Dichotomy, Unity, and Balance in Nature and Life

//With Respect to the Overall Nature of Existence//
All that exists is inherently a dipolar spectrum that is both "One" and simultaneously "All."  It is "One" because everything that exists, exists relative to something else, and everything is interconnected with everything else, thus constituting an undivided whole.  Because this undivided spectrum provides for infinite degree between its two opposite "poles" (has no division of 'intervals' along it), it is what is necessary for "All" things to have relative distinction from all other things.  For anything to exist it must exist within a construct that provides the "contrast" necessary for any thing's attributes to be mathematically or physically definable; the dipolar spectrum in our universe provides this contrast, which in turn provides the capacity of things to have different attributes and relative relations to everything else.

So prolific and apparent is the dipolar nature of existence, a large group of people formulated the belief system called "Taoism" in which 'all is One whole' yet has internal distinctions ("Yin & Yang") simultaneously.  I will provide you with several examples of Yin & Yang features of nature that you are already naturally familiar with: light vs. darkness, order vs. chaos, hot vs. cold, larger scales of space vs. smaller scales of space, past vs. future, mass vs. no mass, higher energy state vs. lower energy state, stronger gravity/acceleration vs. weaker gravity/acceleration, moving closer together vs. moving away from each other, "good" vs. "evil", life (animate) vs. death (inanimate), et cetera.  Everything that exists has defining attributes, each of which lie somewhere along and within this dipolar spectrum geometry, whether the attributes being observed are being observed quantitatively (objectively) or qualitatively (subjectively; e.g. based on values and morals, or other form of personal perspective).  It is important to reiterate that even though different things or areas within different space-time locations have these relative distinctions from everything else, due to the fact nothing exists separate from all else and that all things are completely interconnected through space-time, quantum probability waveform, and the continuous field of matter-energy content (a.k.a. a 'state' information waveform), there are no distinct thresholds that separate one thing or area of space-time from another; thus, "All is One" by definition.  A perfect example of this whole concept is a "fractal," which is infinite in its scalability, has internal distinctions, yet is "One" mathematically-defined construct.


//With Respect to Human Life//
Forgive me if this seems obvious to some of you, but many people seem to seldom actively consider balance in their life, and, largely for this reason, happiness is elusive for them.  I would argue that being happy is as dependent on having balance in your life as it is on having the basic necessities of life.  Consider a few examples of the dichotomies that exist for humans in their life: time alone vs. time with friends and family, free time vs. productive time, strict parenting vs. lenient parenting, trusting others completely vs. protecting yourself by being paranoid/suspicious, taking care of others at the expense of self vs. devoting yourself to taking care of yourself so much it is at the expense of others, eating too many sweets vs. not enjoying any, explaining the world through logic and mathematics vs. grasping for meaning or purpose through subjective experiences that are beyond the power of reasoning to explain, worrying too much about appearance vs. not taking care of yourself, living up to others' expectations vs. acting solely based on what you believe is right and appropriate, being naive vs. being judgmental, living a very sheltered life vs. constantly exposing yourself to situations with high risk to the point you must struggle to stay alive, always accepting the beliefs of others vs. only valuing your own, et cetera.

I have come to instinctively recognize such dichotomies almost every day of my life for many, many years.  Indeed, the duality of the human experience is so frequently apparent to me that I perceive it as being as much a 'law of nature' as gravity.  A person who finds or puts themselves too far one way or the other with respect to any aspect of life defined by a dichotomous nature ultimately suffers.  Achieving balance is about achieving relative harmony in your life.  In the past, I personally did not have balance in my life in many areas, and I suffered continuously because of it—happiness was elusive for me because of that lack of balance and, thus, harmony.

One would think that awareness of this duality in every aspect of our lives would be enough to guide our decisions towards establishing harmony for ourselves.  Yet, it is one of humanity's greatest flaws that we constantly struggle with our own selves in trying to follow the "better" path (if we are fortunate enough to recognize it) because of our instinctive impulses, other engrained behaviors, and having to balance our efforts in achieving balance in our own life with helping achieve balance within our society, which often naturally conflict with one another.  We often find some excuse, some weak justification, for not taking the path we know deep down, almost subconsciously, to be more beneficial to us and/or society.  Why?  Is it possible that part of the reason is that we define our existence to some extent through our suffering—that we need suffering as much as happiness to feel alive?  Or do we simply not always have the courage to move beyond the status quo?  Unfortunately, although I have a great deal of objective knowledge and subjective experience on this topic, I have not come to a complete conclusion about such matters.  Maybe the "answer" is inherently different for everyone.  What's yours?

