“The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries
and the opposites they create.”
― Ken Wilber
Whenever we describe something, we create its opposite. If that woman is beautiful then we are saying something else is not in relation to her. If we call a nation or a people free than we are saying that others are not in comparison. Thus we build walls and we fight for them…We seem to often to see in opposites, binary on/off switches where I tend to believe that most things are continuums, sliding scales that all fit on with very little at either end of the scale. To see in binary, means far too often having a preference..good/evil, left/right, black/white. In a universe of infinite colour it seems strange to want to fight for just one. I would rather experience the full range of almost any continuum. If this one life is but one act among many, than surely we are meant to have almost every type of experience and preference there is, the better to grow our souls. Perhaps I become a bit obsessed with understanding and perhaps preferences are hardwired into the package. Maybe so, but I find that the more I see things from a point of view of preferences rather than absolutes, the less I find myself in opposition.
Blessings, G
“Reality is whatever you can get away with. If you can’t get away with it, it’s not real.”
–Robert Anton Wilson
So often we forget that what is going on around us is not reality but is simply our take on it. But what I want to talk about is only slightly tangential to that. I want to talk about ice cream. A friend of mine wrote today something along the lines that God is not colour-blind that indeed he enjoys all of the flavours like a full range of ice cream flavours at Baskin Robins.
Everything is part of the whole. Colour blind is such a poor choice of words and yes words matter why do you think such emphasis is put on spell-ing. The problem comes, as he stated, in believing that one colour or one anything has greater value than anything else….
That doesn’t mean we, as humans don’t have preferences.. choosing one thing over another is part of the human condition. It’s when we try to justify our preferences as value judgements that things start going awry and things totally go to messed-up-ville when we start insisting that everybody should share our preferences because they are BETTER.
Forget that noise.
Could you imagine going to war for rocky road or persecuting anyone who doesn’t like chunky monkey because you KNOW what They’re like. T. hat doesn’t mean the flavours are the same…or that vanilla is peaches and cream…of course that’s absurd. Yet we tend to have so much trouble acknowledging that there can be other valid choices, other flavours also good that so many of us become Almond Creme Supremacists , convinced that because another flavour is chose, that the person choosing it is inferior in some way. Of course we somehow miss the fact that this is because we doubt our own choices. It’s almost enough to make one lactose intolerant.
Blessings, G
