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The Eternal Dichotomy

It Only Makes Sense When It Doesn't



I'm a visual entity. I struggle with words sometimes. For those who know me, or have been reading some of my blogs, you'll know that I'm sometimes called bipolar. That just means that my brain gets a bit out of whack on occasion. The words 'rapid cycler' are also applied to me, which just means I do the 'up' and 'down' thing more frequently. Well, truth be told, I'm just coming off a fairly significant 'up' this past week(the formal word for that is 'hypomania'). (click on graph to see detail)

For you visual folks in the audience, picture this. It's like having to take a pee really really bad and there just isn't anywhere to go. The only difference is, with me, it's my brain that sometimes gets too full of thoughts, and I really, really need to to dump them somewhere. In the end, it just boils down to the simple truth that you and I have different DNA. {Note: I did a search on the words "full bladder" for that last link, and randomly picked one from the list. Is it coincidence or is it serendipitous that the phrase 'dancing like a maniac' is used in step 7; the step just prior to the final step 8, peeing? Hold that thought, will you please, while you read the rest of this blog....but go take a pee if you need to, then I'll finish dumping my thought-words!}

Actually going through a hypomanic state is a tad disturbing sometimes, I think that it's probably more so for everybody else on the outside trying to look in than it is for me. True, my behaviours are different.


Some aren't so good (I'll forget to eat or sleep sometimes, for instance) but the up side is I'll feel really euphoric and I'll have a clarity of thought that I don't experience when I'm in the state referred to as 'having normal brain activity'. Although they're not scheduled events in my life, I'm getting to almost look forward to them. It's a bit like taking a risk, I suppose.

During this past week, I had what for me was a very focussed Aha-insight {Note: in-sight: def-n: "I 'visioned-in' my thoughts and went "aha!"}. What I've been writing in my blog entries all make sense to me now! See that infinity loop? Look at the dot right in the middle where there's a crossover. Zoom in on it....really close. That's me. I am a dot. That was the very first blog entry I wrote! So there I am, eternally at the centre of infinity, a tiny, all-encompassing dot, but simultaneously including all of infinity within me. I'm forever faced with the choice "Do I go left, or do I go right?" That's the bipolar part. It's NEVER an either-or choice though. It's ALWAYS a BOTH choice, where sometimes, you only choose one over the other. So, a two-way choice is always a three-way decision, because first of all you have to decide if you're going to override your default settings.


Sometimes, it's the equilibrium point too. Sometimes, life is in balance there. If you zoom in on the dot a little closer, you might recognize this zen-design of being. See, that's where it starts to get complicated. As you keep zooming in you see more and more detail, which gives focus, but limits context because you don't see what's outside the circle of focus.

All my pleading and praying and ranting about bringing about global peace has also been a very powerful internal message to bring about personal peace. I just forgot to listen to myself that way for awhile. Like walking and chewing gum, they must be simultaneous actions. That seems simple enough. Check out the infinity symbol again. Look both ways and then cross the street. We do a million representations of simultaneous actions every day. Or do we? Are they indeed very rapid sequential actions? Does it matter? Yeah, I think it does. I'll explore that idea in later entries.

In my third blog entry which I wrote, I started to outline a 'theory' I've chosen to call 'is'-ism, and suggested that I would be expounding on it here, and then never did....I got sidetracked when "Get World Peace" appeared at the top of my daily to-do list for awhile.

I've spoken of drawing lines to define our personal essence of being, and whether these lines are drawn by ourselves or by others. In my previous entry about taking risks, one of the comments asked me if I was gay, or sympathetic or...and that he might be asexual, or sexually-confused, or...

That was part of my Aha. I'm NOT a label. I'm not 'normal'. I'm not bipolar. I'm not a teacher. I'm not single. I'm all those things and none of those things. I'm different. I'm unique. I'm a dot. I'm a unique, complicated, dot. How I'm perceived depends upon what angle, what zoom setting, what filter, what bias, which side of the mirror the view is from. That infinity symbol, that zen symbol....they're both simple, two-dimensional views of very complex things. Here, let me adjust the zoom setting for you a bit more.