Insights from "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

[Book Section 1 of 2: "Experiences in a Concentration Camp"]

-Book is an answer to: "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?
-Concerned not with the main figures, but of the xp. of the unknown and unrecorded victims.
-Capos: prisoner leaders; fed decently; often more brutal to reg. prisoners than the SS; demoted if "ineffective".
-Stripped of identity; known by number; prisoner numbers, not qualities mattered.
-Moral/ethical debate nonexistent, only the instinct to survive; only the most cutthroat saved themselves at the expense of others.
-"These former prisoners often say, 'We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.'"
-Three phases: initial period of admission (into camp), distinguished by shock; the period when well entrenched in camp routine; the period following release/liberation.
-"Delusion of reprieve": condemned man has the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.
-Consequential decisions (even life-and-death) treated with no regard or seriousness by the decision-makers.
-Stripped of any connection to former life; only had 'naked' existence.
-A grim humor developed (only thing that could now be taken was their life); affords an aloofness and ability to rise above any situation.
-A curiosity over the fate to be befallen; a objective detachment as a means of protection.
-The thought of suicide was widely entertained due in part to the hopelessness of the situation.
-The fear of death subsides after the first few days.
-"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."
-Entering the second phase, a "phase of relative apathy in which he achieved a kind of emotional death," a self-defense mechanism characterized by blunted feelings, unmoved by the suffering around him.
-"It is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all," that "hurts the most."
-Insult is more rousing of indignation than the cruelty or pain itself.
-"Regression" occurred in camp inmates - a retreat to a more primitive form of mental life, characterized by very simple wishes and desires.
-How helpful is it to dwell on imaginings of good food when you've adapted to poor food (applies to other things as well), "for the sake of knowing that the sub-human existence which had made us unable to think of anything other than food, would at last cease"; more harmful than helpful?
-"...my body, is really a corpse already"; great mass of human flesh behind barbed wire, crowded into a few huts, which rots daily because it has become lifeless.
-When in an austere environment, seemingly small decisions about how to deal with circumstances end up having a profound impact on a person's mental state and willpower.
-"The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. ...The salvation of man is through love and in love."
-"I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss.... In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
-"Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance."
-The prisoner finds refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence by escaping into the past, finding solace in nostalgic memories.
-An appreciation of the beauty of art and nature develops far more than ever before.
-Meaning is found in the smallest of significances.
-"...suffering completely fills (disperses through) the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little."
-In such difficult situations "a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys"; "grateful for the smallest of mercies".
-Comparisons of wellbeing and luck were strictly relative to the experience of the person making the comparisons.
-"Freedom from suffering" was the primary source of any relative 'happiness'.
-"Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated... under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value."
-Resigned to fate, combined with a great apathy.
-Guilt at the idea of escaping the situation when all the others would not be able to.
-A continuous fluctuation between hope and despair in the last hours and days of captivity.
-"We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be 'somebody.' Now we were treated like complete nonentities. ...Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded."
-"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-"...there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision... which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate."
-"...in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally... any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity.... ...the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful."
-"...there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. ...not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."
-"It was impossible to foresee whether or when, if at all, this form of existence would end. ...A man who could not see the end of his 'provisional existence' was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future...."
-"This feeling of lifelessness was intensified by other causes: in time, it was the limitlessness of the term of imprisonment which was most acutely felt; in space, the narrow limits of the prison. Anything outside the barbed wire became remote - out of reach and, in a way, unreal."
-"Regarding our 'provisional existence' as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless."
-"One could make a victory of those experiences turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate...."
-"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it."
-"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."
-Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."
-"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life.... Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct."
-"He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden."
-"When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life."
-"Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being."
-"'Freedom' - we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. ...Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours. ...Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true."
-"...no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them."
-"A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely."
-"We were not hoping for happiness.... And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness."
-"...for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare."

