Understanding the play of opposites is the only way to adjust with the never-ending dance of creation.

You cannot have light without dark. Happy without sad. Up without down. And so on. Each requires the other to exist.

For better or worse, we learn that good is good and bad is bad, and develop preferences for one over the other.

What we eventually realise, however, is that you can’t fully control the outcomes of your life. Any number of things can and will come along to lay waste to your best laid plans.

Sickness. Injury. Death. Job loss. Earthquake. Forest fire. Typhoon. Accidents of various shapes and sizes.

Sure as day becomes night, happy inevitably becomes sad. It is just a matter of time—and, for that matter, just a matter time for the pendulum to swing the other way again. It just doesn’t stop.

After awhile, the swing becomes unbearably frustrating. Our attachment to our good and bad preferences becomes unbearable because we work so hard to get what we want, only to watch it be taken from us in some way (over and over again).

This frustration is important. It creates the opportunity to investigate a wholly different approach to the way we operate in the world.

We start to wonder if there is an alternative to the happy-sad-happy or good-bad-good cycle, ie, a way to get out of the trap.

There is. And it starts by understanding good is bad and bad is good. They are the same energy in different form, with different tastes.

This way, we can develop an embrace of both poles and not fear — welcome, even — the arrival or loss of either.

We can see the beauty of gain and we can see the beauty of loss.

(Think to your own life. When you have experienced the most transformation, or the most insight? Was it not when the clouds were so dark, you couldn’t see more than five feet down the road?)

Taken far enough, we only see beauty—even while in pain.

In fact, we see the pain as our healing.

In the end, we let go of all our attachments and desire only what is happening right now—because it’s the only thing we ever have that can’t be taken away from us.