They told me some time ago that the reason spotted animals are sacred is that Spirit comes in on the edge where “what is” meets “what is not”. A spot has an edge that defines what is and is not that spot. Spirit comes and goes from this realm to the others through that edge. Like a closed door or window, air can still pass through the edges. The more edges, the more passing through. So a spotted horse is Sunka Wakan (Lakota: holy dog). A piebald deer is most rare and treasured. The spotted eagle carries prayers to the Divine. And a spotted dog is a close companion.
They told me that the line of demarcation of a spot is not as distinct as it looks, but rather has volume like space, but space of another dimension. From a distance it is easy to see what is mountain and what is flat land. But as you get closer and closer, it is harder to see where you leave the flats and enter mountain. The dimension of breathing becomes more effective (labored breathing with climbing) in knowing mountain when the dimension of sight becomes less useful.
Edges are places of mixing it up with others. Edges are places where energy moves like the current between the poles of a battery, not being the positive nor negative pole but the space between. A plowed farm field on the horizon is easy to distinguish from the air of the sky. But earth and air mix it up in the edge at least root deep for the benefit of living plants.
Boaters can easily see the edge of water and air on a calm horizon. Even so, we know that water evaporates into the sky and oxygen dissolves into water for the lives of fishes and plants. The energy of great storms demonstrates the power in mixing water and air at the edges. Great windblown and froth-topped waves crashing into land fall show us the strength of water against rock over time and the power of that edge.
Night and day meet at twilight and dawn. Modern measuring tools have given us a specific time for sunrise and sunset, but the mystics were and are drawn to the event of dawn and twilight, not the time of sunrise and sunset. They know how to use the space between the clearly day and the clearly night without the need to be so definitive. By not being specific, one can feel the movement of earth in its ancient cycles and maybe get a glimpse of the Divine that created it.
The human consciousness and super-consciousness meet at edges created by twilight and dawn. As the sun is dropping below the horizon, so too is our waking consciousness. Then the stars and moon reveal themselves to our super-consciousness allowing our dream time to take us where our physical bodies cannot go. Artists, inventors, spiritual seekers and others use the edges of falling asleep and awakening to ask for and receive inspiration.
Edges of living and dying—where we come from at birth and where we are going in death create the thresholds of our spiritual consciousness moving in and out of our physical being. If you use our knowledge of the repeating pattern of day and night as a fractal pattern, one will see the possibility of multiple lifetimes for any one spirit.
Edges are thresholds, frontiers, and permeable boundaries. These edges occur between what we know and do not know. They also occur between the seen and unseen. We all know the edge of can do and cannot do. Transcendence happens at the edge of our known capacity, when we reach the end of what we know we can do. Transcendence is stepping through that permeable boundary into newness, expansion, miracle, and beyond.