MOBIUS STRIP Thoughts on the Mobius Strip by Parker Palmer in the book, A Hidden Wholeness

Take a strip of paper with which we will make a Mobius Strip. One side of the strip represents your outer, onstage life. What is my image influence impact?

The other side represents your inner, backstage life: Ideas, values, faith, heart, spirit, soul, etc.

Stage 1 Children come into this world with no separation between the inner and outer life.

Stage 2 Hold up the strip of paper so that it makes a “wall,” separating outer and inner worlds. We erect walls to serve as barriers between inner truth and the outer world. Examples

If you live behind a wall long enough, not letting the world see who you are: You might forget there is a “real you” hidden there.

3 Consequences of living behind a wall 1) My inner light cannot illuminate my work in the world 2) The light in the world cannot illuminate my inner darkness 3) People see us as “not being real” in our relationships and close themselves off from us.

Pain will crack open our closed world …if we are willing to feel it It could be loneliness, depression, anger, alienation, failed relationships, etc. that force us to admit something needs to change in our lives.

Stage 3 Form the strip of paper into a circle. “I decide I want my inner truth to be the measure for the decisions I make.” Who am I? What am I about? –a good step But there’s another side to this stage.

Shadow side of Stage 3 When we live inside this new identity, we form a “secret garden” to which we invite only people with whom we feel at ease. We use our “inner truth” to exclude those we find challenging. This “circle” is really only a “wall” in disguise.

Stage 4 Make a Mobius Strip with the paper. Whatever is inside us continually flows outward to form or deform the world. Whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform our lives. There is really only ONE REALITY.

We learn that stages 2 and 3 are illusions, although they were necessary at the time. (2) We think we are hiding our truth behind a wall. (3) We think we can use our truth to screen out what is alien to us. But we all live on a Mobius Strip—we are constantly engaged in an exchange of what is “out there” and what is “in here.”

OUR CHOICE We can walk the Mobius Strip wide awake to its continual interchanges, learning to co-create in ways that are life-giving to ourselves and others. Or we can sleep-walk on the Mobius Strip, unconsciously co-creating in ways that are dangerous and often deadly for relationships, good work, or hope.

All spiritual traditions ask us to wake up to the reality in which we live What are we sending from within ourselves to the world and what impact does it have? What is the world sending back to us and what impact does it have in us? We have the POWER TO CHOOSE MOMENT TO MOMENT between THAT WHICH GIVES LIFE and THAT WHICH GIVES DEATH.

In Stage 4 we come full circle to the place where we began—the adult version of the wholeness into which we were born. T.S. Eliot wrote: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.