manitou Posted June 11, 2013 I'm currently reading Ken Wilber's book No Boundary. He puts into words beautifully something that we touch on often in our discussions, the unity of opposites or the Oneness of everything. Hopefully someone will find his words useful: "Most of our 'problems of living', then, are based on the illusion that the opposites can and should be separated and isolated from one another. But since all opposites are actually aspects of one underlying reality, this is like trying to totally separate the two ends of a single rubber band. All you can do is pull harder and harder - until something violently snaps. Thus we might be able to understand that, in all the mystical traditions the world over, one who sees through the illusion of the opposites is called "liberated." Because he is "freed from the pairs" of opposites, he is freed in this life from the fundamentally nonsensical problems and conflicts involved in the war of opposites. He no longer manipulates the opposites one against the other in his search for peace, but instead transcends them both. Not good vs. evil but beyond good and evil. Not life against death but a center of awareness that transcends both. The point is not to separate the opposites and make "positive progress," but rather to unify and harmonize the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground which transcends and encompasses them both. And that ground, as we will soon see, is unity consciousness itself. In the meantime, let us note, as does the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, that liberation is not freedom from the negative, but freedom from the pairs altogether: Content with getting what arrives of itself Passed beyond the pairs, free from envy, Not attached to success nor failure, Even acting, he is not bound. He is to be recognized as eternally free Who neither loathes nor craves; For he that is freed from the pairs, Is easily freed from conflict." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
