The Spiritual Path (Part 3); The Big Picture

If you step back and take a look at “it” and by “it” I mean everything, and you start breaking it down and what I mean by breaking it down is to see the parts and how they interact, you can’t but help feel a sense of awe.  Most of everything that is going on we can’t see, touch, hear, feel, taste or smell; we can’t sense it.  We aren’t  conscious of these things.  Are you aware of the neural firings in the brain or the release of peptides and the docking of proteins on individual cells?  How often do you think of earth as one planet among trillions of other planets in the universe?    What about Black Holes and superstring theory?  We don’t “sense” these things.

What is “The Big Picture?”  The Big Picture is a description, representation, perspective of everything.  Now, I am not aware of everything.  And neither are you.  However, there is a way to inquire into it. Religion has tried to corner the market on The Big Picture. Each religion has its own Creation “story” and destination and rules of the game.    Science has progressed rapidly in describing what it sees. Science can only describe.  By its nature it is unable to explain.

So, where do we start?  In studying mystical teachings and practices like yoga we discover that there are essentially two fundamental components that make up the whole.  They are emptiness and form. As most of you know by now I like to provide multiple perspectives. Other ways to understand these two components are:

The Creator and The Created;  Ground of Being and The Physical World; Yang and Yin; Male and Female;  Light and Dark;  The Light and The Vessel…….

The problem we have is that we seem to be unable to focus on both of these components at the same time.  Everything arises in duality in our universe.  You ever think about that?  Anything that arises must do so with its polar opposite or it can not exist.  We can’t have a sense of sweet without knowing bitter.  If something is right then something is wrong.  A governing principle in Chinese Medicine is “As above so below.”  This principle is so profound and very valuable in our search for the Big Picture.  It provides us with the starting point.

There are many paths of inquiry from here.