Reflections on God's Number

I remember once saying to someone - this must have been just at the beginning of my spiritual journey - that the number 4 was evil. My insight had little to do with numerology, i.e. the knowledge that the number we are all so afraid of, 13, adds in fact up to 4 in numerology. I also knew nothing of the Chinese linguistic fact that 4 rhymes with death. No, it was based on an observation that negative market and economic shocks appeared to be coming in four year intervals.

As I said, this was a while ago, today I would say instead that four is in fact God's numbers. How do I get there? Well, something is missing in the Holy Trinity. We revere the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but we do it with the perspective of an outsider. The sonship is part of us. God is complete if we join the holy union. Four equals three plus one! Yet, we have not yet managed to join the union so we are afraid of what we don't understand.

Often we are afraid of God's "wrath" just because we don't understand the Force that operates in a higher dimension than we do. This was not always the case and other societies don't have our psychological hang-ups. The Indian's for example value Durga - our Holy Mother's benevolent face - as much as Kali - our Holy Mother's occasional fury. The Holy Mother knows best, the reverent Hindu would say. "Inshallah" - as God wills it - the reverent Muslim would add. As many of you know, I am a Taoist, so here would be my spin.

You could write the number 4 in numerology as 123 and 7. One Two Three is a clear symbol of an uptrend. We say this is easy as one two three. Seven in contrast is the symbol of completion. So the fear is that the number 4 will in fact bring the end of the good period. We Tao travelers are not afraid of change, we welcome it. The creator in us see the end of an uptrend as an invite to start an even more powerful uptrend. And even if we are about to enter a contraction phase, the Tao will make this period of decay meaningful to us.  We embrace everything life brings our Way, even the most feared transition of them all - our own death. Lao-Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching, "and if death finally comes, the Master will be ready."