• Conflict
• Virtuosity
• Strength
• All Is Right
• The Magical
• Being Free
• The Strange and Beautiful
• Alone and Accompanied
• To The Extent
• Fantastic and Rational
• Possibility from Impossibility
• A View on Existence
• Contradiction as Distinction
• Taking Together
• Underneath Not
• Choice, Self and the External World
• Context as Community
• Doing Yet Discovering
• Coercion
• Reality as Naming
• An Experiment in Distinction
• A Thing Can Be Multiple Things

“Not.”

A single concept that creates multiplicity.

From “Not,” through its distinguishing opposites, its introduction of duality, springs “All that is”—“Everything” in all its multiplicity.

It also introduces contradiction.  From “Everything” and “Not” comes “That which is not,” the opposing border of “Everything”.  A contradiction to be sure, for if “That which is not” is not “Everything”, it is itself a distinct thing and therefore to be counted among “Everything”.  We must accept this contradiction if we wish to conceive, distinguish, recognize, acknowledge our existence.  Contradiction is, in fact, the very stuff of all our discernment in life, for if a thing has parts their existence surely contradicts the unicity of the whole.  In fact, it may be the single most useful tool in carrying out that conception, that search for understanding.

Laozi used it to justify a Way or Path that is intended to deal with one other manifestation of contradiction: conflict.  It is a powerful idea.  By removing desire we implicitly remove the undesirable.  We become instantly powerful, inexhaustible.  The unattainable doesn't exist.

But in fact the idea does not solve all our problems as we are something, and not whatever we aren't, and therefore smack in the middle of conflict anyway.  We cannot remove our desire for nourishment, rest or love.  The ideal, like the ultimate contradiction, must realistically be defined recognizing the ideal isn't attainable.  Surely the Path cannot be spoken of, but we can look at this contradiction in the small, and see if it applies here within the multiplicity of things in our reality.

I desire to be able to travel from my house to the park instantly.  I desire this because after carrying out enriching activities at home, I wish to carry out enriching activities at the park and the activity of walking to the park isn't particularly enriching.  But I do distinguish activities at the park from activities at home, so I do desire to maintain the duality in the functions of the home and park.  So is the unobtainable nature of this desire of my own making?  In a sense I desire my own conflict in that I want a barrier between home and the park, yet I must now navigate my own barrier to appreciate it.

Can we come to terms with our own definitions and experience more proportionately degrees of dissatisfaction and enrichment, thereby removing disproportionate conflict?  Why not?  In fact this act provides understanding, while embracing the contradiction!  However, we will apply some of that proportion here, and say let's not be surprised when this path we seek will by definition have a barrier between us and it.  It is lesson one that the perfect way cannot be known.  But at least we accept it now.

If you identify yourself with the universe—become one with the universe—its actions become yours.  This inspires some degree of awe in the power thus conferred.  The power of the fifty-foot oak is mine.  The power of the hurricane is mine.  The power of the furnace of the Sun is mine.

As with the power of duality, its extent is limited by its own definition, so I cannot raise a hurricane at will as I can my right hand.  But the power can be tapped.  It is by allying yourself with the events, characteristics, effects, “Way” of the universe.  One might question how much power is received by merely allying yourself with a thing.  It can be seen to have various answers:

• All.  By being one with a thing, you are that thing.  Your power is all the power of the thing.  Your desires identical to the thing.
• Some.  As with any identifiable thing, its definition comes with some barriers that delineate what that thing is not.  So with the strength of the oak comes the limitation of immobility.
• None.  In allying yourself completely to a thing, you give up whatever nature of yourself that was once there, so you—that which is not the thing—do not possess any power at all, the thing possesses it all.

The three answers identify aspects of duality the tool.

• “All” comes from lack of distinction, thereby identifying the whole, or the mysterious, unknown source from which it comes.
• “Some” comes from distinguishing parts—identifying and naming.
• “None” is the complement of “All” and the recognition of the allied thing's characteristic of being really an effect of some other thing—being a distinction in some other context which, if at all, wields any power present.

To effect the correct proportion in the conflict in your life recognize it is all by definition.  Take your frustration over those things you have struggled fruitlessly to master only to find them master you, recognize that just as they flipped the coin from being “None” in your context to being “All” with you in their context, and apply your experience to flipping the coin on the context to which you belong.  Recognize the contradiction in it: you must yield control to be in control.  Recognize this isn't a mystery designed to woo you into complacency, but a genuine contradiction.  An impossibility.  Life is an impossibility and yet it exists.  There is no reason, choice or hope, and knowing that you have no control anyway, take that there is no answer why, stop and ask: why not?

