Principle 11 Negation of Opposites – Week 1 – 2024

November 1, 2024 

Principle 11. Negation of Opposites. Week 1 

“It does not matter in what faction events have placed you what matters is for you to understand that you have not chosen any faction.” 

Last time: Even Other Species.

This time: My beliefs, your beliefs. 

And a couple of stories, a poem, and a song.

Besides the opportunity to participate in the weekly experiences, our next meeting will be a chance for an interchange about your thoughts, insights, examples, and questions. 

To help gain some new perspectives we will also play  

The Game of the Week.

Find It!

The rules for week’s game are simple, and summed up in the name of the game, Find it! We are always looking for examples of the principles in our daily life and personal experience. In the game of Find It! we extend that to the cultural environment around us. 

This week’s story, quotes, images might be considered as examples of what someone playing this game found. During this week keep your eyes and ears (and memory and imagination) open for things around you that illustrate the principle.  

This week we offer a number of examples, including some from Silo’s writings, and from ancient Asia, but don’t let that limit you. Your example can be drawn from contemporary culture, and might include jokes, songs, movies, etc. The point is that the thing you have found casts light on some aspect of this month’s principle. 

This Week:

We are starting a new principle, and this first week we’ll focus on its structure and meaning in general. 

Along with our effort to delve deeply into this principle we are always trying to turn the principles as a whole into a dynamic and permanent meditation. That is to say, into a practice applicable at every moment of our lives. In that way we go on shaping a style of, or way of, engaging with life.

Personal Reflections:

What follows are my reflections. I make no greater claim for them but offer them in the spirit of exchange and dialogue.  

I hope you find these of some use in your own meditations. 

It is important to note that Silo maintained that this principle is not suggesting that you abandon your ideas, ideals, religion culture, politics, etc. Yet many people seem to take it to mean just that. In fact, the principle starts by acknowledging that we all belong to particular groups. The points of view, and values of those factions we identify with of course seem correct to us, if not inevitable, this seems to imply that we are opposed, in greater or lesser measure, to other factions with other values and perspectives. 

This principle asks us to recognize a lack of freedom in situations where we did not, or do not, have real choice. However, it also places us in front of a different dimension of freedom; a freedom to affirm our commonality with others in situations that they also did not choose – and even when their positions apparently oppose mine. At first and perhaps even at third glance, it may seem to be a strange position. Trying to apply it will confirm that it’s a powerfully liberating one as well.

An illustrative tale:

 Here’s a couple of old tales that you will likely have heard but which puts us in mind of this unusual principle.

The enemies of Jesus tried to trap him by getting him to choose between positions where either choice would get him in serious trouble. They approached him and said: “Master, we know you are a truthful man and one whom with truth teaches the path of God. You who have no preference for this man or that and bow before none, tell us therefore what you think. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or should it be for the Temple of the Lord?” 

And Jesus replied: “Why do you try me you hypocrites? Show me the coin of tribute.” So, they handed him a dinar and he held it up and asked: “Whose profile is upon this coin?” They told him: “It is the figure of Caesar.” And he replied: “Then I say to you render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Hearing this they were ashamed and went their way.

 Another tale worth considering in the context of this principle is the famous story of the blind people and the elephant. Here’s a version of that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

Don’t miss the 19th century poetic version by John Godfrey Saxe

referenced in that article. Or this rendition of that tale by Nathalie Merchant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RsssOAoiuE

To Do List:

- Reflect on your basic understanding of the principle, it’s general meaning and implications. 

-Play the game of Find It! 

Coming up:

Next week we will continue with our considerations of Principle Solidarity, in relation to our past situations. 

Remember:

Meditation isn’t Only for When You Close Your Eyes.

For as long as we just leave the principles as words on a paper, we overlook the way to this wonderful spiritual path. That path that lays closer at hand than we might imagine. 

Consider:

“If my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions are in agreement, if they all go in the same direction, if my actions do not create contradiction with what I feel, then I can say that my life has coherence. But though I am true to myself, this does not necessarily mean I am being true to those in my immediate environment. I still need to achieve this same coherence in my relationships with others, treating them the way I would like to be treated”.

Silo_ Letters to My Friends 

Worth Repeating:

One thing that helps me is to try to make sure that every morning before I get caught up in my daily life I take a moment or two (less than five minutes) to reflect on the current principle and the day ahead of me. I’ve found that this almost ludicrously simple work ends up being a powerful and life changing tool. A similar short meditation before going to sleep, where I reflect on the day in light of our work and the principles of valid action.

Coming up:

This week we looked at the general form and implications of principle 11 "the negation of opposites". Next week, we will reflect on this principle in relation to the past.

Note:

These notes have been posted on our Facebook page (Community of Silo’s Message Toronto Annex), sent to our email list, and are also on my webpage at  www.dzuckerbrot.com

Until Next Time …

A Gift for You: 

In some moment of the day or night inhale a breath of air and imagine that you carry this air to your heart. Then, ask with strength for yourself and for your loved ones. Ask with strength to move away from all that brings you contradiction; ask for your life to have unity. Don't take a lot of time with this brief prayer, this brief asking, because it is enough that you interrupt for one brief moment what is happening in your life for this contact with your interior to give clarity to your feelings and your ideas.

Silo_ La Reja, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005