Book Preview: Appendix A
The current title of my book is I Bow to What Is: 1008 Meditations on the Terrible, Unsolvable Contradiction … OR Letting the One Who Has Control Have Control. A question that would naturally arise is, “What is the Terrible, Unsolvable Contradiction?” My first answer is, “You are living it!” or “It is Life… and you!” I imagine that those answers, in some way, are meaningful or provocative enough to a person that they might suffice for the moment. If you contemplate them for a little while, you will probably come to some understanding on your own, which truly would be my preference since that answer will mean something to you. “The Terrible, Unsolvable Contradiction” is one of the 1008 Meditations, so if you “meditate” on it and come to some understanding or realization, ultimately that is my point in sharing any of this. It’s what happens in you that is important, not what is “right” OR what it means to ME!
If you are reading this as a blog, I’ll suggest stop reading now. Ponder the idea for a day or more, and then come back and read more below.
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Why does Life include Death? It just does. In fact, life is Death. If Life exists, Death, its opposite, exists as well. Death came with us when we were born. And life is a constant process of “dying;” nothing ever stays the same even for a moment. So Life and Death are a package—in some ways, a terrible, unsolvable contradiction.
This one example points to what this Name is all about. Life is full of dichotomies that at least sometimes show up as contradictions: We experience happiness and sadness in life, not just one. Things go up and down, though we weirdly act as if the economy or the trajectory of our life should only go up! Breathing includes in and out. We are attracted and repulsed by things, often by the same single thing.
There are two of what might be called “Ultimate Contradictions” that drive everything in our life. The most fundamental one is “Am I connected to Everything, or am I separate?” We know that ultimately, everything is connected! Nothing is ever or can ever be separate. It’s a fundamental impossibility. However, we experience ourselves—and, thus we act! Always!—as if we are separate and only loosely connected, while intrinsically we remain forever connected and Whole. The intimate connection of Everything is the real Truth, though our lived experience is exclusively of separateness. The ancients in India termed this māyā, usually translated as illusion, but that’s not really correct. It’s things seeming to be one way but really being another.
The other “Ultimate Dichotomy,” which stems from the first one, is summed up in a saying: “Everything is perfect… and there’s always room for improvement.” Most of the world is stuck on the second part and, therefore, lives driven, unsatisfied lives, never truly happy but always supposedly seeking happiness. A kind of satisfaction can come from the second part of that statement, but only when the first part is known, felt, and experienced as true as well. Peace lives in the first half of the statement.
Everything—Now!—IS perfect. There is nothing that needs to change. The Universe did a great job and made this beautiful, perfect moment exactly as it should be and in the only way it could be. And, from an “individual,” “separate being” perspective, there is always room for improvement. This constant thorn in our side—the drive toward improvement—is one of the gifts and curses of being human, another unsolvable contradiction. It’s a curse because it prevents us from being happy with What Is, and it’s a blessing because through that feeling, the Universe is calling us to be co-creators in Its Creation. We don’t have to be passive followers of the Universal Flow as all other “lower” forms are. We get a choice.
If we allow ourselves to unconsciously be driven by that thorn, without fully understanding and experiencing it, we remain as a “lower” form of the Universe. When we acknowledge it while understanding and truly feeling the first part of the phrase as well, we gain a Power that can only be called Divine. It’s the Power to feel the Impulse of the Universe to shift, change, “grow,” “evolve” Its Self. By default, we take the feeling toward change as personal to our little self, and thus suffer endlessly, imagining that we need to get and take more to satisfy the urge. But another terrible, unsolvable contradiction is that happiness in a human life comes from giving, not getting.
The above examples give the overall idea presented by the phrase “terrible, unsolvable contradiction,” and it’s important to look more closely at the individual words. The word terrible means, of course, extremely or distressingly bad, and extremely unpleasant or disagreeable. From the human perspective, these definitions describe how we often experience the contradictions in our life, especially around Death! Terrible also means causing or likely to cause terror, sinister, and it’s the same thing; we humans are often terrified by the contradictions so much that we frequently see the negative sides of being human only in others but not in ourselves, even though they exist in everyone.
But terrible also means difficult, formidable in nature, awesome, as well as extreme and great. We often experience the contradictions of Life as difficult. They are often extreme and great, and they are formidable enough that we cannot overcome them. They exist whether we like them or not, and they will, of course, continue long past our short life. If we can stand back enough from them and appreciate them for what they are, we can find a sense of awe at their greatness and come to a greater appreciation of the Mystery of Life that we seem intent on trying to solve, though of course it is unsolvable.
Given those definitions, now, if you didn’t already, begin the fun of pondering for yourself my initial answers which are less explanatory but are ultimately more correct: The Terrible, Unsolvable Contradiction? “You are living it!” or “It is Life… and you!”
And if you can and want to have your mind expanded and smoothed out a bit more, come to one of my recitations of the whole 1008. You can find info on that from the Home page of the website.