Opposites

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.

There is one essential reason why there is so much constant heartache and war on this earth, and why conflict has continued as it has down through the ages. The answer may surprise you. We do not understand the nature of our own pain -- our suffering. Billions of us live with almost no understanding of how much hurt lies hidden in our hearts and minds; in this case, ignorance is not bliss.

Rushing somewhere, through anything, in the hope of finding some imagined peace of mind is like looking for your heart in someone else's body!

We are made in the image of the Divine. Now, that doesn't mean all that we hope it means. It actually means more than that! It means that you and I, as humans, exist in a temporal form that is, for all intents and purposes, a place where a host of magnificent laws and forces converge. Opposing forces reconcile and create a body that is essentially the mirror of a set of perfect opposites -- right hand, left hand, right eye, left eye.

The reason that we don't have peace is because of the way in which our present minds view the experiences we have with others and within ourselves. Our present nature takes everything personally. In fact, most of us don't know how to do anything other than to take something personally...

Our lives, as they are, are less than half of what they are intended to be. We can recognize that something is clearly missing. Often, even though we come up with: "It's him," "It's her," "It's this," or "It's that" which is clearly missing, it turns out that we may even get these things, and things still seem to be missing in our lives...

In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about the painful deception of fighting for one side in a conflict because we feel threatened by the other side. Nothing will ever change in any meaningful way by struggling on the level of the opposites. It is useless to try to change a world that is not interested in knowing what is useful to the soul.

The anticipation of something desirable is always sweet in conception, which would be great if it weren't for a certain fact about the nature of longing itself: it appears within us, at first, by itself, bringing with it the promise of just what we need to make everything right. But appearances are not always what they seem; for standing directly behind it, as it were...

There is always something talking to us, and we don't know better than to talk back to it. The next time you find yourself caught in negative dark dialog, try to see that it doesn't exist without a corresponding so-called positive aspect, promising the end of dark days and a brighter future. In that awareness you stand in the middle as a point of observation, as opposed to...

We have a nature that thinks about itself -- a nature that weighs itself on a scale that our culture has created and our thoughts have unconsciously adopted. Unexamined, this mind is a virtual torture device, keeping us locked within its own limitations. In the absence of practical thought (the only right capacity of the mind), there is always some painful reaction...

Surely we've known certain "perfect" moments in our lives. But who hasn't been in the middle of a dream vacation, without a care in the world, when--kaboom! In spite of the abundance around us, we're suddenly negative, deeply distressed simply because something or someone fails to please us according to our expectations! Or how about those moments when--regardless of how many of our friends...

There's an old Zen saying "first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is a mountain" which alludes to the fact that problems are not outside of us but are an aspect of one's level of consciousness. The clearer that becomes, that there is no mountain apart from the nature that creates it, then the mountain disappears.