PW Series, Part 6: The Law of cycles

Image: Four Sea­sons — Long­bridge Road cour­tesy of joiseyshowaa

Wel­come to the sixth instal­ment in the Peace­ful War­rior Series, a col­lec­tion of arti­cles inspired on a week­end sem­i­nar by best-selling author Dan Mill­man. If you’re new to this series, you may want to start by read­ing the pre­vi­ous arti­cles in this series.

Today we will talk about a very timely topic: The law of cycles. Accord­ing to Dan Millman’s book The Laws of Spirit, “the world of nature moves in rhythms, pat­terns and cycles — the pass­ing of the sea­sons, the move­ment of the stars, the ebb and flow of the tides.” The idea is far from being earth-shattering; Yet despite our basic under­stand­ing of this nat­ural law, mod­ern liv­ing works against this law most of the time. In this arti­cle we will explore the law of cycles and what it means for us; and will describe a few ways in which we can apply and lever­age the law in every­day living.

Under­stand­ing the law of cycles

“The sea­sons do not push one another; nei­ther do clouds race the winds
across the sky. All things hap­pen in their own good time — ris­ing and
falling and ris­ing like ocean waves, in the cir­cles of time”.

- Dan Mill­man, The Laws of Spirit

Before we explore the law of cycles in detail, it is worth remem­ber­ing what it is we usu­ally call a ‘Nat­ural Law’. Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Ency­clo­pe­dia of the Social Sci­ences, a nat­ural law is “a the­ory that posits the exis­tence of a law whose con­tent is set by nature and that there­fore has valid­ity every­where”. To dis­cover a nat­ural law, we use the empir­i­cal method of observ­ing our nat­ural sur­round­ings, and mak­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tions that apply to what we observe. A good exam­ple of a nat­ural law is Newton’s law of uni­ver­sal grav­i­ta­tion, also known as the Law of Grav­ity. Accord­ing to Newton’s sec­ond law, any­thing that is free-falling in our world will exhibit a con­stant rate of accel­er­a­tion, irre­spec­tive of the object’s size or weight. This phe­nom­ena can be observed and mea­sured with a vari­ety of exper­i­ments, thus prov­ing its Uni­ver­sal character.

By con­trast, the uni­ver­sal law of cycles states that most things in nature, if observed for a long enough period of time, will repeat them­selves. We can eas­ily see this in the short cycles of day & night; in the some­what longer repro­duc­tive cycles of men­stru­a­tion; in the longer cycles of sea­sons; and even in the extra-long eco­nomic cycles every­one is talk­ing about in recent times.

There are 3 impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics of the law of cycles:

1. It is uni­ver­sal. The law of cycles spans all areas of knowl­edge and obser­va­tion, from astron­omy (day & night) to his­tory (gov­ern­ment cycling through a conservative/liberal cycle); from eco­nom­ics (boom/bust cycle) to biol­ogy (men­stru­a­tion); from geog­ra­phy (sea­sons) to psy­chol­ogy (manic/depression).
2. It is repet­i­tive. Cycles (by def­i­n­i­tion) are the rep­e­ti­tion of sev­eral stages, fol­lowed in a clearly defined order in a repet­i­tive manner.
3. It is pre­dictable. Once you under­stand a cycle, you can pre­dict what comes next at any stage of the cycle.

Become famil­iar with the law of cycles, and the world starts look­ing dif­fer­ent. Your out­look will become more patient, under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion­ate then ever before.

Lever­ag­ing the law of cycles

Once you are famil­iar with the law of cycles, you will start recog­nis­ing them every­where. There are three ways in which you can ben­e­fit from this new under­stand­ing of the world around you:

1. Lever­age it to become more cen­tred. Under­stand­ing cycles allows you to become more patient with chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions. I recently was made redun­dant from my old job; by remem­ber­ing that I was in the mid­dle of a cycle, and under­stand­ing that a new phase of the cycle would soon arise, I was able to nav­i­gate through dif­fi­cult emo­tional times with less panic. I am not say­ing you can get rid of anx­i­ety or depres­sion; what I am say­ing is that using this new per­spec­tive, nav­i­gat­ing those dif­fi­cult times can become a lit­tle bit easier.
2. Lever­age it to become more suc­cess­ful. You can increase your per­sonal suc­cess (in whichever area you desire to become more suc­cess­ful) sim­ply by recog­nis­ing the phases of the cycle where you are most pro­duc­tive / clear / artic­u­late / pow­er­ful, and focus­ing these peri­ods to the achieve­ment of your most impor­tant goals. Viewed from this per­spec­tive, suc­cess is less a mat­ter of push­ing your­self to the limit all the time, and more a mat­ter of recog­nis­ing when you’re at your best, and using this knowl­edge to your advantage.
3. Lever­age it to achieve a more bal­anced life. In a pre­vi­ous  arti­cle, I explored the uni­ver­sal Law of Bal­ance. Under­stand­ing the Law of cycles allows you to com­pre­hend why it is desir­able to strive for bal­ance, and gives you a pow­er­ful tool to achieve a more bal­anced life. Observe how most elite ath­letes train, and you will see the law of cycles in action: They will con­sis­tently use inter­val train­ing, where they will push them­selves to the ceil­ing of phys­i­cal exer­tion, and then will slow down and allow a period of recov­ery, with this pat­tern repeat­ing sev­eral times over a train­ing ses­sion. If you recog­nise the cycles in your life, you can apply the same prin­ci­ple and ensure you allow both for times of effort and times of rest. Too much rest and you will not accom­plish any­thing; Too much effort, and you will burn out. Syn­chro­nise your life’s cycle with your activ­i­ties, and you will live a more bal­anced, suc­cess­ful life.

As we’ve explored in this arti­cle, our world is made of cycles, and learn­ing to recog­nise them can lead to a bet­ter, more bal­anced and ful­filled life.

Tagged as: cycles, Dan Millman, law of cycles, Lessons, Life skills, Peaceful warrior, Peaceful Warrior Series, Review