Pick A Number (Any Number!)

As the first humans awoke and looked around, the only “number” they knew was one. Each person perceived one self, one Sun, one Moon, one meal at a time. One was the number of the age.

As humans became more evolved, and looked out into the Universe, they began to perceive duality. There was night and day, summer and winter, male and female, good and evil. As ages passed and philosophies developed, there was yin and yang. Now two was the number of the age, and working with that concept brought people to the idea that, where there is two, neither of the pair can exist without the other. On a planet with no night, there is no meaningful day. In a world without evil, there can be no good. These are profound insights; and pondering them helped develop the society in which we live.

The next big number was Seven. The Hindus described seven chakras (energy points on the body), people pondered the Seven Ages of Man, and sailed the Seven Seas. Seven is a number of discovery; it took mankind from the childhood of Two into a world which, while being admittedly more complex than the world of primitive man, was still knowable and therefore not so frightening.

Note that the world hadn’t changed: Man’s perception of it changed. With more finely-tuned cognitive faculties, people could perceive finer gradations of experience; and many of those experiences seemed to fall into patterns of Seven.

Still, something like 5,000 years ago, the ancient Sumerians began working with the number Twelve. They perceived twelve Signs of the Zodiac—signs we still use today. They perceived twelve heavenly bodies in our Solar System, including, accurately, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which cannot be seen without a rather strong telescope. And their governmental bodies were always composed of twelve individuals.

Sumerian politics eventually became Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology; and in those cultures’ tales of the gods, there were always twelve primary gods at a time. The myths tell stories of one god leaving the primary group and being replaced by another; that’s how important it was to have twelve gods seated in Olympus, or wherever.

More recently, Jesus chose to have twelve apostles—and, when one turned out to be a poor choice, the remaining apostles immediately hired a new replacement.

At a level closer to home, we humans (and all vertebrates) have twelve major joints in our bodies: two ankles, two knees, two hips, two wrists, two elbows, and two in the neck.

Now, presumably, someday we’ll realize that some higher number has a great significance to the human experience. Will it be 16? 24? 144? Who knows? For now, it appears that the number Twelve still has much to teach us. Remember, moving to Seven from Two didn’t put an end to Day and Night. It just allowed us to perceive additional, more subtle, phenomena...just as our present preoccupation with Twelve affords us.

ONA has discovered that, in each human being, Twelve is manifested in very intimate ways, ways that are possible and even useful to work with. They are: the Twelve Inner Aspects, the Twelve Fields, and the resulting Twelve Systems.

Each System arises from the interaction of an Inner Aspect and the corresponding Field. However, this is a reciprocal effect: A System and a Field would cause a matching Inner Aspect to come into existence, just as a System and an Inner Aspect would bring about a matching Field. Each pair of concepts, then, gives rise to the third.

The concepts appear to tie in, intimately, with their numerical position relative to the others. That is, while the First Inner Aspect, the First Field, and the First System are not interchangeable, they do share a profound truth which affects the manner in which the Inner Aspect, Field, and System, respectively, is perceived. In addition to a Truth, each is associated with an astrological sign and a musical note, which some people can use to help activate these concepts.

The following chart lists these components for convenience:

In the following pages, we’ll examine the Inner Aspects, Fields, and Systems as independent entities. That is only for the convenience of the reader, of course: The Inner Aspects, Fields and Systems are never independent of each other.

Moreover, each Inner Aspect interacts with all the Fields and Systems, not just its mate; every System interacts with all the Inner Aspects and Fields. Beyond that, each Inner Aspect actually has twelve Inner Aspects, Fields, and Systems of its own, as does each Field and each System. All things possess twelve Inner Aspects, Fields, and Systems, not just people. But, from the standpoint of a newcomer to ONA, it is sufficient (and very productive) to work first with the Twelve in their simplest forms. As long as one is dealing with linear time, one must crawl before one can walk.

The Fields as well as the Inner Aspects are not limited to linear time—they extend beyond time and space. Therefore we are not limited by time and/or space when relating to them. We are only limited by our agreements and what we have become programmed to think, feel and believe is so. Working with our Fields, we can learn to relate to the Universe as the whole beings we truly are.

Why bother to study any of these things? Simply because, we can experience our Higher Selves by becoming more aware of our Inner Aspects, Fields and Systems. This is true of any relationship in life; the more familiar you become with a person, place or thing the better you know it. This allows you to freely operate, interchange or interact with whatever you are learning more about. An example of this is when you start a new job. You may not know where to go or how to accomplish everything at first. It takes time asking questions and finding out where to go and who to talk with to get various aspects of your job done. The more you communicate and find out what your options are the more empowered you become. You can more easily do your job to eventually master it, knowing the ins and outs of it.

The same is true of life...and it is our opinion that the purpose of life is to become more familiar with our Higher Selves—or, as some may prefer to think of it, the God within.