People are born gentle and weak. At death they are hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At death they are withered and dry. Therefore those who are stiff and unbending are disciples of death. While the gentle and yielding are disciples of life. An army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome. -- Tao Poem #76
In this world of illusion, everything seems to have an opposite.
Up vs. Down Hot vs. Cold Day vs. Night Stay vs. Go
You get the idea.
The “biggies” of course, are:
Love vs. Hate Pain vs. Pleasure Joy vs. Sorrow Youth vs. Age Life vs. Death
We live in a world of contrast, of duality. The whole game we play on this level of existence is to balance out the extremes and live somewhere in the middle.
This is the “Goldilocks” principle. Not too hot. Not too cold. But just right.
Astronomers use this example in their search for Earth-like planets, which might be hospitable to extraterrestrial life. “Goldilocks” planets are ones like Earth: not too close, not too far away from its sun.
The middle between two extremes is the goal.
But many philosophers going all the way back to Ancient Greece, as well as many of the world’s great spiritual traditions and modern quantum physicists – all are coming into agreement:
This world of duality is only true as far as we see it. It is not true in Reality.
Patricia Pearce says:
Imagine the surface of a lake where gusts of wind are creating all sorts of ripples on the surface of the water. These ripples, these waves, are all interacting with each other, creating unique and ever changing patterns. What I understood in that moment of lucidity is that what “I” am is a temporal, locational convergence of an infinite number of “waves,” an infinite number of influences interacting with each other, like ripples moving across the surface of the water, coming together in a moment, in a place, in a unique pattern of expression…. When I speak of oneness, that’s what I mean. Not sameness, but inseparability.
In quantum physics, light exists as a duality: it can either be a particle or a wave, depending!
Depending on what?
Depending on the observer! Light is a wave unless there is an experimenter viewing the experiment. Then light behaves as a particle, a packet of light known as a photon.
In quantum physics, the act of observing has an effect, called “the observer effect.” The act of measurement by an observer, including a machine, can cause the wave to collapse, revealing particle-like behavior. This phenomenon is known as wave-particle duality.
In truth, light is neither wave or particle, but the observer (or lack of an observer) makes it appear one way or the other.
Greater minds than mine are trying to understand and to come up with an answer to how this paradox can be.
For me, understanding the duality of our plane of existence points to a larger concept that is at the heart of the matter – at the heart of matter!
Oneness!
Q. What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? A. “Make me One with everything!”
If the truly-true Truth undergirding all physical reality, is that everything is One, than those opposite pairs are illusory manifestations on the plane of the observer (us). And we need to see things as separated, in order to make sense of the world.
Another “biggie” I didn’t mention at the outset?
Time vs. Eternity.
If the Wiccans and other native spiritual traditions are correct (and I believe that they are) then this axiom prevails over the illusion of duality:
All places are here.
All time is now.
This Oneness that some call God, Love, Great Spirit, Mystery, is all that there is, All-in-All. And we as observers on a physical plane, need to break things up into separate parts, separate people, separate places moving through separate lives on a continuum of time that has separate seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, lifetimes.
So, we live a lifetime and then what? We die?
No.
We (like everything) are eternal beings with no beginning and no end. We are One continuous wave of spiritual energy which does not separate into distinct packets of energy (particles) until we look for it (aka observe) and see what we are looking for!
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post highlighting a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and especially the line that I love, It is apparent that there is no death.
The duality of life vs. death is at the heart of our very existence on the physical plane, and yet, like all duality, it is dependent on our belief and our observation of these phenomenon. The poet sees death all around her, yet still concludes that life is what is real, and death is not….
One of my favorite poems in the Tao Te Ching, Poem #38 concludes:
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality, When morality is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos. Therefore the Master concerns themselves with the depths and not the surface, with the fruit and not the flower. They have no will of their own. They dwell in reality, and let all illusions go.
In other words, Tao is the Ultimate Oneness. When we lose sight of that Ultimate Oneness, we have to rely on the duality of good vs. evil (another “biggie”).
When we lose goodness, people become “moral” and judgmental. And when they lose that, they fall back on ritual, which is the dead husk of faith (and the beginning of chaos).
Ritual is waving the flag.
Ritual is going to church an hour a week.
Ritual is going through the motions, without knowing why, without the heart, the mind, the breath of life in the actions.
One who aspires to be a Master over the world of illusion, “concerns themselves with the depths, not the surface.” They realize that Life is all that there is, and it’s supposed opposite, death, is the shadow that disappears in the light.
In Hawaii, non-natives are referred to as haoles (pronounced how-a-lee). Nobody knows the word’s origin with 100% certainty, but one theory is that the word, referring to European invaders, meant “without breath”.
The European’s didn’t take time to pray. They would kneel and say a few mumbled words, get up and leave. The Hawaiians spent much time in prayer. They took their time. They “breathed life” into their prayers.
The Europeans were “without breath” meaning they had nothing holding them together spiritually. They didn’t have prayers with breath, with life.
Tao Te Ching Poem #76 at the beginning of this post clarifies how we can be “disciples of Life” by being soft and supple in our attitudes, in how we see Life.
“Wear Life like a loose garment” is a phrase I love to use, to remind myself to take it easy and let Life be what it is: the real Reality.
It is apparent that there is not death. Apparent to me, and hopefully to you as well.
Happy Sunday!
Johnny
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