The renowned psychologist Carl Jung once shared a profound insight: "Happiness wouldn't mean much if we didn't have sadness to compare it with." Such a simple yet deep statement touches upon a core truth about how we experience life: so much of what we understand is shaped by contrasts. Without opposites, many of our concepts would lose their meaning. For example, we know what light is because we've experienced darkness. Similarly, we realize happiness because only then have we known pain. But what would this duality of happiness versus pain imply toward our view about life, and emotions, as well as being?
In the following blog we will examine some of the interesting ways opposites shape our reality, take up the idea of change versus permanent and how that leads us deeper into an inexhaustible Source of Life standing beyond all that is dual or opposite.
The Interplay of Opposites: Defining Our Reality
To understand our existence more deeply, we must first acknowledge the essential role opposites play in shaping how we perceive the world. Consider the simple idea of light and dark. We know what light is because we've seen darkness. Without darkness, light would lose its significance. The same logic applies to many other things: we understand what it means to be wet because we know what it feels like to be dry. These opposites—whether it's big and small, heavy and light, fast and slow—are vital to how we measure and interpret the world around us.
This duality is not limited to just physical attributes alone. It applies to our feelings as well. Consider happiness and sadness: can we really be said to appreciate the depth of happiness if we haven't touched the bottom of sadness? Our appreciation of one feeling so often depends upon our understanding of the other. It is the interplay of opposites which shapes our emotional landscape and gives us direction through life's ups and downs.
The Need for Contrast: Change and Permanence
As we look deeper into the nature of opposites, we realize that they do not only define our emotions but also our comprehension of time, growth, and transformation. Change and permanence are two very basic aspects of life that work off each other. Without something permanent to measure it against, we wouldn't even know we were changing. In a world where everything changes at the same rate, we could not perceive change at all. Change needs something stable to make it visible and meaningful.
To explain further, think of creating a pot. When we form the pot, we define the concepts of inside and outside. Without the pot, we wouldn't have these distinctions—there would be no "inside" to hold the water or "outside" to separate it from the surrounding air. In much the same way, our lives and experiences are shaped by opposites: what changes and what remains constant, what's inside and what's outside. This contrast is crucial for our understanding of existence, growth, and identity.
The Spiritual Truth of Dualities: Change and the Unchanging
At a deeper, more spiritual level, this interplay of change and permanence gives us a window into the nature of reality itself. Everything that changes-the material, the perishable-exists side by side with everything that does not change-the spiritual, the imperishable. Both realms spring from the same universal energy, a force beyond time and space, birth and death, light and darkness.
In many spiritual systems, this force is called Supreme Being, the abode of life, the only source of all reality. The Supreme Being is unmoving, immutable, and exists beyond all differences of the material cosmos. It remains the essence both of that which changes and the unchanging it self. No bounds can surround it. Instead, it underlies creation in its very principle, giving form to joy as well as pain, life or death, beginning or decay.
This universal energy, the Supreme Being, is the source of all contrasts. In knowing it, we cross the dualities that describe much of our experience. Realizing that both the world's fragility and its permanence comes from this one source, we're encouraged to look into more than the change surface and find the eternalness of existence.
Embracing Both Sides of the Coin: The Wisdom of the Gita
It will be depicted profoundly in the Bhagavad Gita, a spiritual text that illuminates the principles of how to lead a life in harmony with the intrinsic constitution of the universe. The truth and wisdom taught is that change and permanence exist within a greater, divine order. Life is only impermanent—every joy, sorrow, trial, and victory; do not fear or resist it. Instead, it forms part of the grand divine play of creation.
The Bhagavad Gita tells us to transcend the ephemeral and connect with the imperishable spirit, the eternal essence of who we are. With the acceptance of the changing and the unchanging in life, one can live peacefully and find a balance amidst life's inevitable ups and downs. This is only possible if we realize that though external conditions change, our true nature—the essence of who we are—remains constant.
The Supreme Source: Beyond Dualities
In removing the transient factors of life-the ever-changing emotions, the fluxing circumstances, and the coming and going of joy and sorrow, what remains is the universal energy: the Supreme Being, the source of all creation. It transcends both happiness and sadness, light and darkness, life and death. It is the absolute base of all, and once one realizes this, one goes beyond the duality of life in general.
This concept challenges us to understand that all things, whether pleasurable or painful, are just temporary expressions of a deeper reality that does not change. Supreme Being transcends these opposites and gives us a vision of life that is not defined by the contrasts that we normally center our focus on but by the universal essence underlying all existence.
Conclusion: Understanding Life Through Opposites
The contrast between happiness and sadness, light and dark, change and permanence is not merely a philosophical abstraction but a vital component of how we experience and understand life. Carl Jung was one of the wiser philosophers when he pointed out that we so often define happiness in terms of its opposite—sadness. But if this contrast is placed within the lens of spiritual wisdom, it reveals an even deeper truth: behind every changing experience lies the unchanging source of all existence.
It is this truth that if we accept it, we may find peace and satisfaction in a life that can change with each moment. We may learn to live with equanimity as we realize that happiness and sadness are both a part of the grand dance of life. And in this way, we connect to the Supreme Being, the ultimate essence of all things, which transcends all dualities and guides us toward a deeper understanding of our place in the universe.
It is not the transitory experiences of joy or sorrow that define us, but the awareness of the universal energy that unites all opposites. Through meditation on this wisdom, we can live more consciously, embracing the fullness of life without being bound by its temporary fluctuations.
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