BLACK MOON HARBOR

FOR DAOIST STUDIES

April 2024

IN THE WAKE
OF
TOTALITY
In the Wake of Totality

We’re counting out-of-state license plates as we drive through town on our way to the high
school. All schools are closed yet my teen-aged son has a Captain’s Practice at 8:00 a.m.
The lacrosse team’s dedication is a force of nature.

New York, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina…Georgia?!

The sidewalks are already teeming with strollers ~ their coffee cups in hand, gazing at store
front windows. Chairs are being set up in front yards and on the Town Green, and it’s feeling
a lot like the morning of the July 4th Parade when Bristol, Vermont becomes a hub of activity.

After dropping off my son, the morning offers a rare opportunity. I take the flight of stairs up to
Open Sky Studio where my friend Deborah is teaching an early morning yoga class. As I enter
the space, a group of women are already on their mats with cushions and bolsters ready to
welcome the day with stretching, breathing and song. This class is a mosaic of practices
sprinkled with Deborah’s insights into the relationship of body and mind from decades of her
training and cultivation.

We move through a series of exercises and postures, all the while instructed to let our feet sink
deeply into the Earth at the same time reaching up to the Sky through the top of our heads.

Our movements are in tune with Deborah’s mellifluous voice sharing the wonder of the human
cell as a microcosm of all life, and how all the cells of our body are listening in concert. As we
settle onto our mats, she seamlessly leads us in song. Together, the words of Woyaya* are
flowing harmoniously in rounds.

We are going
Heaven knows where we are going
But we know within

And we will get there

Heaven knows how we will get there
But we know we will

It will be hard we know

And the road will be muddy and rough
But we’ll get there

Heaven knows how we will get there

But we know we will
Woyaya Woyaya Woyaya

*meaning we are going ~ a song by Ghanaian band Osibisa

* * * * * * *

It happens again!

After class I see Pamela in the parking lot outside the studio. We joke that this particular lot is
a kind of cosmic portal or node as we cross paths here so often.

For us it’s an immediate deep dive into the current. We’re talking through decisions to be made
as to how and with whom we will share the experience which is just hours away. In a story as
old as Motherhood, we’re grappling with the tension between the gravity towards tending to our
personal needs and disposition for autonomy and the momentum carrying us towards being with
and caring for others.

* * * * * * *

From our perspective on a spinning planet, as light from the Sun continuously encounters the
receptivity of the orbiting Moon, we can trace and follow a course of cyclical, rhythmic, and
calendric change which dictates patterns throughout nature and within ourselves.
.
This cosmic exchange between the Sun and Moon, light (yáng 阳) and dark (yīn 阴) is the
understory of Daoist cosmology, Chinese natural sciences, and is ultimately a guiding principle
in the enactment of virtue (dé 德) for the sake of finding the center and harmonious balance in
all relationships.

Dao generated one

One generated two
Two generated three
Three generated the ten thousand things…
Chapter 42, Dào dé jīng ~ 道德經 ~ the Classic of Dao and Virtue

* * * * * * *

My husband, son and I arrive at our close friends’ house in Lincoln in time to help set up the
lawn chairs facing the southwestern hillside, in view of the Sun appearing high above the
treeline of Quaker Street.

For the first time ever, I put on a pair of North American Eclipse 04.08.2024 Total Eclipse
glasses and look upward. My neck is kinked for the next two hours.

Our little group appears to have a natural diversity: some celebrating a reason to kick back with
a beer on a Monday afternoon, singing “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me” with the first
“bite” taken from the Sun; me, senses heightened, introspective and contemplative; and Horace,
a distant relative of my host whose trajectory from Massachusetts lands him two lawn chairs
away.
Horace takes the lead in conversation. He’s filled with anecdotes, news, and commentary about
all kinds of things. Within the stream of his sharing is the mathematical relationships between
the Sun, Moon and Earth ~ the heavenly coincidence in distance and dimension predicting this
extraterrestrial convergence.

While I’m basking in the sounds, sights, sensations, metaphors and meanings of what is
happening, a wave of awe and gratitude rushes through me for all the astronomers,
mathematicians and physicists whose capabilities to measure and calculate with extraordinary
precision, right down to degrees and seconds, this immanent and imminent alignment.

And yet, while our phones are still counting down for us, we needn’t look anywhere else but up.

* * * * * * *

A Daoist perception of the body and self is depicted in the Neijing tu which illustrates the human
form as a microcosm of nature ~ an inner landscape of mountains, rivers, paths, forests and
stars amidst dwellings, palaces, and towers. In the upper realms of the body, the eyes are
represented by the Sun and Moon.

* * * * * * *

The light around us is turning dusky pale and the cooling air is palpable. I put on my sweater
and sense what is shifting as the Sun transforms to a crescent.

I follow my son’s lead whose instinct for solitude is fully intact. His drift away from adult chatter
had started at around 30% obscurity when the Sun, according to their banter, was an orange
Pacman against the black screen of a video game.

Within the Path of Totality he had retreated away from the house and backyard to the tree swing
hanging from a giant oak on the hill near the side of the road, now silent. Words behind us a
meaningless hum.

Beneath the sliver remaining I stand still and catch the breeze from his whole body swinging
back and forth, back and forth in an arc through the blue-green twilight and ponder how the Sun
and Moon are moving with him.

With one last round, as the swing reaches its apex, Kestrel, my son, releases his body into the
air, arms outstretched, alighting firmly on the Earth, just in time.

