A mental mirror
Which absorbs light will project
Darkness in its place.
Thru a glass darkly
The seer cannot be seen
In the way I am.
***
Only the Light can
Love Darkness as Darkness is
Afraid of Itself.
Only the Light can
Love the Darkness as Darkness
Fears its own shadow.
Only Light can Love
Darkness as Darkness itself
Fears its own shadows.
[Rich Note: Except for the first two, which are haiku from OOMM, the related haiku and the collage of contradistinctive quotes were inspired by a Francis Bennett FB post this morning; that quoted the Taylor Swift song lyric, "Haters gonna hate," indicates "...that is their job..." and then goes on to ask, "What are they here to teach you?" and further suggests, "...you are here to teach them something too (?)..."]
Contradistinction Part 1
Contradistinctive-wise (i.e. the darkness, as an apparent absence of the Light, only serves to delineate, highlight and so magnify the Light, etc.), the idea is to let the darkness remind the Light that it is the Light and "Thank it for making the the Truth plain" (which is its only job); and certainly not to further falsely identify with and as the darkness Itself
(1) Poetry-Wise:
(From a 1980 Poem entitled "Conceived in Truth")
III
"...So do I pray Thee, Oh Father of Life,
Awaken Thy Son and end all His strife;
Make One my Consciousness, Thinker Divine,
And so bless my soul with Thy Perfect Mind.
"So lift the veil of my thought’s false division,
And open mine eyes to Thy Perfect Vision;
Thus end the reign of my partial sight,
The shadows I cast and my blockage of Light.
"That empty my heart of its selfish love,
May I so ascend to Your Kingdom above;
So scale Life’s Mountain and know its height,
Behold the One and see the Light..."
(2) Scripture-Wise:
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
Contradistinction Part 2:
(3) Bill Samuel-Wise:
[Rich Notes: The following piece Related Papers section of "Child Within Us Lives" by Bill Samuel, which relates Bill's first "real world insight" into the contradistinctive nature of darkness (or "why a "Good God" really allows "bad things" to happen), which was profoundly revelatory here, when first read, illustrates the principle much better than I.]
37 -- THE MAN WHO STOLE THE CHEWING GUM
"There are days to write and days to read. There are days to sit loose and free, days to dream and watch the grass grow and chase dogs out of the rose garden before they water something.
"Today, I am remembering, thinking back to the time when “contradistinction” first came alive for me. One doesn't often see a thief in the act of stealing, but on this day a well-to-do friend came into the bakery and I saw him steal a package of chewing gum. Obviously he didn't know that my sons and I were watching from a table in the bakery's dining room.
"I didn't like what I saw. My first inclination was to use the scene as an example for my boys. “Do you see that? That's not honest! That's stealing! We don't do things like that!” But, for some reason, I held my tongue. Perhaps for the first time in my life I managed to say nothing about a distasteful sight.
"I was in the middle of my metaphysical period, the time when one has seen that “the mountain is not a mountain,” but when one is beginning to wonder why some of the ugly scenes on the mountain keep reappearing. As metaphysical development goes, things were beginning to come full circle, from “not a mountain” to “It's a mountain again.” anyway, I sat at the table with my boys, silently asking, “What am I seeing? What do I really see, if God is all and God is good?” I looked on indignantly and felt abused, the grind very much in my belly.
All this happened in the twinkling of an eye, of course. “I can't afford to lose a nickel,” I thought. “My employees think they are merely careless when they spill salt or sugar on the floor, but I have to pay for every granule. That so-called friend of mine doesn't realize he is taking food right out of the mouths of my boys! But,” I continued to reason, “if God is really all, that allness must somehow include the sights at hand. Somehow my friend isn't guilty. What am I seeing anyway?” For once in my life, I asked God what was going on.
"As quickly as I asked, the Answer came, almost as if I'd been shaken by the shoulders. The words popped into my head, “Bill, what is dishonesty but the delineation of honesty?”
"Then I heard, “Would you know what honesty really is if you had never seen the actions that make it plain?” Would I?..."
"...The following Thursday, as I was sitting at the same table and putting the finishing touches on some bookwork, my friend walked in the front door and headed my way. “Uh oh,” I said to myself. “Help me hold my tongue, Father.”
"Jack walked up and said, “Hello, Bill, how are you?”
“Fine,” I answered, inviting him to sit down. He took a chair beside me.
“Did you see me here last Sunday, Bill?” He asked. I admitted I had, biting my tongue. Then he began his story, and this is what he told me. All his life he had been plagued with the terrible burden of kleptomania. He took great sensual delight in stealing things, small and large, valuable or otherwise—it didn't make much difference. His dresser at home was stuffed with things he had stolen over the years. He and his wife lived in perpetual terror that he would be found out some day and their lives ruined. Then he asked if I had seen him take the chewing gum Sunday, and I said, “Yes.”
“I knew you had,” he said.
"Then (and here is the wonder) he went on to say that a strange thing had happened since Sunday. This terrible urge to steal was perpetual, he said. It plagued him every day at the most unexpected times and places, and it was “stronger than sex” and virtually irresistible. But since the past Sunday he had been free of it. He had gone nearly the week without the terrible urge. “Bill,” he said, “I felt that you saw me and didn't condemn me. Whatever has happened to me since last Sunday has something to do with your silent forgiveness.”
"Well, I hadn't condemned him. Rather, the night after it happened, I sat at my journal and thanked God for making honesty so apparent in my experience. This is the first time I can remember actually taking a negative experience and consciously turning it around in my head to the positive side—and then thanking GOD, the event, and the man who seemed to be the instrument for the lesson learned. At the time that I “called the thief by his new name,” I was comforted. And with the comfort, I found the strength to dismiss the anger and condemnation, to forgive the scene and thank it. This “turning around,” I learned later, is what the Ancients really meant by “repentance.”
"Jack went on to say that he had seen all the people who came into the bakery's coffee shop to talk philosophy. He didn't know what was going on or what I taught, but he wanted to be a part of it. “Whatever it is, it is good,” he said.
"So Jack began a study of the Truth and became a good metaphysician along the way. He was never plagued with the terrible problem again.
"Such is the power of seeing the good in a situation—that is, in calling things by their right name. Not only was I comforted, but the action was synergistic. It reached out and helped my world."
Contradistinction 3
(4) Metaphor-Wise:
56. Dark Glass (Dirty Mirror): "A perfect mirror would cast a perfect reflection. Such a mirror would retain none of the light it reflects and so perfectly reproduce the images of light it receives and reveals. If, however, the mirror were to absorb a portion of the light cast upon it, the reflected image it produced would be partial, imperfect, and so unfaithful. Worse yet, a degree of darkness would necessarily be projected in place of the light such a mirror absorbed." 1992; UD12/2/97; 5/08/03.
55. Mental Mirror: "When a mirror is perfectly empty of distortion it's nature is to faithfully reflect images of light cast upon it. If, however, said mirror is the least bit convex or concave it will necessarily reflect and so project distorted images. In a similar vein, a mental mirror full of multiple self-reflections, such as those found in a fun house hall of mirrors (or the mind of man), will very likely cause one to lose sight and sense of the original image." 1992; U/D 12/2/97; 5/08/03.
(5) Abstract-Wise: Light Bulb Image.
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