Virtuosity.  It is the real object of any introspection.  We seek grace, comprehension and effect.

Effect and virtuosity are here taken to mean the same thing.  We want to be effective, and to have an effect, a direct operative effect on our world.  As Paganini was a virtuoso of the violin—he had great effect with his instrument—so would we like to be virtuosos of our lives.  To Laozi the virtuoso of life was the sage.  Just as “virtue” has taken on too lofty of connotations for us to use in place of “effect”, so has the word “sage”, so we will use “virtuoso”, or simply “a person with great effect”.

What are some ways we can effect our virtuosity?  Let us recap our understanding of the origin of things:

1. The unidentified mysterious whole is that in which things are part and which is, of course, unknown to any things part of it.
2. Through distinctions, that is naming or identification, multiplicity and the character of our lives is born.  The simplest of these distinctions, “Not”, or “that which is not ___”, is present in every distinction.  So it is with simple comprehension that a whole is shown to be divided.
3. It would appear much of the substance of our lives is entirely of our own conceptual creation, though there is some mysterious source from which we emerge and, while not perfectly knowable, is evidenced by those distinctions we cannot simply conceptualize away like desire for rest, nourishment and love.
4. It is our thesis that contradiction itself is the essence of distinction.  Distinction demonstrates the separateness of some thing that presumably is not separate, hence the need for demonstration.  Some might say that in this sense the distinction is not contradictory, but the thesis is that in fact contradiction itself is not contradictory.

It is important to note here that we are really talking about the most unyielding problems in our lives, and those which we can address through our understanding.  There is of course a degree of more traditional virtuosity a person can obtain to remove some conflict from his or her life—say by learning better grass caretaking techniques!  But we assume those alternatives have been exhausted before the approaches outlined here are attempted.

Resolving conflict is great.  But, while one might be tempted to think all enhancements to our effectiveness might be phrased in terms of resolution of conflict—finding solutions implies the resolution of problems, one might assume—but to all things correspond those things which they are not, and therefore, not all things are aspects of conflict.  How can we become stronger, better, faster in ways other than resolving conflict?

Simplification.

It is one thing to juggle a problem and hate doing it, it's another to suddenly realize one was contentedly, unwittingly juggling an unnecessary problem and to suddenly find the freedom of not having to.  By simplifying our lives we free ourselves to focus and be more effective in what remains.  As we look back at our four points we see immediately where the most basic and effective means of simplification is going to come from: erasing of distinction.  Going backward from a separated multiplicity to the whole source.

An obvious example of simplification is recognizing when you are digesting irrelevant information.  The information is just more distinction of a whole whose parts are never going to have any impact on what you are using it for.  When you ask for directions and the person you ask fills you in on the history of the landmarks along the way, you may be inclined to politely nod in interest, but you will do yourself a favor if, as the directions become complicated, you focus less on remembering the history and more on the landmarks.  This is hardly a surprising piece of advice.  What is interesting is that this very commonsense idea is an example of the traditionally “lofty” goal of becoming one with the universe and leaving duality behind.

A more useful example brings us back to the topic of conflict.  Not our own this time, rather the conflict of others.  Given our new proportion in handling conflict by design—that is conflict we create by our own definitions—we are now in a position to filter out irrelevancies in the machinations of those around us.  Where another person is caught up in the details of a conflict that is completely unavoidable, and therefore hardly worth protest from our point of view, we can step back an only invest as much excitement in the situation as is necessary, even while we may not be able to convince our friend of the same possibility.  And if we can help our friend out, we may just simplify our own lives even more.

A profound example of simplification is recognizing that distinction always includes the essence of “Not” or “Complement” and that an object and its complement are identical in all ways except their opposition to each other.  Sound tautological?  Perhaps paradoxical?  Let us look at this in a couple other ways.

Certainly one has to agree a thing and its opposite are equal in complexity.  That they have a predictable relationship.  When we look at the complex of reality sprawling out before us, we can be aided in recognizing where the contours in definition lie.  Where two phenomena are simply the opposing implications of a distinction in a larger whole.  So with the protection of a locked door comes the possibility of being locked out.  So with the existence of wealth comes the existence of poverty.  So with the existence of good comes bad.  So with every move of some object from one position of one advantage to another with a different advantage comes a change in the disadvantages of the that same object.  When seen as simplification, duality takes the form of a conservation principle, similar to, and perhaps a generalization of, the principle of the conservation of energy.  A certain calm can be afforded an individual who, though still accountable for strategic and tactical details, knows not so much has changed on the playing field of life as may at first appear on each passing event.