* * * * * * *

The Dao that can be spoken of as Dao is not the constant Dao
The name that can be named is not the constant name
Without name - it is the beginning of Heaven and Earth
Chapter 1, Dào dé jīng ~ 道德經 ~ the Classic of Dao and Virtue
* * * * * * *

The next morning I continue to feel disoriented with a visceral sense of grief and a weird mixture
of withdrawal and longing. I don’t know what is happening.

I visit the flower shop on Main Street where Randy, the owner, is swapping Eclipse stories with a
patron as they exchange money at the register. I am listening with keen interest and curiosity
as I would with many other conversations in the coming days.

After the customer leaves, the Eclipse is still in the air as Randy wraps brown paper around the
Peruvian Lilies I have chosen. We’re talking about our experiences and that of his friend who
told him how afterwards she felt depressed and unsettled, asking herself, What do I do now?

Randy goes on to share the tale of William Shatner (famous Star Trek Captain of the Star Ship
Enterprise) who, after his first real voyage into space, returned to Earth distraught yet
transformed; and also the reports of many astronauts who experience lasting psychological and
emotional effects from their distant travels.

* * * * * * *

The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth
from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent
qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus”. The most prominent common
aspects of personally experiencing the Earth from space are appreciation and perception of
beauty, unexpected and even overwhelming emotion, and an increased sense of connection to
other people and the Earth as a whole.The effect can cause changes in the observer’s self
concept and value system, and can be transformative. ~ Wikipedia

Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our
planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and
concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The
result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

* * * * * * *

Could it be…was I experiencing what might be named The Underview Effect?

* * * * * * *

I take the flowers home to my kitchen and trim a few inches off the stems. They now stand
erect with the purple and yellow blooms circling the square opening of the vase. I carry the
offering downstairs to my altar and set the vase down where it belongs.

There are two red candles side by side on the altar. First, I light the candle to the right in the
East for the Sun, then the candle in the West for the Moon. I take three sticks of incense and
place the tips into the flame of the Sun, then wave them in the air until the tips glow orange.
One by one they stand upright in the urn of salt and ash. Smoke billows upward as I begin
three bows. Standing to kneeling, falling and rising sunlight pours in from the eastern windows
casting fractals about the room. By the third bow I remain on my knees, catching teardrops in
my hands.

* * * * * * *

A week later with the waxing moon rising up over Mount Abraham, it is time for one more story
from Nancy.

Nancy and I met outside the Lincoln Library after Friday morning storytime over 20 years ago.
I had my first son in tow, and she was holding hands with her 2-year old granddaughter. This
confluence and an immediate feeling of compatibility led to us form our own little playgroup of
four to mitigate the ennui of caretaking little ones. Over the next several years, during frequent
playdates as the children frolicked, Nancy and I talked for hours and hours about so many
things under the Sun.

Turns out that April 7th was Nancy’s 80th birthday! So when I called her on the phone it was to
wish her a belated “happy birthday” as well as inquire about her encounter with Totality.
Admittedly I was eager to find out. Nancy is a woman whose life work as a social worker and
hypnotherapist has led her to traverse the rugged landscape of interiority, her psychic skills and
compassion benefitting an immeasurable number of people. And as a devoted mother,
grandmother, mentor and friend to many, she is a fully tuned-in presence in our community.

For Nancy, on the day after her birthday, it was not only what was visible in the Sky that she
could see.

It was not only the brilliant ring of luminosity, the mesmerizing halo, how the horizons lit up all
around, the solar flares perceivable to the naked eye, the immediate response of the birds, bats,
squirrels, and mosquitos (so many mosquitos!) as the dance of dark and light dazzled the
senses.

For within those two minutes, she went inside and closed her eyes. In the darkness, in the
stillness of her mind, she felt a glimpse, an invocation of the mystery that sets the Sun and
Moon in motion, entranced by the unity of hundreds of thousands of human beings converged
with tens of millions along the Path, a transfixed attention upon what we all share and what
makes us feel that we all belong. The illusion of separateness ~ a cloud cover, a veil ~ that
under the attunement of perfect alignment is parted and dissolved inspiring a reverent
exhilaration of wholeness ~ not partial, not even 98%, but 100% indivisibly One.

* * * * * * *

Approaching the Full Moon the Forsythia are finally in bloom and the yellow trout lilies and wild
leeks have busted up and out of the forest floor. It’s been nearly two weeks since the New
Moon of April 8th and while digital images and commemorative T-shirts remain intact the Eclipse
has since faded out of conversation becoming a distant memory.

During another visit to the flower shop, Randy and I wonder if it’s back to business as usual.
We agree that for us it is not and corroborate one another’s sense that something has shifted,
feeling inspired and a bit more courageous to do and be better, acting with more kindness and
forgiveness in our world of messy imperfection, knowing deeper down inside that we are always
in the Path of Totality because, after all, we ARE Totality!

Rachel Edwards makes the Sun and Moon her business as an acupuncturist, herbalist, Daoist medicine practitioner,
martial artist and ordained Daoist (23rd generation) in the Quan Zhen Long Men Pai (Complete Reality School,
Dragon Gate Lineage). She lives in Lincoln, Vermont.

____________________________________________________________________________
Resources:
Daoist Morning and Evening Altar Recitations, Parting Clouds Daoist Education
The Taoist Body, Kristofer Schipper
The Daoist Tradition, Louis Komjathy
The Daode jing Commentary of Cheng Xuanying, Friederike Assandri