In relational ontology, stabilisation is not a state but a process; not a property but a temporary arrangement of forces; not a substance but a configuration of relations that, for a time, arrives at a local equilibrium. Stability, in this sense, is never something possessed but something that occurs. What classical ontologies interpreted as permanence, substantiality, or essence appears here as a temporary settling of movement, a momentary equilibrium within the relational field that allows consciousness to recognise a form. Stabilisation is therefore both an epistemological and an ontological phenomenon: it is that which makes perception possible and that which is perceived. Yet its nature remains irreducibly dynamic, for every form is only a temporary tension within a relational field that continually oscillates, shifts, and reorganises itself.
Here a fundamental difference emerges between relational ontology and the substantialist traditions of metaphysics. Stability was traditionally regarded as evidence of something existing “in itself”, something capable of enduring through change. Within relational ontology, stability becomes evidence of the opposite: nothing endures by itself, but only through the relations that sustain it. Stabilisation is therefore inherently paradoxical. It is temporary, yet sufficiently enduring to be recognised as a form; fragile, yet sufficiently resilient to support action; local, yet sufficiently coherent to become part of larger structures. Relational ontology does not deny stability. On the contrary, it places stability among its central phenomena. What it rejects is the assumption that stability is fundamental. Stability is not a foundation but an outcome.
If stabilisation is a temporary settling of movement, instability is its natural condition. Instability is not a defect, an absence, or a disturbance. It is the primordial dynamic of the relational field itself. Every relation is a tension, and every tension carries the possibility of transformation. In this sense, instability is primary and stability secondary; instability is the source, while stability is one of its expressions; instability is movement, while stability is movement momentarily made visible. Relational ontology therefore understands instability not as a threat but as the condition that makes every form possible. From instability emerge the patterns and structures that consciousness experiences as reality.
Yet instability appears in different forms and on different levels. There are chaotic instabilities that disperse relational energies without giving rise to coherent patterns. There are oscillatory instabilities that generate rhythms, cycles, and recurring configurations. There are progressive instabilities that allow new structures to emerge. Finally, there are transformative instabilities, threshold moments at which an existing stabilisation loses its coherence and the relational field reorganises itself into a new order. These threshold instabilities are of particular importance because they reveal one of the deepest principles of relational ontology: every form is merely a stage within the ongoing reorganisation of relations.
Stabilisations and instabilities are not opposites but complementary aspects of the same movement. A stabilisation is an instability that has temporarily found equilibrium; an instability is a stabilisation that has begun to lose coherence. Every form is therefore both stable and unstable at once: stable in its present configuration, unstable in relation to its future development. Relational ontology does not describe the world as a collection of things but as a multiplicity of stabilising trajectories that continually pass into instability and then into new forms of stabilisation. The world is movement that, for a moment, takes the shape of form.
It is important to recognise that stabilisations exist on different temporal and energetic scales. Some are fleeting and almost imperceptible: a brief concentration of attention, a passing emotional state, a transient perceptual arrangement. Others seem remarkably enduring: biological structures, social institutions, languages, and cultures. Yet even the most durable of these are not substances. They are stabilisations sustained through the continual renewal of relations. Language endures because it is spoken. Institutions endure because they are enacted and maintained. Organisms endure because they are continuously renewed through their own living processes. Stabilisation is therefore always an activity and never a fixed condition.
Instabilities likewise occur across many scales. There are micro-instabilities unfolding within individual relations: fluctuations of attention, subtle alterations of mood, brief shifts in perception. There are macro-instabilities encompassing entire relational fields: social crises, cultural transformations, and technological revolutions. Relational ontology offers a unified way of understanding them all, seeing each as a reorganisation of the relational field that prepares the emergence of new stabilisations. Every instability is thus potentially creative, for it opens a space in which new forms may arise.
Ultimately, stabilisations and instabilities are not only ontological phenomena but also phenomena of consciousness. Consciousness itself may be understood as a particular kind of stabilisation: a stabilisation of the relational field capable of recognising its own instabilities.
This is why consciousness is intrinsically dynamic, mutable, and open to continual reorganisation. Its stability is always provisional, while its instabilities become the source of creativity, reflection, and transformation. Consciousness is not a substance but a stabilising process that continually oscillates between form and movement.
In this article we therefore approach the very heart of relational ontology: its dynamic character, its ceaseless movement, and its capacity to bring forth forms that are at once stable and unstable. Stabilisations and instabilities are not merely descriptive concepts but constitutive dimensions of reality itself. Through them the world takes shape, consciousness emerges, and every form comes into being. Their ceaseless interplay, their continual transformation into one another, is the very movement through which being unfolds.
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