You and I live from a black and white mentality. That means, we live from a mind that, in its divided state, is entirely the captive of opposites. For us, this idea of good and bad, black and white, means that "I know." I was told what was good. And by the way, how were you told what was good? Here's your parent saying, "Don't you be like that. You told a fib. You white-lied. Oh, hell is coming to you, it is. Hell's coming to you because you never should lie. Only evil people lie!" You say, "Oh, God! I'm never going to be evil." And you're a kid. You wonder why you're a wreck!
So this black and white mentality is that I know what good is, when I never actually found what was good, I was educated as to what was good. And whatever religious background, whatever your traditions, your social identity, your culture, every last part of it inculcated into this identity that knows for sure that anything that's like "this" is evil and bad. And anything like "that" is sweet and good. And I only want sweet and good. I want nothing bad. And if I see bad, the only thing I know to do is to hide from myself the bad I see, because it mustn't be there, and instead, think about the good things. Or, in the goodness of myself, blame something in myself for the badness I see. Be ashamed of what I see; and therefore, pull the blinds down so I don't see where some stain on the carpet has appeared, born of a lie that I was told, and told myself.
What we don't understand is that, in real life, even though our mindset works this way, we are living with a kind of an interior protagonist and antagonist -- diametrically opposed characters. In proper terms, it would be, the devil and God. These archetypal antagonistic forces dwelling in us -- and I only want the good, I don't want the bad.
But I want you to listen to something that no one has ever told you, and that I'm going to tell you, and then you see for yourself whether it's true. I ask you to believe nothing, ever.
Let's take the example of animals in nature -- here's Mrs. Puss who is stalking a mouse. Some of the mice she stalks get away, and some become food for her. Now, when Mrs. Puss catches the mouse, who benefits? Does the mouse benefit in any way? You wouldn't think so, would you? Mrs. Puss, though, has got that cat-smile going. So it seems that Mrs. Puss benefits when she catches the mouse. What happens when the mouse gets away? Who benefits? Does the mouse benefit? Mrs. Puss is now a sour Puss?
So we can see that there is a relationship between Mrs. Puss and the mouse, where sometimes it seems like the mouse benefits, and sometimes Mrs. Puss benefits. But what happens when there is no more Mrs. Puss? She is increasing her predatory instincts, isn't she, every time she stalks? And she benefits from the capture, because her hunting instincts are honed. And every time the mouse gets away, the mouse instincts are honed, so that they know the next time Mrs. Puss smiles and says, "Come over," not to do it.
But one day, no mouse; no Mrs. Puss. Who has benefitted from Mrs. Puss and Mr. Mouse? See, this is what you don't see. Nature herself has benefitted from the relationship. That which is greater than what is created from it is in relationship with the whole of it, no matter what happens to the parts. So that every last moment that everything is taking place, that seems to be between protagonist and antagonist, is not really protagonist/antagonist at all, but rather one thing that is being served through the parts.
How many of you can see the truth of this without stretching? Can you or can you not? But, when you see a "stain" as an antagonist, and then act as the protagonist to protect yourself from it, what's happening? Are the antagonist and the protagonist working for a greater good connected to the consciousness that holds both of those possibilities? Or in that moment, is the individual in his/her sleeping state in their ambition to promote, provide, or otherwise protect themselves, are they not separating themselves out from that stain, from the evidence benefitted by nature herself -- by God Himself?
"Look son, look daughter, here's something you don't know about yourself. I'm going to show it to you. Oh, I can't show it to you directly. I can only show you through the mirrors that makes it possible in this world to evidence my compassion and my intelligence. Look, the reason you're worried about that now is because you lied about it before. You were in there wanting something for yourself, but you didn't know there was a self in there glorifying itself and becoming something through what you were doing. And now, I'm showing it to you. Are you grateful, son? Are you grateful, daughter?" "No, no. I'm not. I don't want to know about it."
But one day, for those souls for whom it is true, a person sees, "Wow. I wasn't innocent at all. I was nothing like what I was pretending to be. I was lying, and I didn't know I was lying. There was motive and ambition and all of the corruption involved in it." And now, thanks be to God, I will not blame that person for presenting it to me. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to that Intelligence for making me aware of where it is that living in me is something whose ambition to be does not care what it does to anything else around it. And by whose evidence, now, through the appearance of this disturbance -- this stain -- I must now make a new choice, because I can no longer continue being that man or that woman.
That's where you pull the blinds back. That's where you take the carpeting off. That's where you simply refuse to hide from yourself anything ever again, because isn't to hide from yourself, to lie to yourself? Isn't hiding anything from yourself a lie? It is!
At some point in a person's life, they start to see that it is the grace of God that is showing them the stains -- not the punishment of things outside of themselves, or the world that's trying to be an antagonistic position to them.
See, a liar is a one-sided being. I only see one side, and my pain in life is that I've been a one-sided man; you've been a one-sided woman. Let's change the word "one-sided" to "one-sighted." I'm not going to be one-sided anymore when the stain appears. Because I understand the protagonist and the antagonist, if brought together, reveal something greater than the individual forces my mind sees and blames for my futility and my pain. I pull back the curtains, I open the blinds, and I look ever so closely at the evidence of my own actions -- now, listen carefully -- understanding that it is the judgment of my actions that is what makes me a one-sided man.
It is the embrace of what the stain reveals that produces the moment where the light goes to work on the darkness. I see that protagonist and antagonist, light and darkness, don't work to serve themselves alone. They work to serve the perfection of that which gives rise to those opposites.
