Opposites

To understand Love, we must understand the opposites.

Love is often an opposite of either fear, hatred and evil. But Love has no opposite. Fear is the opposite of courage, hatred is the opposite of forgiveness, and evil is often the opposite of good. Courage and forgiveness are both transcendent quality of Love, where they represent Love as a direct experience. Good and Evil are, on the other hand, not really opposites at all. This problem can be understood through the two kinds of opposites. In the truth of Love, we will see that there is a thin line that separates the the nature of opposites: either opposites are complementing or opposing.

Complementing opposites are basically natural: light and dark, hot and cold, high and low, hard and soft. They are all part and whole of this reality. Nothing separates them except in our minds. The experience of complementing opposite is what most spiritual teachings call Oneness.

Oneness is the ultimate sense of unity. It is deep beneath the physical reality we see. It is the essence of connectedness, no matter how different people, things and events may be. In Oneness, opposites do not oppose; rather, they are always one and the same. They are in the same spectrum. Darkness is simply absence of Light, and Coldness is simply absence of Heat. In absence, we define presence and vice versa. At first this would be mind-boggling, but we will further understand this when we understand the next kind of opposite.

Opposing opposites are distorted view of the opposite, an experience we often call Separation.The ultimate separation ingrained in our beliefs is the opposition of good and evil. From here, all natural opposites seem to be always at war with each other: Black versus white, superior versus inferior, strong versus weak, rich versus poor, man versus woman. We have always believed this illusion that it has perpetuated a culture of survival of the fittest. We destroy each other because we both believe the other is an enemy rather than a friend, or we see ourselves more righteous than others. We have become self-centered creatures that our only survival is our concern. This primal instinct has wiped the dinosaur species millions of years ago.

Seeing beyond the opposites leads us to an awakened soul. We would not see that the mind and body are separate, more so of seeing God and humanity. There is no more rift between two opposites, only understanding them as two expressions of the same essence. Deepak Chopra, the poet-prophet of mind/body medicine, says that "good is the union of all opposites; evil does not exist." As we operate on this consciousness, we would never identify evil as the great opponent of good. Good is the all-encompassing circle that includes all opposites that naturally mirror each other. No more enemies. No more evil.

But why do we still think in opposites. One reason: because the nature of Love is completely whole that it cannot be experienced without a conscious mind that can experience it.

Think of a flower. A flower is perfect in itself. It behaves on its own reality without the need of other flowers' appreciation. But a flower is not conscious of its own existence. We, human beings who are conscious of our own, cannot escape the reality of being conscious of others' existence, be it a fellow human, living beings such as plants, animals, and inanimate things such as nature, heavenly bodies. With this consciousness, we see the flower, appreciate and give name to it. This is the experience of seeing the flower, as if the flower experiences itself through us.


Because of this consciousness, we sense our reality as if separate from us, an illusion most thinkers call duality. I am here, you are there. Kahlil Gibran, the poet-mystic author of The Prophet once said: "Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?" By being down here, we can see the mountain up there. If we are up in the mountain, we cannot see the mountain at all.

This is why opposites exists, not to separate us from everything that exists, but to be conscious of all of them. Love is infinite in many ways, expresses in different forms, and how Love does it is a mystery to all of us. And these seemingly separate expressions of Love, be it in words, deeds, objects, persons, creatures, arts, etc., are all but same manifestation of this Oneness.

This is why opposites exist not to separate us from everything that exists, but to be conscious of all of them.

A man is naturally a man, and his experience is different from that of a woman. They are different forms of the same species: homo sapiens aka human beings. Can we really say that their nature is opposing? How can another human being be born without a man-woman sexual union? It is because of their difference--opposite--that they can complement each other, and their unity bears another creation, or material unfolding of Love that remains intangible and invisible.

It is in this sense of Separation that we can appreciate this sense of Oneness. And the irony is that It is because of this Separation that our consciousness seem to contradict itself. This is known to many as paradox. Christ himself has taught paradoxical teachings, of which loving your enemies is the most well-known. In the realm of separation, truth will naturally contradict in the form of paradox because each opposite can embody the truth of another. Paradoxes are so universal and natural that it traverses all systems of thought. Our notion of opposing opposites tells us to take sides, yet the realization of complementing opposites tells us that we cannot--choosing one means choosing the other. As one meditation teacher puts it, you cannot choose the right wing of a bird more important than the left one. Both of them are important.

