Tercet Modus

The Way of Three

Using three core strategic pillars - Modes, Methods, and Materials - Tercet Modus provides the structure needed to:

Leverage techniques based on an understanding of triplet forms and patterns to help make nuanced decisions in our complicated lives by identifying paths through uncertainty

Determine and take actions that guide change, overcome difficulty, and focus on emerging realities while maintaining stability in the course of discovery and intervention

Iterate on the practices and principles over time to move forward with minimal resistance, and in so doing, find certainty in the extent of our control

The Significance of Three

We are often faced with choices for which we use a simple binary decision to determine how to proceed - yes/no, on/off, stay/go, and so on. Within this, there are in-between options that are disregarded, often without our awareness, and mostly practically motivated. For example, something may be partial, but most often we just consider this incomplete.

This binary way of decision making is certainly useful, and it is only through repeated experiences that we gain a working sense of "this" and "that". Even when something seems to clearly be one or the other, we make an active decision to determine if it really is true.

Broadly within nature and for ourselves, this binary is actually much more, and often there exists a spectrum of options. In nature, quantum states exist as probabilities, lacking inherent determinant properties until measured. Similarly, at the scale of our daily lives, we may have a brand new experience where we have no understanding of the range of possibilities, so they are limitless.

What if the binary is all we can see? What do we do when all we know is "this" and "that"? How do we proceed if the very experience we build our understanding from also limits us? It can be hard to see a range of options when options are limited. Even when we are certain have only two options, there is always a third. By understanding a minimum of two options, exploring their interplay, and incorporating our role between them, we can find another way or create our own path - even if this means acceptance of things we cannot change.

The Tao gave birth to One.

The One gave birth to Two.

The Two gave birth to Three.

The Three gave birth to all of creation.

- Tao Te Ching, 42

Unfolding Possibility

These images are a visualization of a mathematical concept called a fractal - an equation that when calculated, uses the result to put back into the equation, then uses that output as a new input, repeating over and over, potentially forever.

This particular fractal is called the Mandelbrot Set; it's most recognizable form is notably identifiable in the center of the second image. Each image is zoomed in at a different magnification level, as if through a microscope. No matter how much you magnify the image, the smallest parts are fundamentally identical to the largest. All this complexity arises from a relatively simple equation, and depicts how simple rules can lead to incredible forms.

More examples like this are prevalent. Cantor's Diagonal Proof demonstrates that there are more decimal numbers between 1 and 0 than there are whole numbers from negative infinity to positive infinity. In quantum physics, experimentation shows that at the smallest scales, binary determinations like true and false are actually indeterminant and do not reflect the large scale reality we experience.

Our brains construct our reality so that we feel far more than the fundamental dimensions - three space and one time - and we can be active participants in that process. These fundamental dimensions come together at the smallest scales and in the smallest moments, and through interactions of incredible complexity give rise to compound dimensionality. We live within and through hundreds of compound dimensions - taste, color, tone, temperature, balance, memory, joy, loss, and more - each felt as uniquely real, yet all fundamentally rooted in three dimensions - plus time.