The Still Point

Lenten Meditation for March 3 2026

Today, another extract from our unknown Ming Dynasty Taoist commentator:

Gazing upward, we see the North Star abiding in its place, with the other stars revolving around it; so it is called the pivot of the sky. Since even the heavens have a pivot-- which is considered the root of creation-- human beings also have a pivot, which is considered the source of nature and life.

--Treatise on the Cultivation of Realization, translated by Thomas Cleary

There are two reasons for choosing this particular passage, two points I want to take from it.

The first is another re-capitulaton of the theme that’s emerged over the course of the week. There is a center to the human being, a still point, around which the accidents and details of our minds, our bodies, and our lives turn. When we live from the circumference of our personal spheres, we are carried about against our will: by events, by the habitual thoughts and behaviors of both ourselves and our culture, by the lingering consequences of our past actions, by the thoughts and feelings of others, and by a panoply of spirits, egegores, demons, ghosts of the Dead.

In the circle of the Heavens, the North Star is a visible image of the stillness of the invisible God. And note its appearance, here in the Northern Hemisphere: It is a faint point of light, not a bright star like Syrius or one of the planets. This is an icon of our experience of the Throne of God: An absolute unity, like a geometric point, very remote from us. The seven stars of the constellation we call the “Big Dipper” (a worse name could hardly have been devised) surround the North Star and turn about it over the course of the year, and these, of course, are the Seven who stand before the throne of God. Taoist tradition assigns Immortals to the Dipper-stars and invokes them via ritual; a corresponding set of rituals assigning the Seven Angels to the same stars is a project for a future book.

And yet, the old adage has it that God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The Heavens turn about their center, but we too turn about our own centers, and the Still Point within us is not less divine than the Intelligence which governs the stars.

And the second reason to look at this passage is only to make the point that we can and should look to visible Nature to understand the work and purpose of the Invisible God. In the Enneads, Plotinus compared the three primary level of being, that is, the Universal Soul, Intellect, and the One, to the Moon, the Sun, and Light itself. Seeing that the Heavens turn about the Pole Star, and that it appears to us to be the point at the center of a great circle, we can understand it as Light in Plotinus’s sense and therefore, again, as a visible image of the One. Considering the way that the Star, the Sun, and the Moon act in the world of our experience, we gain a deeper understanding of the three levels of being. Leaving aside the residue of materialism, including in its Christian forms, we can honor the Powers of Moon and Sun and Stars, without confusing them for those Higher Powers of which they are simply the visible emissaries.

Seated in meditation, we might imagine our swirling thoughts and emotions as the ever-changing light of the Moon. Withdrawing from these, we gather ourselves into ourselves, and discover the inner sun, that power which produces all our thoughts. Entering into discursive meditation-- the active production of thoughts upon a subject, directed by ourselves and not our circumstances-- we find that we may shine our own light, and illuminate the surface of our minds by our own understanding. And then, leaving aside even the act of discursive thought, we may come to the silent and still point within, imagined as our own inner North Star, round which all the powers of our being turn. The star shines, however faintly, and maybe it shines brighter: this is our own brightness, yes, but it is Divine Brightness, whose source and substance is God, whose center is everywhere, and whose light pervades all things.