Now, we can refresh our ways of seeing opposites. In a paradoxical manner, I am you, and you are me. We both have this same human experience and both of us seek to embody what Love is. So long as we seek for Oneness, through intentions of cooperation, collaboration and participation, rather than competition, domination and manipulation, we are materializing the possibility of Love to exist in our lives, not just a concept, but a true and tangible existence.

The Goddess Within

For most of us, to see God as a woman is quite unimaginable, for we have long accepted that God is only a man, a father, who oversees us with power and control. Our history has galvanized the image of God as a man, whose power is beyond measure, and whose authority knows no boundaries. This is the God we have believed who fathered every one of us, and provided the life that we possess. But, today, the face of God is changing. In this new era of awakening, humanity is restoring the balance of how we see God. We are now embracing that God is not just a father, but a mother who gave birth to us all.

We are now invited to see God in a different way. There is no need to replace God as man with God as a woman. To see the powerful qualities of God in union with the nurturing qualities of the Goddess, we can now understand how significant this insight is in our lives. While we can find the kingdom of God within, together with all its greatness and strength, we can also take refuge with the sanctuary of the Goddess.

The Goddess within is not a substitute to the image of God. To recognize the Goddess is to reconcile with God's great Loving capacity. To find the Goddess within is to see that God can cherish us like a mother, or more so, a mother himself. The Goddess is the face of God in the time of conception and growth of Life. This Goddess is our inner humanity, our wonder and miracle, our potential to create. Regardless of gender, this is more to rediscover the psyche, what Carl Jung calls the anima. To honor the anima, our feminine psyche, which is just another way of calling the Goddess, is to do the same with God, our masculine psyche, our animus. To say that there is a Goddess within cannot dishonor God, for God is but the completion of being a man and a woman, not just in terms of sexuality, but in the light of Truth of the Soul. God is the union of all opposites that are always in harmony with each other. God and the Goddess are but two distinct being of Oneness. They are both within us. They cannot be separated. Christ said, "The two become one." In this union of the God and the Goddess, the being of Love is born.

We are romancing not just the idea of this union, but its potential to enrich our lives. God is no more a mere concept of a separate, superior being. God is always one with us, and He is within us. He transforms in many ways, and becomes the ultimate transformation of the Soul, manifesting in our Loving actions and thoughts. He is the God that becomes the Goddess through colorful possibilities. He can conceive our Soul, give birth to our goodness, and can nurse our hungry hearts. And He cannot anymore be labeled as He, for the pronouns that separates God and the Goddess no longer labels whoever is man or woman. Love becomes their main gender, and they are in One within our Soul. Our God calculates, organizes and focuses on the physical aspects of how Love is express. Our Goddess endows, sustains, emancipates the soulful, subtle energies of how Love purely exists. Whenever we share Love to others, God provides us tangible ways to do it, such as a physical gesture, or a material blessing. And Goddess imparts Her sheer, pristine divine power of caring and compassion. This very dynamic is happening within us, and we become both the God and the Goddess in our own right. For their awakening reveals the balance of Love within us, and the wholeness of Love invokes our Soul to be whole again.

The Nature of Circle

In the Circle, all of the gifts of human being are yours. --Laura Day, The Circle

Our eyes bear the most sacred shape in nature: the Circle. It is not a polygon, unlike any other shapes, which have a number of corners. The Circle appears so organic and flowing, a perfect meeting of curved lines, closing at the same point of its origin. It is a metaphor of infinite space, where it embraces everything in its radius, and can expand into limitless boundaries. It is the most ubiquitous shape, possessed and manifested by many creatures and natural structures. The Circle is found from a tiniest disk of single cell to the gigantic celestial spheres in the universe. And whatever begins and ends at same point is a process of the Circle, where all evolve in the rhythmical cycle of Life. As the saying goes, "Life comes full circle."

If God has a shape, then it is Circle, since God is the alpha and omega, the every beginning and end of existence. In its tangent, all points of time are never-ending, and its fringes encompasses the past, present and future, all fused in timelessness. While within the radius of a Circle is the Oneness of all, wherein nothing is separated. Every being, creature, event and things is within the Circle's inclusive field. They are all within its grand universe, and nothing is unimportant or even deserted. And, in the center of the Circle, is the source of being, from where all possibility radiates and expands and flows into all levels of reality.

