Wherever there is opposition, resistance follows. For instance, in nature, in the physical world, this kind of conflict is natural, necessary, and accepted. After the winds pass, the trees they’ve touched—having been exercised and duly strengthened, accordingly—resume their natural course of life. They don’t stand there and resent the wind that stirred them up and perhaps even stripped them of their beautiful leaves. This interaction between what is active (the wind) and what is passive (the tree) sees to the gradual perfection of everything created—or at least it’s intended to.
Whenever we experience unwanted moments, or “winds” that challenge both our vessel and our vision of some safe harbor to come, we resist them tooth and nail. We fight with almost anything or anyone who seems to oppose us, struggling in vain to control or avoid what we see as punishing us. And for this opposition we reap its result: the unconscious pain of being in conflict with life’s higher purposes.
What we fail to realize, however, is that without those opposing forces working their way in and upon us, inertia would rule the day: our nature would be unable to change. Strange as it seems, without consciously realizing our own limitations, it’s impossible for our understanding to grow; and, without higher self-awareness, we could never come to this next vital realization:
What we now perceive as painful or opposing conditions in life are secretly complementary opposites. They don’t just complete one another, they serve to perfect all of creation through each complete cycle of life and death that they help birth.
In other words, without them nothing new can be conceived. Your success depends upon being able to see that real life is secretly a single, beautiful movement incapable of contradicting itself. The more you understand how this one truth includes everything that happens to you, the more you’ll be willing to let go and enter into the flow of even your most unwanted moments!