Perhaps most profound of all in the simplification of understanding accorded by duality the conservation principle, is that the world is what we are not.  You are you and the rest is what you are not.  That means the world is no more and no less complicated than you.  The world has a predictable relationship to you.  This most drastic of realizations might seem to afford the most drastic sources of virtuosity.

Perhaps.  But then with every change in our lives, including our effect, comes the complementary implications of that change, perhaps preventing as much from changing as one might expect.  But in some sense, you already are the ultimate virtuoso, since reality is defined in exact corresponding response to you.

Strength—we desire it.  It enhances our virtuosity.  It enables us to achieve other of our desires, or fend off other impositions on us.  It really isn't possible not to want it, for even if all we seek is peace and tranquility, we still seek to impose a condition on our environment.  When we seek the most humble and sharing of strengths or even seek not to seek at all, we still seek advantage in our particular goals.  Recognizing its inevitability, we unabashedly begin our quest for greater strength.

Here we explore an approach to attaining strength that takes advantage of our understanding of life as born from distinction.  First we take a moment to define strength and identify a few of its characteristics.

While there are many concrete definitions of strength, we will use the most basic and abstract definition.  This will make our investigation easier and yield the most universal and extensive of results.  Strength generally refers to a degree of effectiveness controlling the environment, and the essence of control is choice, so we will here take strength to mean access to options—to having choice.

Strength as choice, looked at through the duality lens, points us directly to several other definitions: weakness and exertion.  The opposite of choice is limitation, that which is already chosen.  So the opposite of strength, weakness, is limitation.  And if an unmade choice is a strength and an option already chosen is a limitation, then the act of choosing is exertion.  As a brief demonstration that even the more concrete examples of strength boil down to choice, take the weightlifter.  The weightlifter certainly has the option of moving large masses off the ground, while most of us have no such choice.  And exertion limits even the strongest weightlifter's choices in this same regard.

We will not be surprised that duality has imbued all choice with limitation.  As was already pointed out, making a choice clearly removes the degree of freedom held when the option was still available.  And though we hope a good choice will introduce more options, having any, let alone more options comes at a price.  Keeping options entails not exercising them, and both the maintenance of their availability, say working out to keep our biceps steely, and the restraint from exercising them, say saving our energy before the big competition, are limitations on our lifestyle.  In the case of the seeker of tranquility, it is likely that the only tranquility in store for the seeker is contingent on a bit of strife.  If tranquility could really be guaranteed to remain uncontested, its incontestability would certainly appear tyrannical from any context in which peace and tranquility was not previously at issue, and some objection would be expected.  In general, the maintenance of an option is itself a limitation.  And so we again find ourselves seeking proportion, this time in the strength we acquire.  With this understanding in mind, let us get on to the business of acquisition.

To the extent we wish to increase our strength—enhance our effect—we first recognize the only options we seek are ones we as of yet do not have.  Not having them appears as a limitation imposed on us.  In Conflict it was recommended that when confronted with lack of choice we turn the tables on that which imposes on us.  Do we have this choice?  In Virtuosity we said “we” are what we are and “the world” is everything else—that we and our reality are opposites, mirror images in one-to-one correspondence.  So, with the usual contradiction attendant, it would seem we do have the choice.  By changing ourselves the mirror image that is our world will change in correspondence.  Change us, we change it.  Change it, we may change its impositions on us, finding we have choice over our seeming lack of choice after all.

The interesting thing here is that in turning the tables on the world and its imposition on us, the fact that the world is our opposite turns out to require that we give up our strengths to remove its strength in limiting us.  In this paragraph we will detail how that happens.  We wish to transcend a contradiction.  In wishing to increase our strength we wish to end weakness.  In other words, we wish to have a choice over not having a choice.  Let's not argue over weather this is possible, but observe that to the extent we can accomplish this, i.e. do have the choice to end this imposition, the limitation must be of our own creation.  If we have any influence, the limitation must not actually be externally imposed, but rather the result of a choice of our own.  This gives us some power on a case by case basis—we may be able to identify the offending choice, and change it.  But more importantly, it tells us that the seemingly contradictory advice of gaining strength by relinquishing it actually makes sense.  The world is defined in terms of ourselves, including our choices, and when we relinquish our options we relinquish their restraint.  Now all that remains are those choices we do not have the option of relinquishing, the existence of which is in clear evidence around us.  A person caught in the midst of a natural disaster certainly cannot reach safety simply by changing his or her choices.  Some limitations certainly seem inevitable, as is exemplified in the paradox that the freedom obtained by relinquishing options and their attendant limitations must have its own set of limitations.

