and Yellow Fire have certain similarities. Blue Sky represents peaceful chaos, which White Truth seeks to disrupt by assimilation. Yellow Fire represents raw, untamed influx of identity, which White Truth seeks to distill by assimilation. White Truth is better suited to assimilating Blue Sky’s reality, and thus looks to hold its distance from Yellow Fire through Red Blood. But, in a way, White Truth seeks to eat away at both of these dynamics, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire. What White Truth excretes goes to Red Blood.
To Red Blood, White Truth and Yellow Fire are similar in that they both excrete toward it. Red Blood receives the vast new from Yellow Fire and the minutiae of truth from White Truth. This makes Red Blood naturally receptive—reality flows into Red Blood like rivers into the ocean—but causes its dynamic to also be resistive, to control the influx—Red Blood builds damns, canals and irrigation to keep from flooding. Blue Sky, contrarily is eaten away at by both White Truth and Yellow Fire; White Truth transforms its homey chaos into truth and Yellow Fire manifests its infinite potential into something more static. Blue Sky is therefore naturally expansive—reality flows out from Blue Sky like rain from clouds, pushing outward into White Truth and Yellow Fire. It is this dynamic that emphasizes how Blue Sky represents potential, the bubbling of reality into something new, rather than down into history (which would be the antithetical Red Blood dynamic). Blue Sky is not passively in love with chaos, it is actively pushing things into new being—chaos as an intermediary step to evolution.
At the center of the galaxy is an area that is so massive that nothing appears to emit from it; all movement is into its center. The stars that make up the obvious form in the galaxy contrarily are almost entirely radiative, pushing themselves outward into the void. In between, in what is generally termed “interstellar space” is a region with much activity that is mostly deemed to be a subtle balance of the two dynamics, involution and expression. The galactic message is thus writ large and small, and human dynamism is a microcosm of these possibilities. Interpreting the Clans usefully will involve assigning life situations and issues in terms of these metaphors.
If you were, let’s say, a human Yellow Fire Clan member, then it would be useful to consider how what you perceive and deal with in your life seems to be relatively empty of whatever you value or delight in, and how particularly well suited you are to bring some of these things into that emptiness. It’s of little use to decry the emptiness when you, yourself are intended to be its solution. So, if you’re a Yellow Fire and you’re depressed over what isn’t the way you want it to be, it should be helpful to receive the Yellow Fire advice that potential exists all around you and wants only your power to ignite into something new. In relationships with others, it’s important to know that not everyone will be comfortable with the changes, and that social responsibility demands that you find accord in place and company before setting fire to things. In particular, understand and respect the safe distance that members of the White Truth Clan may need to keep from you for their own comfort. Additionally, if you can stomach helping your Red Blood acquaintances get used to your new ideas and projects, and allow for plenty of versatility for your Blue Sky acquaintances, you may find that there is much support and even assistance available to you.
With Red Blood, we explored the differentiation between the bubbling that is the baseline of reality, and represents everything known, understood and comforting, versus the bubbling that is the baseline of reality that is unknown, unrelated and comparatively chaotic. As Yellow Fire was to Blue Sky when reality was emptiness or form, White Truth is to Blue Sky when reality is chaos and the familiar. While Blue Sky appreciates the chaos unaltered, White Truth is moved to make of it that which can be understood and used. It would be appropriate to suppose that White Truth is the spontaneous generation of truth and pattern from chaos, the Yellow Fire of chaos.
Red Blood appreciates the ripples on the pond that have resulted from a past event, but shies away from turbulence of unknown origin or intent, and is awakened to action when the ripples of the past begin to subside or disappear, creating augmented reminiscence. White Truth, contrarily, appreciates pattern and synchronicity, shies away from undifferentiated wholeness (Yellow Fire), is awakened to interest and action by the unknown, and creates as a result of its action, that which can be known. Blue Sky appreciates all the ripples just as they are, without requiring understanding of them, but avoids the sedentary and static. Blue Sky unlike the other three Clans isn’t called into action by anything, but rather represents a default state of action, a kind of always boiling, a mixture of stasis and change. It’s avoidance of static structures, however, make it appear to be called toward undeclared, undifferentiated, unmanifest areas. When something eats away at it, like White Truth or Yellow Fire, it glides away like oil on water.
Your friend in the Tao,
Lihai Sherman, CMQ
Qigong Instructor
I Qi You
© Copyright I Qi You, June, 2008. All rights reserved.
