With any facet of life, in the light of awareness there is a mirror image. For every truth, an equal and opposite truth. We often revile the negative as destructive. We say that is the opposite of what we want, when in fact it’s a mirror image of the thing desired. This is why attachment is supposedly the source of suffering. You get no light without shadow and in hating one thing you hate the other. In loving one thing, you love the other. Extremes create life’s roller coaster.

How can you avoid the roller coaster? Life has rhythms. We add our energy to its rhythms. Most of what we revile as ‘bad’ is our opinion. We experience something. We experience physical pain and we say, “Oh, why me. This hurts so much.” But pain is the mirror image of pleasure. It is sensation. A proper ability to feel pain is an indicator of good health.

How can you interrupt such a negative circle? Your view. When you perceive a negative cycle, know that you are part of it and know what you can do despite circumstance.

In light or in shadow, you are there. The Brahmins say Atman and Brahman are one. That the individual soul and the universal soul are united. It is a mirroring without paradox. A true harmony, if permitted. You can see opposites as tyrannical circumstances. Some would see this subject as morbid and choose to take no interest. But life cannot be seen clearly without the context of its shadow.

Death. The Buddha recommended meditation on the corpse. Not as a way to glorify pain or fear or death but if anything to demystify it. We fear fear. We flee pain. If you give power to shadows then you are in the control of shadows. If you would be free of blindness, you can’t fear looking in dark places. When you encounter hardship and try to flee it, you add hardship to hardship. You aren’t in control. You are not making conscious choices. If one seeks only light, then light becomes like unto shadow. Equally obscure. Blind no matter how you turn.

We, each of us, have a natural inclination to positive or negative thinking. Much criticism is heaped on the pessimist, and many pessimists are just as reactionary as the optimists. Supposedly, they have no hope. They are dour, gloomy, aren’t any fun. There can be joy in shadow. Seeing everything in peace. You can see that the shadow is a piece of the thing and not reject optimism though you see through a dark lens. Or judge the dark ones, because you fear to lose sight of the light you pursue.

Love is the rule on either side of the line. Encompasses all, but it can be lost sight of. Much is given to individual creeds, to “my way” of seeing things, whatever you consider your way. But if you love your way first and only, then that greater way is lost. Some even argue that all truth is subjective. All truth is paradoxical, but it isn’t relative. Related, connected, but not out of context.

We share this world. Light and shadow. Love and hate.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~