We offer think of polar opposites, that things can only have a single character. That there are positive or negatives, desirable or undesirable, right and wrong.
That someone is strong or else flexible, heavy or light, active or inactive, health or unhealthy, lucky or unlucky, but the reality is much different.
Often, contrasts are embodied within, or one quality, gives rise to another. As Lao Tzu states in the Tao Te Ching, “Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
We can see this in the nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system, we are built to alternate between two, contrasting, yet complimentary poles.
Like Lao Tzu’s quote, our own strength comes from our ability to soften at times, to let everything relax and be renewed, and in contrast, our strength and fortitude, then creates the circumstances, in which we can relax fully.
This can also be understood in our experience of life, some of the circumstances, or the situations may not be what we wish for our desire, but we can’t fully understand the way in which these shape things for us.
Often, retrospect allows us to see what has happened in a new light, something of great value perhaps coming from what seemed like difficulty at the time.
The idea of the dark night of the soul that the sage encounters is well known, this is an almost essential part of their rebirthing into a wondrous new experience of reality. A similar phenomena is the Shaman sickness, as the acolyte is forged into a new being, or the challenging physical sensations that accompany the arising of Kundalini.
Even though these are more extreme examples, it allows us to move beyond seeing what is happening in a one dimensional way.
This is a very valuable thing to understand this can lift you out of one fixed idea of yourself and what you can do and what is happening.
So returning back to Lao Tzu’s quote, perhaps in much of our life experience, it may be better to let the mind, ourselves be like water, and flow around and beyond what is encountered, regardless of its nature and qualities.
Perhaps out of what is occurring, or has happened, something wonderful, or magnificent, will arise.
