Dispersing Fear: Allying With the Second Dimension

(This was originally published on my blog in January 2011.
The article referenced in the first paragraph is no longer up, so I’ve removed the link.)

This morning, I read an article whose intention (it seemed) was to drum upoutrage, panic, and general emotional frenzy over synthetic bacteria that BP and its partner corporations are creating to deal with oil in the Gulf. The piece played deeply into the perpetrator/victim perspective and the life-as-warfare paradigm—which, though often effective at creating political change, tend to simply reinforce fear and disempowerment. This particular article also struck a chord with something about which I feel strongly: our conditioned fear of the microorganic realm, or what author Barbara Hand Clow calls the “telluric realm” or second dimension.

In this particular cosmology, the first dimension is the incredibly dense iron core of the earth, and the third is our day-to-day physical reality. The second dimension refers both to the realm beneath the earth’s surface, and the realm beneath the surface of our bodies. It’s easy, perhaps, to get anxious, even fearful, about second dimensional beings like bacteria and genes because, for most of us, they’re too small to see — they’re invisible, mysterious, and thus powerful. Our common mythology’s told us that only doctors and scientists have the privilege of direct access to the microscopic realm — the way the clergy was (and is), in many organized religions, believed to be the sole link between humans and the divine. Telling the devout that a priest was their only means of communicating with and experiencing the numinous realm kept all things divine and transcendental safely out of the common people’s reach. It also kept the clergy in power.

It’s certainly true that many doctors, scientists, and corporations have unbalanced access to and possession of information and technology related to the realm of the second dimension, and that they’re not always using this privilege for the highest collective good. Claims of privileged access, though, are only claims. Bioengineering firms may know how to build genetically engineered bacteria—but they have no actual monopoly on direct access to that realm.

The more we imagine conspiracies and nefarious agendas going on behind the doors of laboratories and BP-partnered biotech firms, the more of our own power we give away. Instead, by turning our focus inward, we can explore new ways of experiencing our relationship to the invisible and microorganic — to chemicals and bacteria, to our own bones and blood, to radioactivity, to all that exists beneath the earth’s surface, to faeries and devas, even — and our abilities to interact with, transform, and be transformed by these realms.

It’s time to recognize our alliance with the second dimension, with those beings and energies that exist beneath the surface of our skin and of the earth. It’s time to recognize our interdependence and deep kinship with microorganisms, with bacteria and fungus, molds and viruses. We spend such time and energy speculating about and looking for potential connections and alliances in outer space, but what about inner space? Our bodies depend on billions of bacteria and other microorganisms to survive; our being is a vast synergy of tiny lives existing together in complex, balanced, flowing harmony.

One second dimensional lesson is that of slowness, of slowing down. According to Hand Clow in her book Alchemy of the 9 Dimensions, the dense second dimension vibrates at a much slower rate than we do in the 3D realm. It’s common knowledge that stress is one of the most potent causes of illness—and so often, this stress comes from rushing around, juggling multiple tasks, and living at such an intense velocity that we lose touch with the pace of our body. Slowing ourselves down is a potent method of healing. In slowing down and tuning in with the processes within our body and even within the earth — whether through meditation, visualization, or simply sitting quietly and resting — we realign ourselves with the second dimension. We sink in, feel ourselves in our bodies, feel all the motion and stillness and flow inside, and sense this occurring within the Earth as well. The second dimension within us is in symbiotic relationship with the planet’s second dimension, and the more we can imagine, feel, and engage with this dimension, the healthier our bodies and the planet will be.

The oil that petroleum companies mine flows directly from the second dimension. Many humans still believe that 2D “is a dead world to be mined, exploited, and processed” (Hand Clow) — whether it’s the land or our own bodies, which medicine all-too-often regards as a mechanical system likely to destroy itself and which we must hand over to “experts.” Chemicals and radioactive elements are also second dimensional, and they too have been manipulated to excess in the past century. This is a time of unprecedented interaction between the second and third dimensions. Will this meeting continue to unfold in terms of confrontation and exploitation (leading to further fragmentation and disease), or of recognition and collaboration, leading to regeneration and renewed health for bodies, communities, and global ecosystems?

The latter is the far more interesting, life-affirming, and challenging choice. I believe that collaborative regeneration is the only way things can unfold as we enter a world in which creative, loving, intellectually-emotionally-spiritually expansive ways blossom from the ashes of old, worn-out, fear-based patterns. This isn’t idealism talking; this is an assertion based on evidence and a basic awareness of systems. Methods that fail to adapt simply expire. It’s fairly unimaginative to think that our species and the planet will collapse based on the outmoded motivations and actions of a few confused people. Rather, those motivations and actions are what can no longer survive (and if those folks find they can’t survive without them, well, that’s their choice).

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be outraged and taking action in regards to the highly toxic dispersants BP’s unleashing in the Gulf, or that bioremediation will just happen on its own (though who knows? Those petroleum-eating bacteria don’t need humans to tell ’em how to live!). It’s simply to say that it’s time to drop our fear of the second dimension and start asking ourselves what a world looks like in which we’re fully allied with our microorganic kin (and all that exists beneath our skin and the earth’s surface).

Our task now, or one of them, is to keep imagining this as we keep learning about ourselves. To keep feeling. To keep opening up into perhaps-unfamiliar ways of perceiving and understanding our bodies and the planet. The second dimension is a vast, barely-charted realm to which we all have access. You don’t need special tools to explore it; all that’s required is openness, slowness, curiosity, and awareness.

Hand Clow writes that

“the diversity we see on the Earth’s surface is formed by the complex world within interacting with higher dimensions. All that matters to the 2D elementals is that the biological, chemical, mineral, and crystalline forms of 3D resonate with them; they are our ancestors that hold memory.”

The more we resonate with the second dimension, the more it teaches us, and the more we can collaborate with its intelligence. What creations might arise from such a collaboration, unprecedented in our cultural experience?