Every once in a while our observations are eerily contradictory.  But every now and again they make an eery amount of sense, as does this one.  Relinquishing options enhances our inexhaustibility.  We wish to maintain strength, so a good approach would be to do away with exertion, or in other words, attain inexhaustibility.  The trick here is to do this in a non-defeatist way.  Sure, if I give up all desire, I will never fail to fulfill my desires, but there are no new options presented in this situation.  We need to relinquish unnecessary desires.  We need to save our energy.  We need to put ourselves in a position where our decisions do not all require sacrifice.  We need to stop working from positions of disadvantage.  If that means giving up some strengths already achieved, so be it.  We should look for ways to give up things that are a struggle to maintain.  Not just anything of course.  If you are in the midst of a natural disaster, hang on until you can afford to give up your struggle.  The point is, a strength that is overly laden with limitations is not such a great strength, and giving it up with a reasonable plan for achieving strength in its place is actually not so tough to do.  And this is exactly what our understanding of strength has given us: the strength to trade what we previously clung to for a greater strength.

Our understanding places new value on our existing strengths and limitations as well as potential ones.  Revaluing the options in our lives opens new doors when we recognize the dual benefits of what we once considered weaknesses, and the dual weaknesses in strengths we once desired.  Working from a position of calm, of lack of conflict, of sufficient time, of sufficient authority, all have such great benefits that coming to accept what we once considered more meager circumstances will be worthwhile when our new strengths, and possibly, access to new heights of accomplishment are seen to be afforded us by being able to act and choose without conflict.  This revaluation shows us not just how struggle-laden strengths are less valuable than we thought, but shows us how much can be achieved with very little effort.

By doing the easy, and recognizing the reach of the easy is just as far as the reach of the difficult, we are really enhancing our strength.  It might not appear so because the allegedly weaker person next to us has the option of using the easy too.  But we truly are stronger because our neighbor has many more options to maintain and this cannot be done with easy maneuvers only so these easy maneuvers really aren't options of his.  He doesn't share our strength.  Unless we want to tip him off, which quite possibly could enhance our own strength too.

All is right—or all is good.  In order to see how all is good we will first see how all that is not good is not so bad after all.  Understanding this is essentially understanding that contradictions can be true.  Just parsing our second sentence we see solving the problem of all things not being good by recognizing all things are good is itself overcoming a contradiction.  Exploring this tricky territory is worth our while because seeing all things as good puts us in a place where just as we'd have it is just as it is.  Here no conflict is too great and our virtuosity in achieving good things is uncontested.  Here all is right.

By “right” we here mean “okay”, “intended”, or “acceptable”.  Since we are going to be reasoning in support of our conclusion about right and wrong with some discussion of true and false, something easily confused with right and wrong, we will also use “good” and “bad” to avoid confusion.  We work with contradiction as it is only realistic to do so.  One reason it is the realistic way is that things we take to be wrong appear as contradictions, impossibilities bringing out our ire that they are allowed to exist, or else things that contradict our own belief of what is right.  A second reason is simply that any real solution to this problem is begging to be disproved unless we leave things in a stasis in which bad still exists.  By virtue of our being something in particular, we are implicitly and unavoidably in conflict with all that is in contradiction to ourselves.  So, weather we like it or not, all is not good.  That we can experience it to be right, allowing the contradiction of simultaneous good and bad, can be motivated by the simple observation of where we already possess this talent in our lives, where we engage in desirable conflict.

Sometimes we work hard, grimacing and groaning as we struggle to complete and perfect our work, then finish to find ourselves very gratified.  We aren't just gratified that we don't have to work anymore.  Quite to the contrary, we're gratified at having accomplished what we did, and in fact would have grimaced and groaned much more strongly if we had been interrupted or prevented from finishing.  This suggests the way in which all can be good.  Here we have grimacing which we'd have no other way.  When a performer emotes strife, it is still a good experience for the performer.  This is good stress, good conflict.  This is not imposition in opposition to our own choices, it is the stress of a fully proportionate conflict.  This is recognizing the function of conflict in our lives.  To make this a more pervasive response to the bad in our lives, let us take a closer look at the basic mechanism behind “wrong”: contradiction.

