Black and White

Siddhananda: So, boy, one of these pink ones are relatively heavy today. (holding up a pink rock) Little pink ones aren’t so fluffy!

G: They are not so fluffy today.

Siddhananda: But, you know, again, you can’t judge that kind of thing. (closing eyes) So, okay. They have a line, like there’s a white line through them, kind of separating this out from that.

G: Okay.

Siddhananda: And let’s see what that’s about. What are they separating out? (pause) More separating out the bad and the good.

G: Okay. The line is drawn. (laughing)

Siddhananda: The ugly and the beautiful. They’ve got that thing going on in their consciousness. (making a line down the middle with her hand)

G: Yeah, they’ve got their list. (grimacing)

Siddhananda: This is ugly; this is pretty. This is good; this is bad.

G: That’s okay. We’ve got everything… everything is classified.

Siddhananda: Yes.

G: Okay, why are we doing classification? (laughing)

Siddhananda: It just helps to keep them, for them, make sense out of things that they can’t understand.

G: Okay. So, what can we help you with today?

Siddhananda: Let’s see if they want to keep that line there. (pause) They don’t know how to live without it. Let’s see if they are want or willing to live without it. They said, “If I take that line, will everything just ‘Whoosh!’ into one big mess?”

G: Not particularly. No. Things are not always as it appears on the surface.

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: Yeah. Some things that you think are negatives in the end being left-handed blessings. So, rather than keeping that line, understand that some things can be left-handed blessings. There’s always some lesson there, somewhere that can be learned, even from the things that one thinks are negative. But, you have to be open to finding the lesson within it.

Siddhananda: It kind of reminds me a little, and this does happen with quite a few… many, that they compartmentalize.

G: Right.

Siddhananda: Put things, okay, here’s this little box for this, this little box… and they have it on the shelf.

G: Right. It has to look this way…

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: …and it has to look that way otherwise… But, no, then you are going to be missing out on many things that could be really beneficial in the end.

Siddhananda: Right. Because, you are not going to pay attention to that…

G: Right.

Siddhananda: Because you have to only go with this. (holding her hands up in rigid sections)

G: You’re not going to see it. I have blinders on. (putting her hands up blocking her peripheral vision)

Siddhananda: Right.

G: I’m not even going to look at that.

Siddhananda: Exactly! You’re going to lose the richness of things, for sure. So, let’s see if they are willing to have that line be dissolved and work on that. (pause) Okay, so I do see more of a black and white in my mind. Okay, they are willing. They just feel like they may feel lost. But, how can you say, they haven’t experienced it without…

G: Right, you have to be open to experience.

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: And everything, I don’t care if it’s the one you have that you’ve got on your side of white…

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: If you really look at it…

Siddhananda: Exactly.

G: … it’s got a seed of dark in it.

Siddhananda: Perfect.

G: It can be taken the wrong way. It could be… anything can be misused and abused even though it seems to be good. If you over do it, then, again, it can be a problem.

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: So, again, something to look at.

Siddhananda: No doubt. And there are so many things, if we look at it in our lives, that we maybe at some point have labeled negative that have turned and opened up to something completely different.

G: Right. It’s become a left-handed blessing.

Siddhananda: Yeah.

G: Without that, you wouldn’t have gotten to where you are.

Siddhananda: Absolutely!

G: And so sometimes you have to be willing to go through experiences that you think in the beginning are negative.

Siddhananda: Yes,

G: But, in the end, you see, when you look back, it was a left-handed blessing because without that wouldn’t have gone in the direction that you needed to go.

Siddhananda: Absolutely. And as hard as it is at the time, just stay steady with that.

G: Right.

Siddhananda: But, you need to be willing. You need to be willing.

G: Exactly.

Siddhananda: So, it sounds like they are, but what do you think in terms of… let’s see what they would like to do at this point. (pause) They would like a practice, maybe one or two, to keep them…

G: Yeah, they can do the “Om That I Am,” the “I Am That I Am,” that will be a good starting point. And the regular “Om.” They can just do the “Om.”

Siddhananda: Yeah. That sounds like a plan.

G: The “Om,” the “Om That I Am” and the “I Am That I Am.”

Siddhananda: Perfect! Okay.

G: And be willing and open to experiences.

Siddhananda: Yeah, that’s the main thing.

G: Rather than classifying it and just not being willing to see what else is there. One has to be willing to look at the whole of it and not just the surface.

Siddhananda: You lose out otherwise. Really, you lose out. It’s up to you.