Some months ago, browsing in a charity shop in Enniskillen I came upon the Mobius Strip pictured above. One week earlier I would have passed it by because I would not have known its significance. Synchronistic ally, I had just read about the symbol in a book called A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. Thus I bought the object, placed it in my prayer space so I could reflect on its challenges.
The Mobius Strip
The Mobius strip is a mathematical form, discovered in 1853, by a German mathematician and astronomer, August Ferdinand Mobius and it is a symbol of transformation.
If you take a finger and trace the apparent outside surface you will seamlessly find yourself on the apparent inside and as you continue to trace you will find yourself on the apparent outside again. You will realise that there is no separation of ‘inside and outside’ – the two surfaces keep flowing into each other in an endless cycle of a form that has only one side.
The Mobius Strip is thus an expression of non-duality. Polar opposites are drawn together to complete the whole, reminding us of the Oneness of all that is. Quantum physics is now revealing existence as an interrelated network of complementary relationships in constant flux. Physicist David Bohm described the nature of reality as “….a single unbroken wholeness in flowing movement” There are no barriers separating and dividing the energy/matter continuum of our Universe. The Mobius Strip is an embodiment of this with its single unbroken surface. The Mobius strip, challenges us to rediscover the holistic nature of reality.
We don’t exist in isolation but we act as if we do. John Muir once said that “Most people are on the world, not in it – have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them – undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” We are called by the Mobius strip into the awareness that separateness is an illusion, that we are not apart from the Earth, we are part of it.
The Mobius strip appears to have two sides but has only one, reminding us that there is only one reality, that whatever is ‘inside’ us continually flows ‘outwards’ to shape the world and vice versa. This challenges us to become more conscious of what we are sending out into the world from within ourselves and of how we choose to internalize what the world sends back to us. Each of our thoughts and actions cause ripples that reverberate throughout the interconnected web of existence. The crises we experience in today’s world are reflections of our collective inner state of mind. If we are to co-create a better world, we need to walk the Mobius strip of life awake to the continual interchange between inner and outer, transcending the illusion of separateness and conscious of the ripple effect of our thoughts and actions.
The Mobius strip symbolizes transformation on a planetary level. It is used as the symbol of recycling, representing the transformation of waste products back into valuable resources.
Recycling Logo
May we learn how to be in the flow of the Mobius strip of life.
Carmel Bracken rsm
Northern Province
