Sometimes at dusk, when the high desert sky is scrubbed clean, heaven and earth become one. The process is both stark and enchanting. As the sun sets in the west, rolling hills and flat-topped mountains lose their identity, morphing from mounds of scrub, tree, and rock into graphical plot lines of time, the areas under their curves no more than inky summations of what was, is, and may still be. Above these shadows, night, starless, polished, and glossy, pulses with infinite possibility. Gradually, if observation cedes to emptiness, the two perspectives merge. The earth extends a slumbering embrace. The sky envelops the terrestrial outreach. Night ascends. Yong wraps itself inside yin. Opposites end.
We live in a world of contrast, of comparison. Differences help us distinguish. Vivid variations enable values to be learned, exercised, and shaped. We see things because of shape, light, and color. We touch and taste the smooth and sharp edges of change. We hear modulation. We smell heterogeneity.
We breathe. First in. Then out. Or out. Followed by in. We assume that out follows in but there is no space for in if out does not happen as well.
Try something. Take a breath in. Not a deep one. Just a small or medium inhalation. What should come next? Should you complete the process of inhaling? Or should you exhale before the next expansion? Does it matter? When you consciously think about that place, the pivot between in and out, does that awareness interfere with the spontaneity of the experience?
There is good in all of us. There is also good’s antithesis. It helps me to recognize each, to know their oppositional existence, to avoid the easy excuses when my thoughts, actions, or spirit are not aligned with the positive, when what I do is not reflective of who I aim or am meant to be. It also challenges me. And unnerves and frightens me. My shortcomings motivate me to be better but they can also encourage me to judge the faults and failings of others. I feel better when I can clearly detect right and wrong. I can tolerate the gravitational pull of physical mass when I am able to feel lifted by the releasing energy of aspirational spirit. This can make me look out, to gaze “there”. Which can cause me to look away from in, from being with “here”. Day can turn proud and boastful. Night can assume a belittled and disparaged place in my life.
But day cannot exist without night. And night cannot play its role without day. My eyes cannot always be open. My sleep cannot refresh unless I reawaken to a new cycle of light.
Breathless release at the border of contrast can help transcend the paradox of being. It can feel freeing to vibrate, even temporarily, at the boundary of understanding and renewal.