Everything in the universe is in balance, but there is a tension between opposites that sometimes makes that balance difficult to maintain. When the pull in each direction is evenly distributed, all is well. But when one side of a pair of opposites pulls harder than the other we plod painfully through our lives like a washing machine with an unbalanced load.

All of nature maintains balance without effort except, it seems, for human beings. We see not the balance, but the opposites, not the harmony but the conflict. These conflicts are part of what we are, for, in this life, we see in dualisms. We are taught to do so from a very young age when our culture teaches us things like, "The opposite of cold is hot; the opposite of happy is sad; the opposite of giving is taking."

If we were to think about it, we might wonder at the truth of these statements. Cold and hot do not only exist as independent states of being--over here is cold and over there is hot. Rather, they exist as extremes on a continuum of temperatures, and cold gradually becomes hot as heat is applied.

The same is so for happy and sad. If grief is at one extreme of the mood continuum we might go from there through feeling sad, to feeling mildly depressed, to feeling okay, to feeling nothing, to feeling content, to feeling happy, and ultimately, to feeling joy. We can feel happy one day and sad the next, but both of these extremes of feeling exist on an emotional continuum like the temperature continuum, and when we get out toward the extremes, toward the edges of experience, we discover one extreme within the other. Cold, at the furthest extreme, burns just like fire. In the midst of grief we find joy. The core of hate is love. Pain can be pleasure and pleasure, pain.

When someone we love dies, we learn about grief. Our hope for the future is blackened by it; nothing exists but the agony of separation. Yet in the midst of war, when loved ones are dying all around, people seek out connections and love, and find it. We cry at weddings because the joy is so intense it's almost painful. Most murders involve crimes of passion because hate is love that is twisted out of shape or which has been frustrated beyond bearing. Responsibility and freedom are one.

Nothing in life is black and white-- it's all in color--and the dualisms we tend to think in are caused by faulty methods of perception. On the one hand, every duality exists on a continuum; opposites are an illusion. On the other hand, beneath every duality, hidden in its heart, is a joining of supposed opposites. It's exactly as if we were to extend that continuum, that line, all the way around, until it meets in a hidden fold of reality. We cannot see the joining if we look with our eyes, but we can if we look with our spirit. Those who live on the edge--who traffic in danger--are trying to get the experience of those joinings, to know the sorrow in joy and the joy in sorrow, the death in life and the life in death.

Extremes of human nature are, in reality, joinings of dualisms. When we give everything we've got, we must begin to take because there is nothing left to give. When we go to the opposite extreme and take everything, there is nothing we can do but begin to give it back. It is the dualisms that create the balancing act that is life, but joy is found in the joinings. The tension must remain, for that is the structure of life, but duality must be bridged, for that is the reason for living.

Though we rarely have names for the continuums of life, only for the opposites, it's important to become aware of those continuums, and to go even farther, and see all the way around. These one-isms are the vortex through which we travel into the realm of spirit and touch upon joy.

The key to change is learning that all dualities are one. When we see this we can bring our lives into balance. No longer do we plod through it, lopsidedly wobbling round the dance. Instead, we move with grace amid the lowliest burdens.