There are some people who only see the good in themselves. We call these people arrogant, self-centered, confident. There are others who only see the bad. These people are the depressed, pessimistic type. How often do we look at the whole?
It’s often hard—almost impossible—to see ourselves objectively, the good and the bad. It’s often hard to see our whole self and accept it for what it is—all that it is. But the truth of the matter is that everyone has good and bad stirring around inside of them. But what is “good” and what is “bad”? Well, actually, they don’t exist. Good and Bad are labels we came up with to identify things. It’s the nature of our mind to try and figure everything out and therefore label everything using binary oppositions: good, bad, up, down, black, white. But there is no duality in the universe. Things simple are as they are.
A notion I have carried with me for some time is this: that we don’t know what this life is. We have no idea what comes before this life and what happens to us when we die, all we are left with is this small fragment of time, cut off from everything else that holds it together. Our frame of reference is so disengaged from the whole, how could we possibly conclude what is truth when we can’t see the whole picture? All we have to rely on is this moment and our inner guidance.
Good and Bad do not stem from our past, our actions, our thoughts. There are things that are indeed good and bad, but they are not the root of it all. Good and Bad, these labels, stem from our mind trying to make sense of this small fragment of time. Why? Because that is the way our mind works, because we are simply terrified by the infinite universe and the finite body we live in, because it makes us feel better to categorize and conceptualize things that we understand, it keeps the mind from wondering.
Each of us contains the entire universe. Though we attempt to label and understand everything, it is impossible to be sure of anything because we do not know the ultimate truths of what this life is, what happens before and what happens after. These labels we devise help us to navigate through life, but they must not be taken as truths. In the end, the Good and the Bad are all the same; it is our trust and our faith in this bigger picture, and the acceptance of ourselves as a whole that our mind and spirit truly yearns for.
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, an it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" (The Gulag Archipelago).
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