MESSAGE FROM THE FULCRUM

Silence.

Knock!

Awakening

“Was that a sound?”

Silence.

Knock!

The dream is over

“Is something happening?”

Silence.

Knock!

The dualities resume

“There it is again!”

The duality of silence and sound are the clothing with which the mind adorns experience as its best gesture to suggest one’s ineffable insights into an existence too everywhere to be pointed at. At the balance point of each and of all, that which can be dressed in expression fitting the fashion must neglect the rest of the ongoing reality to tell a snap shot story of the enormous variety of dualities contained in any instant, inspirational glimpse of the eternal present. Seeing the dynamic of dualities as a dance or a war seems to depend on the centeredness of one’s fulcrum.

If the essence of the living universe were not the fulcrum about which constant change occurs, we could not be aware of our existence in it. Duality, simultaneously recognized difference, is the trigger to our awareness and the limit to the range of our ability to describe the truth at the fulcrum upon which the instant of the present balances. Like a tight rope walker stabilizes herself by spreading her apparent physical presence over imaginary ground on either side of the rope with a balance bar, our memories and expectations stabilize our awareness of the reality of the only time or place we or anything else ever has or will walk, now.

My version of the yin yang symbol for duality above demonstrates how the variations produced by the living universe mix into the definitive duality of two complimentary, opposite colors which, rather than obscuring the polarity, show the dynamic mix of two elements whose existence depends on each other in the often ignored threshold between them, now.

Though I used a tight rope, now and the line dividing the yin yang as examples of this universal threshold just now, a deeper examination is needed of the ramifications of ignoring such a critical transition by allowing the distraction of the more stark contrast of stereotypical extremes by indolent minds insistent on viewing the world in black and white righteousness. For the civilized mind such examination is possible only by withdrawal from all cultural influence, found most purposefully in deep meditation or prayer and inadvertently in epiphanies called anything from religious to psychedelic experiences of the true connectedness of the living universe. During any such personal insight into the eternity of the present, one’s purpose for being there dissolves in significance when one realizes that the resolution of all dualities is this source from which we attempt to single out, follow and favor any number of its myriad variations over the rest.

Lao Tsu speaks of the threshold not as something to be limited by or crossed, but as a path to be wandered as the way of everything, the path of unattached balance. Upon such a path, habitual temptations and aversions acquired and indulged, in excess of the necessities of a healthy life, may be seen as so much baggage and examined for their push/pull connectedness across the threshold of pernicious preferences frustrating the already well off, like trying to use a long balance pole while walking along the flat ground in a row of a cornfield.

This turned out to be a bigger chunk of the constant ramble unwinding from this view from the fulcrum than I intended. Maybe.