Paradox – KM Huber's Blog

Thursday Tidbits: The Inner Wolves

Posted on February 7, 2013 by KM Huber in Oneness, Thursday Tidbits

This week’s Thursday Tidbits is my February post as part of the Bloggers for Peace movement. At least once a month, over 100 bloggers dedicate at least one blog post to peace and its many facets.

On this blog, I explore peace fairly frequently including the fascinating fact that critical mass consciousness is now possible through the technology that connects the world. Imagine the possibilities for the world if we let peace begin within each one of us. Yet, how to secure the peace within….

There is a Cherokee story about a conversation on life between a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather tells a vivid tale of the battle between his inner “black wolf and white wolf.” The two wolves are constantly fighting each other no matter what the grandfather does. The grandson wonders which wolf will win.

Here is the grandfather’s reply:

“If you feed them right, they both win.

“…the white wolf needs the black wolf at his side. To feed only one would starve the other and they will become uncontrollable. To feed and care for both means they will serve you well and do nothing that is not a part of something greater, something good, something of life. Feed them both and there will be no more internal struggle for your attention.

“And when there is no battle inside, you can listen to the voices of deeper knowing that will guide you in choosing what is right in every circumstance.

“Peace, my son, is the Cherokee mission in life. A man or a woman who has peace inside has everything. A man or a woman who is pulled apart by the war inside him or her has nothing.

“How you choose to interact with the opposing forces within you will determine your life. Starve one or the other or guide them both” (Beyond the Conflict of Inner Forces at www.awakin.org).

No matter what characteristics you attribute to your inner wolves, they are the two halves of the one that is you. Your left and right halves of your body make up the physical you; emotionally, your ego provides the context of your life, surrendering only to compassion, gratitude, love and joy. In peace, there is no reaction to chaos, only response out of stillness.

For me, the Cherokee story is also another way to view the paradox that is duality: Oneness originates out of opposites becoming one, equal in every way. Only in equanimity is there peace, which requires lifelong attention to the light and dark that is in each one of us, where peace begins.

Once again, my thanks to Kozo at Everyday Gurus for this mindful way to spend 2013 as well as every moment we ever have.

Thursday Tidbits are weekly posts that offer choice bits of information to celebrate our oneness with one another through our unique perspectives. It is how we connect, how we have always connected but in the 21st century, the connection is a global one.

Blogs of Interest:

Kozo on Peace Practice

Radical Amazement on The Presence of Peace

Bullzen on How to Save the World (Abridged)

Grandmalin on The Global Family

The Quiet Teachers

Posted on August 26, 2012August 25, 2012 by KM Huber in Oneness, Writing

As I have mentioned more than once, I’m spending this year with Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening, meaning that I begin my daily meditation by reading one of his 365 observations. More often than not, a series of readings—one day after another—will seem an awakening designed only for me. This past week, Nepo introduced me to the quiet teachers.

The quiet teachers are often ignored but are everywhere and are as solid as the ground upon which we walk. We know these quiet teachers by their “lessons [that] dissolve as accidents or coincidence…offering us direction that can only be heard in the roots of how we feel and think” (Nepo).

For me, the lessons have been clear but somewhat noisy for I am in the process of completely restructuring a novel I wrote seventeen years ago. What that means is the destruction of a weakly structured novel in order to salvage a stubborn story that has waited a long time to be told. It has required me to immerse myself into an old world, awakening characters long silent and provoking images fraught with memories. There has been much shattering of ideals but the shards of those ideals proved to be quiet teachers, the first of others that I met this week.

Nepo also introduced me to an observation from Megan Scribner: “‘I’m only lost if I’m going someplace in particular.'” I could not have described my own first attempt at writing a novel more succinctly. For over 80,000 words and seventeen years, I stayed with a story I no longer believed rather than facing the story that was trying to emerge. Once I began stripping away the façade, I heard the heart of the story and found myself at journey’s beginning: “Practice letting go of your plan and discover the path of interest that waits beneath your plan” (Nepo).

Not being attached to outcome or plan reveals the story waiting to be written. It is only when I have the courage to face failure do I heed the lessons of the quiet teachers. Accident and coincidence dissolve into the direction of the story. I am struck by the synchronicity of my own life’s direction with that of my writing life. Not for the last time, I am in awe at the oneness that is all.

“‘Be serene in the oneness of things and erroneous views will disappear by themselves'” (Seng-Ts’an) became clearer and clearer to me as I separated the heart of the story from the remnants of what was once a novel. All of the tearing apart and leaving of words is less difficult than I imagine. There are thorny moments but eventually, they give way to the relief of no longer having to hold up the façade of novel.

