Finding Balance
May 18, 2014
Consciousness and Contradiction.
I was talking to Chrissie the other day.
We’ve known one another for almost forty years (!) We give and receive advice from one another by turns. It’s just fabulous to have her in my life.
We had been talking about the patterns in our lives, and particularly the challenging nature of my own life, offset by an extraordinary sense of always having been loved unconditionally by what I termed my “something”.
At one point, Chrissie said, “Now don’t take this the wrong way”.
Lawdie – here we go.
“No, of course, not”, I replied, fastening the armored breastplate in place and pulling down the visor.
“You are a woman of extremes”, she said.
“Yes”, I muffled.
“Your whole life has been full of contradiction and I really struggle with that sometimes because I can’t reconcile it all. There are two constants in your life. The challenge is constant and your ‘something’ is constant.”
You know how it is, when you have the feeling that somebody has just told you something …
We continued with our conversation. And as we always, always do, we finished up laughing and I felt so good after we’d hung up.
Definition of Consciousness
But that bit about contradiction nagged at me. I put it aside to think about later and got on with what had to be done.
Some hours later the light went on: I leafed through some texts until I found it: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s definition of Consciousness:
“Consciousness is the unity, or co-existence of two qualities of intelligence that are contradictory to each other:
1) Singularity… and
2) Diversity …” 1
For “Diversity” read “Dynamism”, “Activity” or, in this case, “Challenge”.
For “Singularity” read “Silence”, i.e. “ My Something”.
That’s what I am!
I am the existence that holds the two in balance, that keeps them both going, never allowing one to override the other for too long.
I have my challenges, to be sure, but I also have my silent “something”; that unconditionally loving presence of self that grounds and stabilizes me at the same time.
It was a very profound moment.
Just for a minute or so I saw myself not as a personality, an ego, but as a spark of consciousness that has come to earth in order to go through what has to be gone through on the way to becoming who I really am.
I am the unifying element in my life. I am the fulcrum. The point of balance. The maintainer. So much more, I am, than I ever thought I was.
It felt just marvelous to rest in that knowledge for a while.
Finding balance became my top priority.
Balance and Harmony
Afterwards, I found myself reflecting on Chrissie’s frustration, that she had been unable to reconcile the contradiction.
That is the problem, isn’t it.
But actually the problem is that we think it’s a problem!
That we seem to always feel that we have to somehow get rid of contradiction in life. To reconcile the opposites, negate the differences, make everything one and the same. That is how we think of harmony.
That is a huge mistake.
Some contradictions, I grant you, are made for reconciliation.
But not all.
And the skill is in knowing which ones are to be negated and which to be held in balance.
Contradiction is not an enemy. Not at all.
Differences are great. Creative.
The coming together of differences, the coming together of opposites, is what makes unity. This is true harmony — a beautiful mosaic of differences upheld and supported by the oneness of unity.
Contradiction is what we are, when it comes down to it. We live in a world of polarity, where opposites abound. Up, down. Right, left. In, out. Here, there.
Without polarity there would be no experience of consciousness.
Without consciousness there is no individual.
The key is to remain in the neutral point, the zero point of balance in the middle between the two, so that you don’t feel you are swung from one extreme to the other.
This is where I’m so happy to have learned Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation technique, for it’s a perfect way for me to expand my consciousness to balance anything I have going on in my life.
That way I really feel like I’m on top of the challenges or contradictions in my life, because sitting at the balance point, I can enjoy each extreme without being overwhelmed by it.
And it’s not just true for me and my own life.
It’s true for everyone.
It’s just that the extremes in my life have made it glaringly obvious.
You Too!
You, also, are the consciousness that balances the dynamism and the silence in your own life.
You are the unity, or co-existence, of two contradictory qualities of intelligence.
Get rid of the opposites and life sinks.
Treasure them both, because they are the very stuff of life.
I’ll never accuse anyone of being contradictory again.
I’ll congratulate them.
CONGRATULATIONS!! To you, to me, to the whole world!
(More thoughts on finding balance are coming – I’ll put them in the next blog)
By AMR.
1 (ref. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Maharishi Vedic University Introduction, page 59)
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