The problematic kind of contradiction is the paradoxical kind that we will call actual contradiction.  An actual contradiction is one that isn't simply a hypothesis, but is present and true.  The existence of actual contradiction is itself contradictory but unavoidable as is evidenced by the famous Liar's Paradox “I am lying”—or more simply “this statement is false”.  Consideration of the phrase forces us to conclude either it or its opposite is actual.  There is a way to come to an understanding of actual contradiction looking at its nearby relatives, posited contradiction and seeming contradiction.  Posited contradiction is simply statement of impossible conditions—“the box is full and the box is empty,” is a statement that can clearly never be true, but is harmless enough because it is only posited, or considered.  Seeming contradiction is statement of counterintuitive conditions—“the fastest way to finish is to work slowly”.  A seeming contradiction can be true because there is no real contradiction in it, rather it is merely confusingly similar to the other forms of contradiction.  So for some tasks one makes fewer mistakes when working slowly, hence finishing the job more quickly.  However, can a posited contradiction ever be actual?  Only true things can be actual, and all false things can only ever be posited, so no, of course not.  But in a world where the positing of a phrase implies the actuality of an impossibility—a world containing the Liar's Paradox—the simultaneous answer, yes absolutely, should come as no surprise.

Let us just recap the inevitability of facing up to this issue.  There is a certain infinite regress in the Liar's Paradox.  Even when only positing it, it implies that some contradiction must be actual because:

1. consideration of the phrase forces us to ask if it could ever be true, something that itself can only be A) true or B) false, and
2. whichever the case, a contradiction must be actual, because if A) then a contradiction is actual because a person can make a contradictory statement truthfully, but if B) a person can never make this statement truthfully and so upon interpretation a person can only ever not be lying when making the statement, and again we have an actual contradiction.

Now to the contradictions that we do not experience as simple distinctions in our perception.  What about those things around us that are just plain wrong.  They should not be, and it is just unbelievably annoying that they are.  This annoyance is a definite liability in our lives.  While it may be a defense mechanism, it frequently persists when all our efforts fail, and it sometimes creates further annoyance of its own.  The obvious way to remove it without leaving ourselves defenseless is to remove our distinction of what is wrong—but keep it too.  We remember it is possible to feel conflict in a way that is proportionate, and in some sense, not wrong at all.

How can what is wrong be right?  Well, in the final context how can anything be wrong at all?  Everything is what it is.  If things are whatever is implied by the distinction that defines them, how can they be any more wrong than that which exists in distinction with them?  If all things are distinctions in the ultimate undistinguished thing we call (contradictorily) “Everything”, no thing can be any more wrong than “Everything” itself.  We see this idea in everyday life as “we are the products of our environment”.  This doesn't let us off the hook for navigating right and wrong—as we said, wrong is inevitably with us—but now we can see it in context.  Nothing is necessarily wrong in all contexts, or, there is always a context in which a thing is not wrong.  So the choice of perspective “All is right” is ours to be had.  Finding it in any one circumstance is a matter of identifying the way the impossibility in each wrong, each actual contradiction, is a matter of context.

Take those things we find wrong in ourselves.  There is a contradiction here to be navigated: how can something about ourselves be against our own concept of right?  It is us after all.  The really obvious contradiction is wanting to do something we wish we did not want to do.  If we examine both sides of the contradiction we will see why we want it, why we don't, and that any of the wrong we experience just by being in conflict can be completely set aside.  So we do not need to feel bad about ourselves that we have this contradiction, contradiction is completely normal.  At the same time the tendencies we see are also just natural extensions of our own state.  If we accept these wrongs as right, we can continue to feel them, while maintaining composure in searching for ways to remove them, possibly being more successful in that endeavor consequently.  If it is something about ourselves we dislike, rather than not “want” specifically—we do not like some physical attribute of ourselves—we still need to remember, what “we” want is about “us”, and that “us” is the person with those attributes.  Think of the consequences of success.  Becoming something we aren't is just going to give us a different set of contradictions.  Perhaps even considering this we still would consider other attributes better, but at minimum we still can consider our attributes and our opinion of those attributes as right, and not something to impede our other activities.

