Sometimes you just feel like writing.....

For those of us with a literary flair, sometimes writing is the best way to think. So, quite often, when I need to make an important decision, or I just need clarification, I will sit down and write from the hip so to speak. Quite often, I will discover interesting things about myself or my beliefs about the world from doing so. Below is the result of one such episode.

Ah! Such a creature is man. Capable of the highest of heights and the lowest of lows. So strong and capable is he, yet fragile and forever dependent. Equipped with an infinite imagination. Given the tools to make imagination reality. Oh so simple yet also the most complex of Divine creation. This seeming example of perfect balance, placed in the perfect garden. Duality incarnate. A whole made from opposite pieces! Yet man also was given a will. Will to create! Will to change! Will to build! Will for the best. With will, however, comes choice. With choice, preference. With preference, imbalance. Balance is harmony and is eternal. Imbalance, disharmony and inevitable decay. Thus will has led man (by design it would seem) from that garden of perfection without self discipline. It is only the application of this discipline, this choice to give up will, that man can seek balance. When balance is reached, the duality is seen as it is.... an illusion. The whole cannot be achieved as a summation of its parts. The two would cancel to nothing. The parts were never parts at all! They were always the whole. Greater than the pieces one would choose to carve. There is great peace, calm, and completion in entirety. Yet how is one to truly know wholeness without first knowing limitation? How is up defined except in its relation to its opposite? Ones experience is entirely relative to previous experience. Both beauty and beast may be found in the most treasured of man's creative expression. The choice of will to see is yours. Use it wisely. Carve your lines of distinction well. Make them your own. Wield the awesome tool of expression that has been bestowed upon you. Yet know always this: the final result is always balance. No matter how you choose to define the pieces, will always repays its debt. Thus we find that seeking anything but middle ground is ultimately futile. It is pointless to yearn for extreme. Extreme is a place of power, not a place of balance. Extreme cannot be known without extreme opposite. It is in the understanding of both that the truth is found and balanced finally regained. If you tighten the guitar string too tightly, it will break. If you string it too loosely, it will not play. Ah, the perfection of balance with the experience and knowledge of what is unbalance! The rose in the rose garden is taken for granted. When experienced in the midst of rose splendor the single rose gives to the beauty of the whole and adds its beauty freely to that of the whole. Yet were the rose to be seen without the whole, the true beauty of the individual may be appreciated. Thus it seems that the rose is both. Yet is it not both in equality? Does it not provide fully its gifts to the whole while also prizing its unique individuality? It is no more accurate to appreciate the rose as an individual only than it is to appraise it as merely a necessary piece of the whole. The truth lies in the realization that both are equally true and both are necessary for the entire existence of the rose. The bush is not the totality of a rose, nor can a bush be without the contribution of the individual. The two are inseparable. Even when the individual ceases to bloom, the place is left for its return when next it chooses to express its individuality. Thus the cycle continues. From the complete beginning all the way to the end. Which, happens to be the same as the beginning. The alpha is the omega. The omega is the alpha. Together, they form all that is. And all that is is one.