4. Everything and Nothing (G2)
Or The Upside Down & Downside Up
There seems to be a common sentiment throughout the world right now: nothing matters. What's the point when the world is obviously going to hell in handbasket. That deep sense of nihilism, of hopelessness, of why try? The downward spiral into Incoherence where nothing makes sense and it's all upside down.
We are living in the Upside Down. We have a front row seat at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Or would his tea party be the way it should be? The Rightside Up. The Downside Up. It doesn’t really matter, because we’re all mad here, aren’t we?
But if it doesn’t matter, then why do we care? Our apathy is only a means to protect ourselves from hurting from just how much we really do care. That it hurts too much to put our attention on, so it's easier to check out. To not let it matter. And if we do not let it matter, it ceases to be matter in our current reality. Ignorance is bliss.
And with this certain death of hopelessness of things ever really mattering, this terminal illness that only allows us X amount of time to live… Does that not give us a sense of liberation? Hmm…nothing matters. Quite a sense of freedom in that. If your days are numbered, would you not live it to the fullest? If nothing truly mattered?
Two sides of the same coin. The light and the dark side of Nihilism. The two sides of Nothing. Of caring not at all and not caring at all.
We tend to think of Dualities as the Black and White between two things. The this or that. And the duality of Nothing is Everything. The Black to the White. Yet as we already saw, Nothing already has a Black and a White side. How does this math work again?
Nothing has two sides. Everything has two sides.
So wait a minute. Nothing mattered. It actually mattered that none of it mattered. It gave us the freedom to live fully and experience all that life has to offer. Doesn't that inherently mean that everything also matters then? And if everything matters, then how do we choose what to put our attention on? What do we prioritize? How do we even get started each day if EVERYTHING matters?
Because WE make it matter. We [are conscious] matter. It becomes matter if it matters to us.
And when we remember we’re really only tiny specks shooting through space on a floating rock, spiraling around a hot orb of light, it almost becomes comical how seriously we take it all. WHY does any of this matter?
The Nothing and the Everything balance each other - the Yin to the Yang, a small dot of Nothing in the Everythingness to soothe the gnawing overwhelm of anxiety when Everything piles up all at once, and a smidge of Everything in the Nothingness to remind us that we simply have to choose what matters.
What is worth putting our attention on at any given moment. Between the multitudes of decisions we have to make, every single day. Do the hard thing or the easy thing? Do the yoga or sleep in? Drink the water or the wine?
In this game of life, we are what we eat. We become the one we feed. The version of ourself. The White Wolf or the Black Wolf. The light or the dark.
And it's never as simple as just black or white.
We've already seen that there is a negative and a positive to each aspect of Nothing and Everything.
So let's do that math:
- Nothing vs Everything (0 x 1)
- Negative vs Positive (- x +)
- Positive Nothing vs Negative Nothing (+0 x -0)
- Positive Everything vs Negative Everything (+1 x -1)
So now, with something we initially thought there were only two sides to one coin, we now see there are really 8 sides to 4 coins!
That is shifting perspective from binary to multi-dimensional comprehension through pattern thinking. No wonder we're in the Upside Down, silly us thinking there are only Up and Down. Can we not make the Upside Down into the Downside Up simply by shifting our perspective a bit?