While the shininess of a new structure of a novel is a gift, the fear of idolizing structure at the cost of story, wherever it may wend, is a battle that will wage until structure and story support one another as a whole. I am confident in the lessons of the quiet teachers but mostly, I am vigilant for like life, writing is fraught with accident and coincidence as is the beating of my heart.

“As you enter your day, try not to reach for life. Try not to leave or arrive. Try to let life into you” (Nepo).

A Unified Life

Posted on March 11, 2012August 2, 2012 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Oneness

It is not frequently the “world is too much” with me but too much always means a matter of words.

These are days of careless and thoughtless words thrown around the world in a nanosecond and forgotten just as immediately, as if a word once released is never more.

Every word reveals its writer, as Wayne Dyer demonstrates in his work with the Tao: “Live a unified life” and forego the “mind game” of duality, that “propensity to compartmentalize everything as good or bad, right or wrong.” Ah, the slippery slope of duality.

I take this viewpoint or that one, keeping each in its box, opposites, while I allow myself the luxury of weighing right vs. left, considering women vs. men, contemplating yin-yang.

I name it balance but my heart knows it as judgment unexpressed but held. I am a lifelong hair-splitter within myself as well as with the world. At times, both are too much with me.

I am a true believer in finding common ground on any issue—no matter how insignificant that spot of ground may be, I know it exists–often, I am tenacious beyond popularity with left or right, no or yes, yet it keeps me just shy of duality. Dyer offers this: “eliminating opposites paradoxically unifies them.”

Imagine that as a political viewpoint in a discussion of the role of government for the individual, for an entire country, especially when our planet is so pendulous, left-right, right-left, right-wrong. Words and more words, this word heard, that word ignored, a lie believed, a truth buried.

It’s a squawking sky of words where a good offense is the next day’s defense, and no one remembers to ask whether the sky is falling for the sky is full of flying words.

“…notice an opportunity to defend or explain yourself and choose not to. Instead, turn within and sense the texture of misunderstanding…just be with what is.”

These Wayne Dyer words clear the sky for me on any day. The moment is all we ever have and it’s more than enough to “just be.” In order to clear the sky, I have to remove “me” from the words so I can see their meaning, their context, how they come together and when. Then, I can hear them.

“The world is too much with us, late and soon,” Mr. Wordsworth, as it always has been.

Rainbow Amanda Stephan Flickr — Amanda Stephan Image
WANA Commons

Rhythm of ROW80 Sunday Scheduling:

This past week, I started a month-long workshop with Bob Mayer on Idea and Conflict. For the rest of this round of ROW80, I will work with the kernel idea and conflict box of a story that may actually become a novel.

Daily, I write for at least 30 minutes, often longer, generating at least 1,000 words per day for blog posts as well as some creative nonfiction. In this regard, I have exceeded my word count for this first round of ROW80.

All Wayne Dyer excerpts are from Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, second verse of the Tao.

Paradox Practice

Posted on February 8, 2012 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Lupus, Oneness

I didn’t grow up practicing to be a paradox so when Wayne Dyer writes, “practice being a living, breathing paradox every moment of your life”* it seems a tad…paradoxical. Yet, my life of duality brought me only contrasts, opposites, comparisons and yes, judgment—all balancing acts of duality and not of the “paradoxical unity” that is the oneness of the Tao.

This I discover after almost 60 years of living but I do discover it.

More than thirty years of my life have been with lupus, an autoimmune disease that now actively lives with me permanently, unlike its earlier years of extended stays but then it had other names. Truly, I understand “the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

Regardless, lupus was made to order for practicing paradoxical unity.

For years, juggling balance, stressing no stress, and unlimiting limitations were my duality, uneven at best. The effort of trying to order my life out of chaos was like touching the wind. Yet, chaos, like every storm, has one, still eye that allows …”apparent duality while seeing the unity that is reality…[an] effortless action without attachment to outcome.” By no longer focusing on outcome in my life with lupus, I replaced the trying and the effort with what is moment by moment.

Being requires a lot of presence–“duality is a mind game” that is always ready for a match–so I get a lot of paradox practice.

*Attribution: All quotations are excerpted from Wayne Dyer’s book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, CA, 2007.

ROW80 Wednesday Word Marking:

From January 2 until February 4, my goal was to write 250 words per day—as blog posts, fiction, or nonfiction–for an approximate total of 8250 words.

On February 4, I started the “30-minute” stretch in which I write for 30 minutes daily. So far, that has generated just over 3700 words, averaging about 900 words a day. It takes care of a lot of my mind minutia so my other writing is more focused, and I fuss less.