Bitter Sweet

One Taste
Recently I've been on a special diet because of a medical condition. The diet excludes eating processed sugar of any kind. The first few weeks were hell, my mood was low but at least it was constant! Over the last few weeks I have come to realise something quite profound. The 'sweet highs' and the 'bitter lows' of my life have disappeared. Instead they have been replaced with a different type of experience. The 'sweet highs' now contain an element of bitterness and the 'bitter lows' contain an element of sweetness.

This was highlighted beautifully for me recently in the film "Shadowlands" with Anthony Hopkins as the writer C.S Lewis. He had spend years writing and teaching about love but had never been in love until he met an American woman and fell in love with her. Unfortunately she was diagnosed with cancer and was dying. He found out and they were spending a beautiful day in the countryside together. He didn't want to talk about the fact that she was dying but wanted to just enjoy the beautiful day. She approached him and said "The pain of my loss is just as much apart of the day as the love between us, and needs to be included."

I find that in my practice of meditation this is also the case. The feelings of bliss or joy are always anchored by sadness and vulnerability. Just as the times when I meet terrible loneliness or darkness it always seems to have an underlying quality of lightness or aliveness.

On an emotional level I recognise that this is leading me to a more mature place, a place in myself where the human condition and my spiritual Self are becoming more integrated. This gives me one of the most important terms in my understanding of spirituality and meditation, "both and..." or "both at the same time..."

When I practice in order to enter into a meditative state of being I am cultivating two seemingly opposite qualities of 'relaxation' and 'switching-off' on one hand and 'focusing' and 'staying awake' on the other. By bringing them together they become 'both and'... I am both 'relaxed' and 'focused' at the same time. The balance of these seemingly opposite poles creates an energy and tension than can allow my mind to open into a meditative state.

This apparent contradiction exists in all spiritual practice, the very act of being human and spiritual at the same time creates a tension that over time allows us to become more integrated as we learn to HOLD these apparent opposites together in our lives.