Reconciliation of Opposites

The path to reconciliation lies in transforming boundaries into bridges. Polarities solidify into antagonists when they are bounded, when passing between them is impossible. When pathways between them are opened, they soften and become friends, then beloveds, then aspects of a greater whole.

To begin with, one side must become real to the other. The spirit and aspiration that drives communism must become real to the capitalist. The capitalist can remain aware of the ways in which communism's rigid application and exclusionist framing invalidate the essential human longings for equity and collaboration that drive it. And the same goes for the communist, who need not ignore the selfish monstrosity that capitalism becomes when it walls itself off from the common good and dwells exclusively on its principles of freedom and individualism.

 

When bridges open between these two approaches to human economy, when we can begin to travel between them and understand the motives and essential truths that inspire their adherents, we see that they exist as aspects of each other. We see that their failing is in trying to exorcise the other, in demonizing part of itself and glorifying another. It's not a compromise that I'm proposing here, but an integration, a blending and joining, a yoga in the fullest sense of the word.

 

Your soul, the indwelling spirit that animates your life and mind, can rise above your mind's bifurcations and the emotional surges that create enemies and wall us off from each other. Soul can see and understand that capitalism and communism are aspects of one more holistic model of human economy that accounts for both our individuality and our collectivity, our unique aspirations and our interdependence. Soul rises above the dusty field where mind draws the lines and emotions pitch their battles.

 

The cosmic consciousness soars above, its awareness expansive and synthesizing. It knows the oneness of all, starts from the place of unity and then observes individuality. The soul partakes of the cosmic consciousness, the single field of awareness that embraces all reality, material and metaphysical. In the cosmic consciousness, Matter becomes real to Spirit and Spirit becomes real to Matter. When we rest in the soul's perspective, mind and emotions transform from agents of separation to intermediaries, bridge-builders and mediators of commerce between two poles of one whole.

 

When we breach the limits of mind and open upward to the wisdom of the soul, the wisdom of cosmic consciousness, this wisdom pours down and illuminates our minds with a knowledge that can see both Unity and Multiplicity, understand how they relate to each other and enrich each other. The divine Harmony, because it can hold both absolute Unity and Multiplicity at the same time, fully understanding and honoring each as totally real, reconciles and explains Mind's discords. Harmony is the wholeness that takes each individual note and weaves it into One sound, takes each individual tree and makes of it One forest, without in any way diminishing the intricate and exquisite beauty of the single note or tree.

 

All evolution has embodied this pattern: Matter opened upward and received Life, Life opened upward and received Mind. Now we stand in a field of existence where Mind's far-reaching possibilities have been realized and also its limits have been touched. The various converging crises of our day reflect the limits of Mind, which tries to solve the climate crisis and global terrorism and the pandemic with studies and arguments because these are the only tools it has without falling back into the emotional patterns of coercion, threat, and bribe.

 

Beyond Mind, above Mind, is the doorway to cosmic consciousness, which reveals Matter as the figure and body of Spirit and Spirit as the soul, the truth, the essence of Matter. These two fields of being that seem to the unawakened Mind to be wholly separate and opposed are seen through the eyes of cosmic consciousness as the inner and outer manifestations of One. This One is divine, and so both the inner and outer manifestations must also be divine.

 

And when Mind is filled with the true vision of cosmic consciousness, it realizes itself as an instrument of the supreme Conscious Being. We see that Mind and Life both are the means by which that One Being extends and houses Itself in material form and in that form unveils Itself to Its multiple centers of consciousness. They are the bridges, not the barriers. The One uses them to manifest Itself as the Many, and to touch and observe and love the essential Oneness in all its multiplicity. Mind and Life are windows and not walls, passages and not prisons.

 

When the glass of these windows is clouded, they become walls. When the passages are cluttered and blocked, they become prisons. But when they become clear and open, their purpose is revealed and they attain their self-fulfillment. Mind then reflects the Truth of Being which expresses itself in the symbols of the universe, the ideals and formulae that define material reality. And Life consciously participates in the Divine Reality, offering its energies to the progressive embodiment of perfection, to the evolution of ever-new forms and activities of the One Being of which all existence is part.

- Matthew Andrews (AVI USA)

Keywords: Harmony, Mind, Integration, Cosmic Consciousness