Friday, May 18, 2007

The Yin and Yang of Living


Life has been a little dicey, to say the least, here lately and I have often found myself pondering the meaning of it all. What is there beyond survival and temporal success? The obvious answer here for me goes beyond the mortal, transcending the understanding of terrestrial existence and touching on the spiritual. A challenge here is to keep this celestial mindset whilst life, the flesh taking its moment by moment beating, continues its perilous trek here on planet earth.

The biggest problem with existence is this duality. Most do not even attempt pondering this coexistence and just tamp their days with the business of busyness. I empathize, for this consideration all in itself is enough to drive one mad, the stress of balancing a dual mindset without allowing one or the other to consume you is a formidable challenge.

Right now my biggest challenge has been discerning the difference between earthly and heavenly success. It seems I have been a spectator to this struggle all my youth, watching my dad achieve some form of worldly success and then lose it again. He repeated this process of gain and loss many times over and I, in my own limited juvenile perception of this battle did not quite grasp the metes and bounds of such effort. To me it seemed normal and even now I find myself overburdened by my perception of success and failure. If I do not make ‘x’ amount of money then I am a loser. If I do not achieve ‘x’ then I am a complete failure. It is these thoughts which steadily erode my being.

To strip away such cares and come to the truth is much more difficult in its simplicity than I can even appreciate. All surrendered unto Christ. It really is that simple but then the ignominy of worldly failure creeps up in my being choking out the yang of spiritual awareness. This yin is a cancer needing to be cut away and I manage to cut it out only to find it has been replaced by yet another savage parasitic cousin.

This is the struggle. Not worldly achievement and wealth, and knowledge or learning but to understand that all of this is nothing without the saving grace of Christ and our ability to surrender all to this. We must be willing to embrace earthly disgrace if that is what it means to, at the same time, pick up our cross and carry it.

For one steeped in secular indulgence this mindset is ridiculous but then this is where the duality of existence is lost to them. We are here on the earth and we must coexist as aliens amongst those who prefer the treasures here over eternal fortune and we must do so with the same grace Christ shed on us. We too were once aliens to eternal fortune and eternity itself. In its simplest devise we are cousins to those around us refusing to even attempt a balance. Our cousins, just like us, could shed their worldly crust and join us at any time on an equal ranking and it is because of this uncomplicated and unfettered benchmark that we are forced to maintain a duality.

Christ would not have us forsake those around us in face of the truth that we are but vacationing here. He would have us share this awareness with our cousins in hopes that they too will adopt our duality and accept worldly failure for heavenly acquiescence. With such acceptance comes true wealth.

Regardless of our place in the hierarchy of comprehension here on earth we will continue to struggle. In the constant, daily, moment by moment surrender we continue to glorify God. So I believe that a part of our heavenly success is in our earthly failure. We fail to gain the ultimate in material achievement because we choose to be triumphant in our walk with God instead.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

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