Now spin it around to create a donut shape.....and tomorrow we'll add on onion-like layers. And somewhere buried in that immense mass of interwoven imagery is a fractal that represents THIS MOMENT only....and then it changes. Simultaneously. Personal, internal changes in co-ordination, competition, collusion or ignorance of outside influences. One component, we have total ownership of (the body-person entity part). The other depends on recognizing that it's not 'others out there'; but rather recognizing that it's as simple as turning around and looking through your own mirror from the other side.

Canadian author, scientist and journalist Jay Ingram has just written a book "Theatre of the Mind: Perplexing Perspectives" and has a weekly podcast on his site discussing some of these same concepts. Listen in...it's fascinating stuff. Also, Digital Dewdrops is proposing an "eh to zen" Canadiana blending of beings to create some artistic tapestry of existence. Check it out too.

I fascinate myself sometimes when I backtrack on my earlier thinking and discover after the fact how it makes sense. That's the thought I asked you to hold on to earlier. As I'm writing this, I realized that the profile I first put up for myself was "I am a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and stars, and have a right to be here. I'm one of the billions of "people" molecules who comprise human existence. We're all connected. Thanks for being part of who I am." At some point (dot) along the way (I don't remember when), I changed it to what you see there today.

It's all related. It's not sequential. It's not disjoint. My earlier blogs were some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of my mind that I've been dumping on the table. This one starts joining them together. The links, the internet, the sites, the thoughts, similar and different. Everything is a metaphor for everything else, because they're all the same...they're just different is all. Just like you and me. Unique dots.

We create our own reality, simply by being. Being us. A dot. Period. Dots. The beginning.

So, that's the insight I had which has inspired this blog. It's me. It's everybody, and everything, and no one. It's totality and emptiness. It's 'up' and it's 'down'. It's past and it's future. It's religion and it's politics. It's hatred and it's love. It's friendship. It's words and their music. It's the silence between the words. It's symbols. It's cartoons; sometimes funny, sometimes satirical, sometimes triggers, sometimes opportunities.

That's why it also MUST be TOLERANCE.

It simply must.

It's the dichotomy of life.....and we're all it. Eternally.



PEACE and TOLERANCE......spread it around, and spread it on thick. Add a touch of love if you feel it.



Rick, it was a wild ride, but it was fascinating.

My personal preference is absolutely NOT to get rid of words....they are the tools of creative genius in the hands of many wordsmiths....what I seek, I think, is that we find a way to remove, or at least weaken, the ultra-sensitivity that has become attached to words. As it is now, any word or phrase could potentially be interpreted as being offensive to someone...but you never know who, or when or where. In my blogs so far, I've used some language and images that I personally am offended by, but I use them to make my point. The answer isn't to stop speaking or writing. It seems then the only other reasonable option I see is to toughen our verbal skins a bit, and allow some of the "I hear that in a different/offensive context" reaction to just roll off our backs....like gentle "Digital Dewdrops"! It reflects the common sense philosophy of "you can't please all the people all the time".

That's why I think TOLERANCE of others, no matter how much I might disagree or not accept, is the one constant that is a pre-requisite to co-existence. There is one absolute condition that I would apply to tolerance, though. I haven't spoken of it much yet, but tolerance can NEVER imply permission to injure another against their will.

Does that make any sense to you?

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  • I'm Evydense
  • From Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  • And I'm tired of living in the shadow of narrow-mindedness and ignorance. So here's the fax, Jack! "The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and three hundred and sixty-two admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." - Lynne Lavner*** I'm confused; curious; satisfied; realistically resigned to being a frustrated idealist; usually at peace with myself, but not always. Amazed at how little I know, and wondering how much I need to understand.
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