No need to rush, says the Water,
No room to hesitate, says the Fire,
You must open the door for yourself:
Pull and push at the same time.

There is a vertical axis of symmetry, a thin border of Emptiness, which separates our left Water half from our right Fire part, so they don't conflict nor get lost in each other.

A thin line of Emptiness at the very center of ourselves - you are probably already aware of its presence from your life story, from those moments of silence when the Great Spirit was looking at you from behind the scenes.

There is a rune for this - Isa.

We are still working on the first phase, which means we see the world left-to-right, not top-to-bottom, but if we rotate our picture, paradoxically, Isa remains vertical:

Do you now see a dashed line in the middle representing Emptiness?
If you succeed with separation and can hold both energies together but apart, you probably noticed how the idea of an axis of emptiness helped to stabilize the entire system. It's because Isa is a force of Emptiness that holds Kenaz preventing it from collapsing back to unity.

Rune itself appears horizontal now, connecting Water on the left and Fire on the Right. It represents the principle of simultaneity. But its essence is Emptiness.

You can feel Fire and Water directly. But you can't feel Emptiness alone. Because Emptiness is not substantial, it is force, and force reveals itself only when applied.

Take a magnet, and try to feel the magnetic field around it with your fingers - you can't. Take another magnet and move it around holding the opposite pole towards the first magnet. Now you can feel how the magnet in your hand is repelled.
It's just a metaphor, but now we are going to feel emptiness in a very similar way:

• Stand or sit comfortably, and close your eyes.
• Summon Fire into your right hand.
• Invite Water into your left one.
• Slowly, to not lose your Fire and Water, move palms towards each other to make a prayer gesture or Anjali Mudra but keep a bit of distance between palms.
• You are now touching the vertical axis with your palms, a thin layer of emptiness, which divides your Fire and Water halves.
• This axis goes through and beyond yourself, up and down across all five worlds: Water, Air, Emptiness, Earth, and Fire, making them all resonate.
• Feel this stillness, balance, internal silence.
• It's a source of order in the world and the Great Spirit lives in the thin line of emptiness in the very center of the universe, dividing duality like a horizon line and watching us from behind the scenes. You are now touching the Emptiness.

Ice is an order.

Liquid water is chaotic, molecules running here and there, bumping into each other.
Ice is a crystal, each molecule sits in its place, and they are ordered.

Emptiness is space and time, something that gives order, and allows us to distinguish things, to say where and when things start and end.

Isa is a simultaneity of everything, it fixes everything in its right places every little moment. Even if everything changes in the next moment - it becomes a new order.

Emptiness is dissolved around us, it's like invisible glue everywhere which holds our universe, not letting it fall apart or collapse back to the initial uncertain state of unity of everything with everything. Even in a non-empty place - still every thing, every bit of it is submerged into emptiness like a fly into invisible but slightly springy amber.

We have two more vertical axes waiting for us on the path.