“In the absence of that which you are not, that which you are is not.”
When Neale Donald Walsch wrote that sentence, he had no idea what it meant. He was channeling inspired wisdom and knowledge that would become a series of books called, Conversations with God, the first one published in 1995. “With that sentence…I was introduced to the Law of Opposites,” Walsch wrote in a blog post on the Beliefnet.com. “I didn’t understand what was meant by that sentence when I first saw it come off my pen and most people with whom I have shared this wisdom do not ‘get it’ the first time they hear it.”
Once Walsch understood the meaning of the sentence, he realized that it was tremendously powerful. In his blog post entitled, The Law of Opposites, he calls it one the most illuminating statements in all the material that he gathered. “The sentence means that we live in a world of relativity. Everything here is experienced relative to something else, and when there is no ‘something else,’ there is no ability to experience what is being experienced.”
With that, it seems that God has answered the question of why there is evil in the world. Without it, we could not experience good.
Here’s God’s “voice” speaking in Walsch’s first book in the series, as he addresses the importance of opposites: “All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions—fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions—only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.”
Whether or not you believe that is really God’s voice speaking through Walsch doesn’t matter. What does matter is the message and it rings true. It’s also a message that writers and poets have written about over the centuries.
The famous 13th century poet Rumi seems to have tuned into the same insight in this refrain from a poem called Necessary Opposites.
God created suffering and heartache,
so that joy might be revealed by its opposite.
Hence, hidden things are manifest by their opposite
But since God has no opposite, He remains hidden.
As I mentioned the other day, it will be interesting to see what comes of this. We are in the process of great change, our soft underbelly has been exposed, and I fear the next few years are going to be one of extremes before we see what emerges from the fire.
I agree. I’s a paradigm shift.
Love this post!!! Truth
Hi Michelle, good to see you!
Amazing.
Walsch seems to be talking about otherness. We can’t exist without otherness.
True!