What goes up must come down

I love the lyric from the song “Spinning Wheel” by David Clayton Thomas

What goes up must come down
Spinnin’ wheel got to go ‘round

This morning I was reflecting on the ups and down of my life. The moments of excitement and the moments of despair. I picked up some favorite ancient texts (this question has been surfacing for all time) and immediately was presented with a conundrum.

I realized that I am addicted to the ups of life. I create so that I can feel the excitement of the highs. I landed a great contract. I got an accolade from someone I respect. I got a large check in the mail. You get the idea.

This addiction has a price tag. A cost that I forget each time I sip the elixir that will certainly give me the high. This simple law of opposites is that there is a low that must follow every high. This duality of life is the main part of living.

We breathe in, we breathe out.
We love, we hate.
We are born, we die.

Now, I mostly hope that the down will not follow the up. I pretend to myself that I can cheat the law of opposites this time around. I can do it through either my cleverness, or my authenticity, or by using my gifts.

Wrong. This law of duality is not escapable. Hoping it will be different is the foundation of suffering. I want the high because it feels so good. Then I begin running to escape the consequence of my choice.

I was with someone last week who was asking about love. She had accepted our cultural story of love that has been corrupted by romance novelists and movie makers. When you are “in love” the fireworks go off, and life is surreal, and you feel oh so good. She bought the story that this condition can last forever.

Anyone who has experienced the fireworks knows that they don’t last. Maybe you have had them last longer than most. There reaches a moment though when they fizzle. It may not be noticeable at first. You don’ want it to end so you start pretending you feel something that you don’t. Then the coolness sets in like morning fog and you start to feel things that you wish weren’t so. Small things about the other person begin to bother you. You may suppress it, but you both know that something is not right. In the end, a new relationship sets in. If you are fortunate, you grow together but mostly people become isolated and maybe feel a bit deadened.

We talked about another love. A true love that doesn’t live at the extremes. A love that is real and comes from embracing myself and others just as we are. A love that knows what’s true and has no need for anyone or anything to be different than it is. A love that gives without expectation. A love that is available freely to all who choose to receive it.

She felt very sad. The myth was punctured. She resisted even considering a life without the fireworks. I suspect she felt that she would be cheated of something important. We sat through her sadness and the beginning of peacefulness appeared.

Just as I am addicted to the high, we all have our emotional addictions. I know these addictions produce a fleeting feeling that is creating its opposite as it declines. By knowing this truth, I can step off the roller coaster and have a chance to feel something that cannot be described and is beyond belief.

Until later,

Thomas

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Comment by Thomas White on July 8, 2009 at 4:05pm: I have experienced the dissolution of time on occasion. This has happened when I am completed consumed in the present moment. Everything else disappears and the walls that create linearity are transformed. I have also had this experience when I am teaching. When our group moves into the area of the heart and intimacy, this same phenomena is present.

I have considered the question of critical mass for transformation. I don't know. What I can see is that the prevalent human consciousness does not engage transformative actions without extreme crisis. The evolution of consciousness that is called for is to act without imminent danger and remove the need to suffer.

Comment by Robin on July 8, 2009 at 1:37pm: I have the same feeling that my life has its share of lust, and that everything goes up and down (even if describing a given path with only two words is a little bit frustrating, up and down are with back and forth the bottleneck of our living path).

About Lust, I see this is something we share, but I can't get out of the idea that it has to do with nature and in particular with human nature. I have heard many interesting things about architectures in these pages. I found it really interesting but still come to this old apory about what we inherit before our first breath and what we learn from life. Don't we also have to think about what in these architecture comes from humans ? Accepting what we are could be a first step to understand the architecture that constraint our lives and it is pleasant to read your post and see how you pay attention to what you are.

About Going up and down, I have the feeling that the most difficult task is to be able to breath a little bit and change our time scale for a minute, have a larger (or a lower) view. When I see myself as a transitioner - ok, it is not that often- I try to follow what Mahatma Gandhi said: 'Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.' In my brave new world, any transition is both in the instant and for eternity. I find it pleasant to say that the instant is for my self and eternity for the others (Is my self keeping his share of eternity while finding it pleasant ? ). Internet tools (and in particular what is to be studied by the transitioner ? ) seems to provide places for the instant (twitter, facebook, blog,...) and for eternity (wiki ? architecture for open money? is there enough people at that time in the transitioner to think about this ?) but clearly the most difficult part (and it is not clear for me how we deal with this, does google wave make a step toward that point?) is to connect instantaneous synergies to transform them into sustainable work ...

We breath in, we breath out
we are born, we die,
and our life grows in between

Comment by fabien on July 7, 2009 at 8:26pm: so here we are welcome thomas

find the love means accepting our desires and the triptych as sex, love desires to unite a work painted or carved into three panels which two external components, can close in on the middle one. The triangle is an invitation to discover us ... (to remove what we cover) to open the shutters to let "emerge" the substance of what we are ... (the bottom panel of the work ...)
The "change" is an illusion, if we can not understand that we must "become" we turn, become what we understood ... The word must become flesh ... In any case, it is not to replace something by another ...

but wenn we now it' s better and the question is what happend when we do what we d'ont like

Comment by Thomas White on July 7, 2009 at 8:06pm: It is so very simple and yet I hold on the the way this is painful. Interesting path for us humans.

I was reading this morning about the difference between love and lust. Love is about needing nothing in return where lust is about wanting something for myself. Most of life is about lust.

Comment by fabien on July 7, 2009 at 7:59pm: hi thomas
For it would just love for all of us to start with
meet our lover inside, which means love without external reason (and not so good guy
or beautiful girl ....) Once we have that we love to love for no reason ...
we can say that we are spiritually on road ... and nature of the self will take us
not to the man or woman that wants our minds, but to the man or woman
life puts in our way ... Once we found the nature of the self in us we will be
never alone, even if our companion (Spain) is leaving us ...
We will love, love without reason ...

sorry for english i am frenchy...

fabien