Power and Race

"Power arises out
of integrating the positive and negatives within us. From the tension that
exists between the two, we develop awareness and become more conscious and
compassionate." -I wish I had the name of the person who wrote
this.

One of the classic characteristics of ADD is the difficulty in starting tasks and projects. It takes me a bit to actually sit down and write down or share my thoughts, even if they are boiling on my brain and I would love to just scream them to the world. Therefore, it is pretty cool to actually see these words being written.

The quote above appeared in my e-mail box this morning. How true it is that everything has an opposite; for good there is evil, black/white, etc....... and the interesting thing is simply that nothing is concrete. There is a duality in everything, but finding stability in anything is honestly, a fruitless effort. It is when we develop a recognition of duality, for instance the ability to act positively also includes the ability to act negatively, when we do become a little more awake to the world and the door to healthy lifestyle components such as compassion can come into play. It is interesting that within the extremes of calm and storm, awareness and recognition that duality of circumstance somehow braces us, and all of a sudden we can just be. We can exist and thrive without fear, with compassion, without judgement and totally observant yet action oriented.

Most of my life I have been taught, and by choice embraced, the idea that holding to the "absolutes" will help build a foundation of stone and keep me on ground. Although I don't disavow the idea of absolutes, I see things as a little more open and less certain as this fundamental upbringing certainly supposed.

Where am I going with this? Who knows? For this is why I built my blog.

For the past couple of weeks I have lived in the place of experiencing a very depressing situation related to ignorance and racism. I will go into the gory details in another post, but simply put, we are all a mess. We are all in the same boat. Often times it is the most dull, unobvious ignorance that sparks extreme and difficult responses. Apathy and ignorance cultivate active response. For instance, Jesus going crazy in the temple. Do you really think in that story that those merchants put that much thought into what they were doing in desecrating the temple? It's not like those merchants sat up in their bed that morning and said, "I think I will go sell my wares in the temple, make a mockery of it and slap God in the face!" It doesn't work like that. They were omissive in their "sin." Ignorant.

Today, this is seen in people and businesses who make decisions based on ignorance and in spineless, 'let's not upset anyone' action. The result is that the people who this ignorance effects the most end up either going along, or risking being seen as "radical" and "hard to work with."

More later.