Monthly Archives: September 2015

PARADOX CONTAINS TRUTH

 

If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.

By not claiming greatness, the sage achieves greatness.

The gentle outlasts the strong.  The obscure outlasts the obvious.

One gains by losing, and loses by gaining.

 

paradox 8

True words often appear paradoxical

 

Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching

 

A paradox is a seeming contradiction, two opposites that can never be reconciled.   Another example of a paradox would be, “Life is death.” Life and death are certainly opposites in the estimation of the world.

 

Let us examine the paradox to see what truths it may yield. Life is death; from the moment you are born into this physical body, it is on a destination to its physical extinction. All of its life is but a journey unto death.

 

 

Turn the paradox around.  Death is life. What truths could it yield?  Death is life. At the death of the physical body, there is release to the life eternal, where you came from and where you have always existed. No matter who the physical body incarnated as, death is the gateway to everlasting life.

The juxtaposition of seeming opposites produces extreme contrast, yielding truths not evident before.

It is in giving we receive

These words of St Francis seem to be a paradox, because surely giving is the very opposite of receiving. By giving something, you lose it and someone else gains it.

 

paradox

Examine the seeming paradox to see in what sense it could be true. To give is to receive.  This would make sense if you were giving to yourself, because then you would be the only recipient of all the giving you did, which would encourage you to do more and more, as there could be no penalty but only increase in giving.

So in the sense that we are all one and connected, is giving indeed the same as receiving.  Every person I might possibly give to, is my Self.

 

paradox

 

How quaint the ways of paradox

At common sense she gently mocks

W.S. Gilbert, “The Pirates of Penzance”

paradox 6 gf

 

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IT IS IN LOVING

other people

 

It is in loving we are loved.

You but waste time in imagining other people can be separate from you. They cannot be.  All are from the same fabric; all are One.  If others seem separate, it is you making them seem so.

 

 

You use other people as agents of your own decisions. If you believe rich people have hard hearts, the rich people you notice will seem hardhearted.  You are not primed to notice examples of good heartedness; they would pass unnoticed or you will say they are the exception that proves the rule. If you think a particular group is lazy, clever, treacherous, or charming, you will find plenty of examples from the people around you. Whatever you are primed to see, you will see. Thus, the people around you become puppets in your show, acting out your beliefs.

 

 

Who do you interact with? Is it another being, pristine in glory, sent here from the same Source as yourself? If it were, nothing could move you to slight or injure a brother; it would be impossible.

We must conclude that in your interactions with other beings, you are interacting with your own beliefs.

 

May I be let out of this prison

 

I meet someone and all I see is what happened before; all I think of them is what I have already decided. All I see is the past, and so I am living with dead forms, in a world of my own making.  Oh God, may I be let out of this prison!  How can I avoid living in the past? How can I avoid making other people the puppets of my beliefs and remembrances?

 

Be relentlessly in the present. Give your full attention to the Other, listening, observing with love, attending, helping.

This becomes very easy to do when you remember it is your Self you serve.

It is in loving that we are loved

St Francis of Assissi

 other people