Opposites

Dynamism requires that everything have an equal and opposite reaction. Same with magnetohydrodynamics. Most loathesomely, so does Newtonian physics. For every push there is a pull. For every injury there is healing.

This concept is summarized by the ancient Taoist alchemists this way:

In our modern slave society we all have issues. All kinds. Digestive, relationship, repetitive strain (my bane), hormone, weight etc. These issues arise from a lack of balance. "Well durr" I hear you say. If you do indeed have a functional use of this knowledge, why aren't you winning Olympic medals or better yet making gold from lead or driving your rocket car to your own Hawaiian island? The simple answer is that if we collectively understood this idea we'd have a stunningly and drastically different world.

Let's review some basics. If you work hard then you must relax hard. If you beat yourself up in the gym, you must pamper yourself outside of the gym. When you quit work you have to stop thinking about it and go do something for yourself (watching TV does not count). If you have a cold, warm yourself up. 

Given the fact everything has an opposite characteristic to it, let's move this idea  into some other arenas. Religion, what better a place to explore the union of opposites.

Phrased poorly but the right message.

We have on one hand a bunch of people trying to gain the favor of god through their various actions. Then on the same hand you have the same people having sex with children, looting and pillaging, condoning wars and engaging in an incredibly diverse array of seemingly unconscious behavior. Odd no? Not really, in reality the Jedi from Star Wars probably would do all the same stuff. They, by publicly adhering to one half of the yin/yang, will privately enact the qualities of the other. Or perhaps more interestingly: vice versa. Think of this in politics: in public they are considerate, well spoken and have everyone's interest at heart and behind the curtain they sleep with their interns, kill them and then hide the bodies and lie about it.  Think about that next time you go to Canada Place.

Slave society places unbalanced premiums on certain types of behavior. This is simply because some behaviors are more profitable than others. For example: who has more social clout? An executive who wears the slave collar (neck tie, noose) and lives in a giant house and has a nice car (all bought with borrowed money in the form of financing and mortgages) who owns neither but has merely sold himself into slavery for his lifetime for the proprietary use of these items, or the entrepreneur who sometimes doesn't have any money but owns his car outright and is in debt to no one? Which one has more worry? Who has more equitable value? These are very important topics, how often do you consider them?

You can, though you may be a slave yourself, learn to use the principle of the unification of opposites to empower yourself and heal yourself despite adversity. The problems in our lives I mentioned are merely the universe forcing balance because you have failed to do so, in essence you have forfeighted your right to free will by not observing how you exercise it. In short your problems are not problems if you accept that they are the universe trying to heal you and accept them. In the film "Jacob's Ladder" there is a line: "If you're scared of dying, you'll see demons ripping your life away. But if you've made your peace, they're really angels, freeing you from the Earth.". 

This reminds me of the notion of failure. People think that you can fail at something. All I see is learning, which is a success. You try to squat 500lbs. and you fail, where did you fail? Did you get bent over? Was it your quads? If you observe how you fail, you'll learn where you are weak and then you can become strong through the knowledge you've gained; i.e. you got bent over = work your hamstrings.

Oh french people, when will you learn.

Recently I made a new bench press personal best. I was so happy because my bench has always been weak. I figured that if I worked even harder I'd do even better. Well I did work harder and now I can't bench at all because I've injured my pec minor. My success bred weakness and ultimately failure. I was doing some reading on Compassionate Dragon and found that the type of injury I was suffering from was caused by me not shouldering the responsibility of taking care of myself because of an overly self competitive drive to best my previous performance. Now I'm at: success>weakness>failure>knowledge>improved self>future greater success. It is the wheel of the yin/yang in action. My "failure", will in time, make me stronger which is no different from a regular workout: put in time working out and you'll get stronger over time.

Dualism. I think this is the most ridiculously inept and unconscious observation a person could have about the yin/yang and it's associated concepts. A yin/yang is only a yin/yang because there are no animated gifs on paper, which is what the Taoist alchemists wrote (brushed) on. The yin/yang does not exist in dynamic time which is where we live. Do an experiment: take a yin yang and spin it, what do you get? Grey circle. Yin and yang do not exist statically. They are in constant interplay with each other, the symbol does not represent reality it represents an idea of what is happening underneath reality that can only be displayed in the absence of time. Dualistic mentality shows the observers mind, not reality, and what it shows is a very limited and small perceptual capacity.

Keep the iron off your feet, your (gun)powder dry and your sidewalks free of banana peels.