A Word (or Two...) On the Truths Concerning Existence

[A Forward: from www.truthcontest.com :
"We as conscious beings now have the opportunity to become aware of the truth of Life by way of reason, attention, and honest intention."]


Over the last several years, through exhaustive studies across a multitude of disciplines, I personally discovered real Truth of what God is and is not, about my world, and my self... purpose, meaning, the 'how it works' answers, and 'what it all means', by identifying and recognizing relevant macroscopic and microscopic patterns (e.g. observing fractal "self-similarity" being present in our universe {reference: Chaos Theory}) across a multitude of vary different types of systems and making a final leap--a leap I ultimately had to make with the help of a little bit of "intuition". Ironically, I also learned that all my intellectual toil was not necessary; all along I could have discovered truth through simple subjective, unanalyzed observation and simply 'knowing' (e.g. the Buddhist story about a man smiling, having attained "enlightenment", after a long period of meditating on a flower he sat before):

One Love Unites All; All is God and God is in all--not separate at all (reference: "pantheism"). Your Conscious Mental-State in the "Now"/"Present" Moment is an infinitesimal slice of the omniscient consciousness of God. Every Conscious Being is Both the Cause and Simultaneously the Result of the Universe Being Experienced/'Observed'. All Possible Configurations of the Universe Exist, Always & Forever, within an ∞ Manifold (Even though We are not Able to See it All from Our Limited Perspective as Human Beings). All Information is Saved--Never Lost--because It Always Existed and Always Will. "Past" and "Future" Always Exist--Just as Much as the Present Moment Does (it is Simply the Case that the Nature of Our Limited Consciousness Does Not Allow Us to Experience Anything but the "Present" at any Moment). Nothing Exists as "Physical" objects; Everything is a "Projection" of Universal Consciousness (reference: "panpsychism"), an ∞ Emanation of Light/Energy/Heat/Warmth/Love/Life into the ∞ Manifold of All Existence. Each of Us can Only See an Infinitesimally thin, singularly Unique, Slice of Existence. The State of the "Universe" is Unique to You at Any Given Moment. You Have "Free Will" Only in the Sense that, Subjectively, You Sense You Are "Navigating" which Particular Universe Will Unfold Before You 'this Time' through Your Subjective Perception that you are Choosing the Path that Unfolds Before You (Out of an ∞ Many Other Paths the Other "You's" Are Traveling); Objectively, from a Universal Frame of Reference, You Do Not Have Free Will because an ∞ number of Different Universes are Unfolding for Each of an ∞ Number of "You's." I Realize that I am in ∞ Synchrony/Interconnection with the Rest of Existence, as All Things Are with Each Other. The Purpose of Life (Universally Speaking) is to Be and Experience All Possibilities. Achieving the Ultimate Zenith of the Unification and Comprehension of All that is 'Knowable' (through Science, Philosophy/Logic, and "Spiritual" Experience)--or the Simplest, Thought-less Subjective Experience of the World--Either can Yield Equal Wisdom.

All conscious beings in the ∞ omniverse are experiencing one 'slice' at one particular scale of perspective along an infinitely-scalable dipolar spectrum ("Yin & Yang"); a spectrum that is ∞ in the "resolution" of its ∞ degrees and has ∞ scale, and yet is All/One Construct. Time is an illusion of an inherently ∞-limited perception, which is dependent upon the conscious neuro-sensory system that is experiencing its "world". The perception of the passage of time is different for each consciousness and is defined by the being's neurological resonance frequency at that moment (i.e. its neuro-sensory awareness "refresh rate"/"frames per second", to borrow from the modern lexicon).

Everything must exist relative to something else, by definition and the inherent necessity for geometric stability and self-consistency. The only thing that is 'real' or 'physical' in the world are the things your particular consciousness, at any given moment, is causally linked to through observation (reference: quantum mechanical effects of an observer on the things being observed). You are made of the same ∞, universal consciousness (reference: "panpsychism") that everything is bound together by. Your mental state right now, which is one configuration of conscious experience out of ∞ many that exist--your awareness and perception of the universe--is causally defined by everything you are observing at this very moment (including your memories of one particular past through your memory engrams, which are quantumly-entangled with that particular past--a lower resolution echo of the original).

All My Love & Peace My Brothers & Sisters; remember that what you do to others, you are literally doing unto your 'universal' "self".