An Allegory of Numbers

This is a brief and non-exhaustive meditation on the nature of numbers One through Nine.

1. One is the wake up, the strike of consciousness, a spark.  One is the first vibration with the will to initiate, to jettison, to quit for something new, not tomorrow but today. One springs into action from the inertia arrived of the nine.
2. Two is sentience and the sense of the other, companionship, a spare, a compromise and the blessings of harmony. Two pairs up, meets up, matches up, the whole greater than it’s component parts. Two is wisdom lived out loud, together.
3. Three is a crowd, a nascent group, the expansion of we and us, the energy and connectivity of the gathering, of fancy, of communication and of the acknowledgement of the divergence of truths. Three is the intersection of honesty and joy.
4. Four acknowledges that we can no longer wing it: we need rules, standards and routines.  Four joys in measuring, evaluations, method, and directions. Four says, break up or build up, one or t’other. Four tilts toward foundations.  Once the basics are discerned, four settles into a regular fixity.
5. Five then wants the reformation, to explore the freedom beyond stability.  Five wants to mix it up, seeks the change in venue. Fives aren’t leftover eaters, they trail blaze just for the taste of something new. Five is rash on purpose, quick on purpose, bendable as Gumby.
6. Six says, to be free is good but life, even the running and the jumping of it, even the staying in one place of it, must be maintained.  Stuff (ourselves included) breaks and sixes want to create both simple and complex ways to mend it all. It seeks coherence and safety. It wants to normalize and incorporate the need for, the time for, the room for the family of everything.
7. Seven is run down by the enormity of the six challenges…so many, too many, too much.  Seven seeks a solitary space to sort it all out.  Seven’s mandate is ‘to quest without a guest’. Seven peers down the hidey-hole of our soul and finds the wheat worth saving.
8. Eight emerges from such silent reveries with the fever of manifestation, a hot vision, the master plan.  Eight is a game changer or wants to be.  Just one mere milestone from the end, eight lives in the feedback zone.  There’s no escaping the harvest ahead, good or bad, karma and dharma both in play and at stake.
9. Nine humanely finds the ends, wisely surveying what has been wrought.  It collects winners and losers, understands why what stays, why what goes.  Nine settles on the chosen ones and the chaff alike with regrets and a lingering backward glance.  Nine masters the art of long goodbye’s with emotion and reverence…the ‘bed of life’ made and ready to be rested upon, at last.