Hi Folks:

Our beginning post for this week included a quote about opposites only having value in this system of reality, of opposites representing a greater harmony.  I’ve often said that my life seems to be about learning two things: opposites and extremes.  Marcia recently characterized them as Opposites –><– and Extremes <—->, which is a way I’d never thought of them before.  Opposites intrigue me because I often find that the truth of something (for me) is the opposite of what I once thought it to be.  Was it the idea that changed, or only my perception of it?  Or did my perception of it change the idea itself?  Truth can be a tricky thing, especially when we figure there’s only one truth of anything.  As a scientist I can understand that perspective, but as a spiritual seeker I find that often the opposite is true.  See?

Opposites also intrigue me because I find that by looking at something from more than one perspective I can come a greater understanding of it as a whole.  When walking down a trail in the woods it’s important to stop periodically and look at the trail from the opposite perspective – it will look very different going the other way, and yet it’s the same trail.  Concepts and ideas can work that way too.  There’s more, however.

We live in a world that has a dualistic nature.  It’s hard to imagine ‘up’ without ‘down’, ‘left’ without ‘right’, ‘in’ without ‘out’ and ‘black’ without ‘white’ to name a few.  Because of this, it’s all too easy to assume that every characteristic must have an opposite, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true.  What’s the opposite of love, for example?  Is it hate, or is it evil?  How about fear?  Are love and hate really opposites, or are they simply differing expressions of the same powerful emotions?  From a religious or spiritual context, if we have positive, loving energies or entities does it necessarily follow that we must also have negative energies or entities as well?  Most religions seem to think so, but I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.  I used to live in a world of positive and negative forces, and in that world the energies around me, the forces behind them and the resulting physical effects all seemed quite real.  I almost died once as a result of something that was ‘done’ to me, metaphysically.  I certainly suffered through the physical effects of that ‘confrontation’.  And yet, looking back I came to realize that the other person involved didn’t ‘do’ anything to me.  It was my beliefs, my understandings that created the physical effects that I underwent.  The mind exerts a powerful effect over the body.  How do I know this?  Well, I’ve been studying different spiritual Ways of Being for some forty years now.  I used to think that numbers like that were important, that it took ‘time’ for the knowledge to accumulate.  It’s not true, not really.  At least not for me.  Opposites again.

Anyway, in those forty odd years I’ve looked at a number of different religious, spiritual, scientific and metaphysical Ways, and as I say, I used to believe in a world of positive and negative forces.  I held those beliefs for quite some time, and I lived with the consequences of them.  But as I grew and learned more, I came to see that, for me, those opposite forces didn’t need to exist, that there is no inherent ‘negative’ force, and that the only ‘evil’ we experience in our lives is what we create for ourselves.  The only real foundation of existence is the pure positive energy that some call Love, some call Units of Consciousness and some call quantum fields.  And in that learning and growing I came to see that I no longer had a need to have these ‘negative’ forces in my life, so I simply gave them up.  In doing so, lo and behold, they went away.  I can dedicate myself to living in ‘light’, to being a loving being, not to balance the scales of good and evil, but simply because, for me, evil doesn’t exist.  Not anymore.

Now, I would never tell anyone else that what they believe is ‘wrong’, only that I see it differently.  This universe is much too big for everyone to hold the same opinion about anything.  This is what works for me, and it may or may not work for you, but I’ve found that in looking at the opposites of things sometimes there are no opposites to find, even though I may once have thought so.

I’m going to close this out with something that was given to me a little while ago.  I’ve invested a lot of years in looking at my beliefs for just about every aspect of my life, sorting through them and tossing out those I found l’imiting’ or ‘negative’ in some way.  I became quite adept at it, until one day I realized that as long as I was looking for limiting beliefs in my life I was going to have to keep inventing new ones to find.  There was a different Way.  The following speaks to that in a way more eloquent than I could say.

“Greetings, Michael, and before we proceed we wanted to offer our congratulations to you for your continued expansion and development.  In truth you could never disappoint, but you are coming into yourself so well in terms of what you wish to become and it is well that you do.

We wished to offer one small comment to what you have recorded here, and as we notice your tensioning we remind you to relax into the process.  We are here to guide you, and we will not let you fall.  Now, as to the ideas you currently hold about the self, they are evolving but still cling too much to old patterns.  You have written about old ideas and beliefs breaking free and thus coming into your awareness, and here we would offer the image of a carver, beginning with a block and removing that which does not belong.  The carver pays little to no attention to the cut away chips and pieces, focusing instead on the carving in his head and its continued evolution.  As one who has done carving in your own way, you can understand the reasoning behind this.  The dust is simply vacuumed away.

It is not simply a matter of removing dross, as someone who models with clay will begin with an empty work table and build upon it.  The same may be said of a painter.  What underlies all of this is not the adding or the taking away, but the continued development of the product.  It is steadfast in its beingness, but as you move through your understandings of time it appears to you as a progression, an evolution.  Therefore, learn to disregard the broken off bits of belief, idea and emotion that no longer fit you.  They are pure energy and will not be wasted.  Nothing is.  Focus on that which you are building.  This is the way of it.”

So… opposites, or unity?  Or are they really the same?

Love,
Mike.

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Follow this link to read Marcia’s View.