Circle is known in many forms, often consecrated as a symbol of the soul. Zen monks call it the Enso, and in their meditative brushstroke they conscientiously paint this Circle of enlightenment. Enso reminds them to see that the essence of Zen is within this shape of essence. While Tibetan monks painstakingly create a detailed sacred sand artwork known as the Mandala. This word literally bears the meaning of circle, and that of essence and completion. Carl Jung once called it the representation of the unconscious. The Labyrinth, on the other hand, is a symbolic circular design seen in medieval times as the path to God. Walking in the labyrinth is like a journey towards the center of the Self, a destination that is actually endless. In China, the moon gate is a common architectural element. It has rich spiritual meanings, yet depicts a symbol of passage. In ancient India, a Chakra (Sanskrit: wheel) is an ethereal passage into the Soul, or the turning wheel that carries our Soul in union with God. And, however mundane the wheels and gears are, they are the great Circles that propelled not just our entire material civilization, but our inner evolution.

Circle is the shape of the never-ending movement and possibility. It is an orbit of time and a cycle of existence. In Sanskrit, this is Samsara, the continuation of birth and death, where every life renews itself. Samsara is the Circle of suffering - and the understanding of suffering, when we realize that we have all enough of our repetitive cycles of our faults and blunders, where at a single point of awareness we stop, and transcend this rotation. When we do, we can see again our cycle in a different light, as Circle moves in the flow of time, where Life constantly creates and perishes, as we arrive in the conscious realization that nothing can escape change, the very nature of our existence.

In the bosoms of heaven we see Circle through the spheres of sun and moon and planets, all in harmony with each other, playing the Divine rhythm. The Light-bearers, sun and moon, shine like flat disks in the face of the sky. They ultimately display the interplay of opposites, the celestial Yin and Yang. They are Circles in the midst of our universe, and they bring the Light of Life in our realm.

This Hindu-Arabic numeral called zero, which literally means empty, carries the depth of emptiness. Within this kind of Circle is the Truth that everything is empty. Empty, not of essence, but of all definitions that constrains us to see Truth as it is. As you add those seemingly empty zeros after another number, that number increases manyfold. In the space of this Circle, we can see that zero is not a number of nothingness, but of infinity.

There, in the eye of the storm, lies the Circle of peace and calmness. Inside its trunk, a tree counts the Circle of ages. Each raindrop on the face of a calm water, Circles of ripples wave instantly, their movement reverberates across every other ripple. Wherever we look at, Circle draws our attention. We are reminded that each of us is a Circle that continues to bear the cycle of Life, the perfection of Oneness, the fullness of our Soul. Circle is the shape of our beings that shapes the consciousness of our collective inner peace, of our all-embracing wholeness, of our ancient yearning for Love.

The Communes

Six years ago I was torn between two books. One was a book on writing, which I found an engrossing connection. The other was a textbook I needed for my college subject. Badly in need of passing for internship, I bought the textbook. After several months, I passed. Still, the book on writing was a very unwilling sacrifice because I didn't found any copy in any shelves of all the bookstores I had visited. Until a month ago.

This book on writing by Elizabeth Ayres, entitled "Writing the Waves" has led me to understand again the original meaning of communication in Latin: com- means "with" and -un means "one". For the author, the word communication is "to be one with." Her meaning led me to conceive the name of this endeavor.

There could be a lot of names possible: study group, support group, fellowship, gatherings, meetings, workshops, association, brotherhood, cell groups, etc. But there is something in the word Commune that resonates in every one's being. After learning so much from many ancient and modern spiritual teachers, it is only one truth that echoes from them: We are all ONE. But we are not aware that we are.

And the decision to name this undertaking as Commune is an intuitive unfolding. I was in one of my most peaceful state when the word came up from me, as if a seed sprouted from earth. We need to begin to be one with each other, for we are all ONE.

But most of us still harbor the illusion that we are separate by time and space. And this very skewed view is what causes all the problems in the world; all the problems in our lives. This illusion had almost led me to mental ill. And I believe that we all have, one way or the other, the problem of this illusion.

Understanding this need is the beginning to find the path. This is a very profound insight for all spiritual teachers. They found a way how to be one with this truth. Being One with is to be awakened to our true nature: Love.

Communes may not be a quantum leap, yet it is one step. Lao Tzu once said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." One step. This is all what we need to do. Since Love can never be contained in one's heart and mind, Communes will serve as the confluence from which the the Love within all of us will flow. All we have to do is to begin.

Let us all be one with Love.