Coming Together & Drifting Apart

3 min readMay 6, 2020

From Knowledge to Wisdom & Wisdom to Knowledge

‘**Form & Formlessness’** (Watercolour and ink on paper, by Alan Rayner, 2019)

‘Knowledge of many things is not wisdom’, said Heraclitus. Wisdom is understanding the essence of things, we can all recognise.

Nature is not made of snippets of information that combine together to make a permanent ‘whole’, complete in its self. The essence of things is that Nature is made from continuous informational flow around and between receptive centres of continuous space.

To be wise, you don’t have to know everything, be super-intelligent or be super-equipped with technological wizardry. You only need to be aware that no body can exist without volume, and for this to be so, form and formlessness must be distinct, not mutually exclusive or one and the same thing. You can then appreciate the simple receptive-responsive relationship between spatial stillness and energetic motion that in-forms the diversity of all material expression.

Form and Formlessness

And the Natural Inclusion of Each in the Other

It’s All so very Simple

Really

There is Form

There is Formlessness

Split Apart

Neither Alone can make Sense of Life

But Each included in the Other

Falls naturally into Place

Form Flows into and out

From Formless Existence

Formlessness Flows into Life

In Form

Form pulls its own Weight

While Formlessness is Weightless

Until its two Great Architects -

Space & Light

Come Together

In Silent Stillness & Lively Motion

Every Night & Every Day

In Every Body

Every Now & Every Then

Everywhere

….

Coming Together, Drifting Apart

When All is disparate

Nothing works

To bring what passes

Into confluence

Around its self

In tangible formation

From intangible diffusion

For a while

Before returning whence it came

Ready to reconfigure

Afresh

But not without learning

From past experience

….

Coming Together & Drifting Apart

Written by Alan Rayner