Double Concepts

Power cannot oppose, for opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless. To weaken is to limit and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept. It joins to the idea a something it is not and makes it unintelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as ‘weakened-power’ or ‘hateful-love’ or ‘living-death?’ Who indeed? I do, you do; that’s the nature of how we think and perceive. We see it all as a matter of degree, of comparison.

Unfortunately, we think of ourselves and each other in these terms, as double thoughts; one half cancelled out by the other and thus we have no meaning and stand for nothing. To realize there is nothing to attack or deny; love or hate; to endow with power or see as weak is the beginning of reality. The picture we have of the world, ourselves and each other has been wholly cancelled out because it is built of contradictions. Since it has no cause, there can be no effects. The picture we cherish is wholly absent and has never existed at all. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to seeing it as wasted.
An empty space perceived as not filled, an interval of time perceived as unused, become silent invitations to the truth/reality to enter. No other welcome or preparation need be made. What we leave vacant, God will fill and with God, truth abides. Un-weakened power, with no opposite, is what God is. For this there are no pictures, no symbols. Nothing points beyond truth, for what can stand for more than everything? Yet true undoing - accepting this truth by accepting that the space is vacant and time is unused, must be kind. And so the first replacement for our picture is another picture of another kind.

As nothingness cannot be pictured, so totality can not be pictured. Reality is ultimately known without a form, un-pictured and unseen. But its memory, for we are there, dreaming we are here, can be felt and experienced. The experience of forgiveness - holding nothing, needing nothing, makes the exchange of pictures possible. From the place of forgiveness, the pictures we have of the world, ourselves and each other are single, not double concepts.

Through forgiveness – true forgiveness, not the ‘bring the guilty bastard in so I can forgive him’ kind, nothing that the eyes have ever seen or the ears ever heard will remain to be perceived. A single Power, without opposites, wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive Its own. Each of us has had moments of this forgiveness, a bliss out of the blue, flashes of the peace of power that oppose nothing, a single thought, without opposite, including and embodying everything – the holy instant. Those flashes, those instants, are what we want to practice to have more of.