"Many men are scared of women and many women are scared of men, [but] what they are actually scared of is themselves. These polarities exist within us and what we are scared of is what these polarities create."
~Bob Moore
Today is Thanksgiving, 2020. I want to wish all of you a day of peace. For me, it's a day of reflection. We will eat later, "surrounded" by family as we look at each other on the iPad screen. So many things remind me that we are related, we touch each other, regardless of physical proximity. It's something that love makes possible.
But, meanwhile, before all the eating and zooming, I want to touch back into the subject of my last writing in this blog. The starting point for my last posting was the recent elections in the US and the entrenched divisions that exist in our political process. I talked about the need for opposites to communicate with each other, work together, blend their activities. I want to continue with one more round on that theme.
Call to mind all the natural systems that depend on the cycles of the seasons, day and night, hot and cold, life and death. Now imagine how far a bird could fly using only one wing. Not very far. The opposites of life need each other. In the natural world, it's fairly obvious that this is how it works.
In our own bodies and hearts and minds, it's the same story. You can't walk using only one foot. (You can hop around, but it's not the same.) We have a right and a left hemisphere in our brains and they are meant to work together. Suppress a feeling long enough and it will find another way to emerge.
Etcetera.
The idea is clear, I hope.
This is the case with naturally-occurring polarities. Like the sun and moon, day and night, life and death, these tend to seek balance and communication between poles in a never-ending give and take. Natural systems self-correct when they get out of balance.
Often, our problems come from what could be called pseudo-polarities, or human-made polarities that arise from our decisions. We humans seem to have an endless capacity for entrenched attitudes and divisions. Still, with a part of ourselves, we also know something about unity. Churchgoers open their hymnals and sing words like, "In Christ there is no East or West, in Him no North or South . . ." What do these words refer to? At odd moments, we settle into peace in which we are not caught up with the struggle of the polarities of our lives. If it's different enough from our habitual feeling, we call it an "altered state of consciousness."
Altered state or not, it can be practiced and cultivated. In the microcosm of our own bodies and energy fields, we can shift into the eternal blend of Yin and Yang that is the creative birthplace of peace.
Below is another exercise dedicated to this principle. If you like, you can hear an audio walk-through of this exercise here: "Lacing"
More to come.
I wish you all a peaceful day.
~Jim