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like breathing, in and out, grasping and letting go
Seth (the author of Seth Speaks) made a good point during my reading last night -- that good and evil are not perfectly balanced, and that an expectation of perfect balance can cause misperception. At times I've believed that every good thing that happens to me must be counteracted by an equivalent bad ... but now I realize that this was a misinterpretation. Good and evil are also entirely subjective ... dependent on both point of view and focus, and desire ... I used to link good with possession and bad with loss ... assuming that each possession must be balanced by its eventual loss ... therefore that each good thing that happens to me must eventually become undone ... the excitement of each new relationship must be balanced by the pain of its future disappearance ... ----- However, the concepts of possession and loss are tricks we play upon ourselves, pretenses at permanence. Life is lived in progressive cycles, we breathe in, we breathe out. We arise, we slumber. We grow, we decay. We are born, we are extinguished. Each day is entirely different from the previous day. Our moods cycle, the seasons cycle, we careen from mastery to frustration and back again. To label one part of the cycle "good", and another part of the cycle "evil", is an attempt to cut the cycle in half, an attempt to breathe in and hold the breath and never exhale -- an attempt which ends in either failure or suffocation. ----- Paradoxically, by living in the moment too well, we can forget or ignore the encompassing nature of these cycles. On our way up, as we breathe in, as we acquire, as we master, we are boundlessly happy and see the world as a bright and comfortable playground. On our way down, as we breathe out, as we lose, as we fail, we are lost in despair and see the world as a meaningless and threatening hell. The reality is a series of progressive cycles, each somewhat different from the previous cycle, connected by a sense of personal continuity via consciousness and memory. Can we learn to savor the exhalations as much as the inhalations? I think so, if we can approach each moment with a sense of wonder, not knowing what will come next, not fearing what might come next, taking life as it comes and gracefully accepting both victory and disaster, knowing that both are temporary cyclic phenomena.
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