EXPANSION & CONTRACTION

From the 2 come 8

Expansion & Contraction

Joining Together

The "2" is 2 overlapping squares with the 2nd square placed at a 45 degree angle atop the first square--see upper left figure in image below. The place where the edges of the squares meet (the red tips) are pointing outward, thus the idea of EXPANSION. 

Let the tips fade into the background, and sharpen the focus on the areas within the two squares, finding an 8 sided octagon (the blue shape near the center of the image below). If the 4 red points from the original two squares are made into smaller squares, there emerges red arrows that point inward toward the center (see 2nd figure on top row with the red arrows in the image below). Both the octagon within the square and the inward pointed red arrows show the idea of CONTRACTION. 

When the squares and octagon, the 2 & 8, merge, as in the colored figure at the bottom right below, we see JOINING. The squares are still there but less noticeable, and the shape of the outer octagon contains the entire image...perhaps waiting for another shape to join and expand again?

The description above seems cumbersome, but the idea is very simple: 

There is expansion followed by contraction. Or, one could start with contraction and follow it with expansion...it seems the two follow each other in a continuous cycle of life and death, beginning with our first in breath at birth, our expansion of the lungs, and our last out breath at death, contraction, the final emptying of the lungs. 

Breathing in, expansion, breathing out, contraction...

what a marvelous, continuous, mostly unconscious process, that our bodies continuously engage in throughout our life...to be aware of our expansion and contraction as we breath in and out is a metaphor for life...we are expanding and contracting at every level of our being, mind, body, and spirit...all functions and all systems...and we are not in conscious control of it..."IT" just happens--what a marvelous mystery! In gratitude for the life forces and energies that keep us expanding and contracting...thank you, thank you, thank you.