Looking out at the world the last few days, there didn't seem to be much that was "new" and good on the surface of world news. In fact, I would be hard pressed to remember (in my lifetime) a less encouraging beginning of the year. Added to that, as often happens when I reach a higher measure of inner peace or understanding, as I did to a small degree late last year, I've subsequently had some very wobbly days indeed. I've wanted to cry to release the last remnants of my congestion, but simply could not. So...I move ahead. Maybe I'll cry later today.
I thought I would start the year trying to do a better job of describing what I've been calling "post-duality". I know that religious people from various traditions have other -- surely better -- terminology for this state, and it dissatisfies me to use the word "duality" at all in the name. I mean, I am a product of duality as is everyone on earth, and it's true that I am evolving out of it. But in the spirit of newness and trying to take the focus off separation, I will start calling it "harmony thinking".
We are surrounded by opposites: light and dark, warm and cool, male and female, war and peace, "good" and "evil", hard and soft, etc. etc. etc. It's not like I look out and don't see these polarities (what Abraham-Hicks calls "contrast"). Many of them have helped create both our natural and manmade worlds, and probably will for generations to come. But what I have finally come to understand about myself is that I am constitutionally unable to see or act on these contrasts as the tipping point for violence or conflict -- even peaceful activism. When a "versus" enters the picture, I am incapable of taking one side and fighting the other. I am incapable of fighting for or against. (This may look from the outside like complete indifference, which couldn't be further from the truth.)
The two modern careers that might have been best suited to my intellect are the law and academia. And yet I couldn't take the "fighting" inherent in either of them, or in most of our other constructs. Of course, this is my bad luck. When you aren't even capable of fighting for your own survival, you end up at the bottom of the barrel, by our current standards.
Still, I look out at a world gone mad, and know that the impulse to fight has led us to the brink of disaster. My models are always the worlds of music and the visual arts: in a choir, the altos and basses don't fight each other to the death. They practice until they can create beauty and harmony out of their disparate sounds. In painting, colors opposite each other on the color wheel are considered "complementary", not "the enemy". A painter works to bring visual opposites into beautiful balance and harmony. Although I'm still not sure if Goddess thinking and harmony thinking completely overlap, it is hard for me to imagine the Goddess/Mother Nature being able to tolerate many more years of human conflict. She must be yearning for us to evolve beyond where we are now.
Perhaps it is my own wishful thinking, my belief that we are entering a "newness" phase of history that is more harmonic and love-filled. And I guess I can live with that, if it keeps me from feeling hopeless as I head toward my 70's!
