Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Morning Meditation - The dichotomizing mind misses the recognition of the ground of being, the life force


Love and hate are the opposite sides of the same coin as are light and dark, bitter and sweet, right and left, up and down, us and them. The mind loves to dichotomize, to compare, to contrast. The mind thinks it is being smart to analyze, to deconstruct, to unpack the concepts and beliefs that frame and structure the mind's existence. But are these things "real" or just illusions that the mind constructs in an attempt to make sense out of its experience, because beyond these dichotomies there is a whole world where these components are parts of the whole. What would it be like to go there where there is no things, but only the oneness, the wholeness before the dichotomization?

Specialization, differentiation of labor, bifurcation, reductionistic thinking has its place. It has given human beings great power to manipulate phenomena in the physical world, but in the spiritual world it seems petty, trivial, stingy, obsessive, less than satisfying, because we miss the big picture, the understanding of life, the ability to appreciate the system which is greater than the sum of its parts. Can we see the forest when we are closely examining the tree? Can we see the person when we are operating on his gall bladder? Can we appreciate the community when we focus on the bad behavior of one individual?

The answer is probably that we have to look and appreciate both the system and the parts, the analytical reductionist view as well as the integrated whole. If love and hate are part of the same process why favor one over the other? We need both for a complete system. Sometimes we hate the most the ones we love the most, and sometimes we hurt the most, the ones we love the most. The hate and the hurt are not the problem, but the way we handle the hate and the hurt when it occurs. The mature souls knows that hate and hurt and love and kindnes are part of the whole. Recognize them for what they are with understanding and compassion. The ying and yang make up the great Tao.

And so Unitarian Universalists welcome the theists and the atheists. We know that there could not be one without the other. Unitarian Universalists are not threatened by either as they are aware of the third way, the place between or above or beyond the dichotomy. The life force supports both theists and atheists and that is where Unitarian Universalism is coming from and going to.

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