Tougher wrongs are to be found in those things outside ourselves.  Perhaps we have a task of accomplishing an impossible goal.  If we can get to the understanding where this impossible goal is in fact possible, certainly our problem is solved.  This goes directly to our example about choices where we needed to see the situation differently, at which time we didn't accomplish the impossible, but didn't have to anymore either.  In everyday life we might call this thinking outside the box.  We also have the benefit, without even transcending the situation by “thinking outside the box” that by accepting our task or opponent as possible or right we won't be looking for the impossible method or considering doing what we consider wrong.  We will only be looking for new dynamics which remove the conflict when it is viewed from the perspective in which it is contradictory—which is not all the time.  This, at minimum, lifts a weight enhancing our inexhaustibility.  Perhaps believing the objectionable tendency of another to be right itself just doesn't seem right.  Accepting that behavior is possibly not in us.  We can accept that and still see the transition of context between ourselves and the other.  Looked at practically we will be able, without conflict, to interact with the alternatives and recast the situation to one which both of us consider right—we will not be imposing something against that person's choices and yet will be obtaining a desired result.

Take even the toughest situation.  Someone or something is utterly destroying your world.  Certainly taking this lying down is not the thing to do, but if you really have no choice over this, your world is already destroyed.  Put the frustration aside on at least one level so you can continue to operate.  Do not accept the inevitable, it is right that you are in conflict with this particular person or thing—go ahead and be in conflict.  But feel it proportionately.  Let go of what you do not have and move forward with what you can create.  Will you be successful?  We can't say, but regardless of the situation, you will be composed, and you will possess virtuosity.

Is magic real?  Being defined as the supernatural, it clearly is not natural, and so no, it is not real.  But with contradictions present in so many very real distinctions in our lives, we might expect the magical to be present in a very real sense.  Reading here before this exposition is complete, we might expect several outcomes.  In one outcome we find below a claim to real magic—yes, a person can predict the future, move an object by force of will, make things disappear with just a thought.  In another outcome we find below a claim that the beauty of a sunset is magic enough.  In the former, new opportunities are open to us because what was previously impossible now comes under consideration as possible.  In the latter the familiar objects of our lives are recast in a light that qualifies them as magic.  The former is exciting until the lack of impossibility of our new powers deflates their excitement back to the ordinary.  The latter is disappointingly already ordinary until in the course of our lives we experience a sublime moment in which a very real and possible thing strikes us as undeniably magical.  In fact we will assert both and look for proportion in the ordinary and sublime.

Correspondence will provide us our answers.  As we observed in Virtuosity, we can gain virtuosity, effect in our world, by recognizing the implication that opposites are in direct and predictable correspondence to each other.  Distinction being the recognition of where one thing is not another, we can take all implication and consequence to be exactly the prediction correspondence enables.  Here we will explore the implications of our conception of the possible.  When we ask what are the implications of an ordinary or magical act and find that they coincide we may see where the magic is real.

Witnessing this is the easiest of them all, because we all do it all the time.  If we couldn't predict the future we could hardly expect to walk for lack of knowledge as to where the ground will be when our foot falls next.  The examples are endless and increasing in impressiveness: predicting the trajectory of a ball with basic physics, predicting the arrival of a train with a schedule, predicting the actions of a familiar person, predicting our own course in life.  As to the fantastic kinds of prediction—predicting the time of our greatest crisis so that we may avoid it—are they real?  Well, who is to say they aren't?  Or rather, is it really relevant?  In the short term, simply looking both ways as we cross the street can be seen to save our lives on a regular basis.  In the long term circling in of tragedy, if one did predict as a child something precarious in his or her future, certainly that foreknowledge would have changed that person's behavior turning a grave prediction in to something that ultimately turned out to be just plain wrong.  How often do we have concern about future events that never come to pass?  They may just as well have been true predictions that we made the most of.

The same sort of reasoning applies to other forms of the magical.  If I concentrate hard enough can I move the sugar jar in front of me?  Funnily enough, modern physics actually allows for the possibility of just about anything.  There is a non-zero probability of even the wildest of events.  Therefore there is a non-zero probability that every time the sugar levitates it is immediately following my concentration on doing exactly that.  But that's really not what we're talking about here.  What we are saying is certain everyday powers, available to us all to create with high probability, correspond to the magical.  Do we expect that these powers be unexplained?  No, if we could really levitate on demand we would recognize a new real force and define it as exactly that which results from our concentration on levitation.  Further, if we had control over the motion of an object with mere thought wouldn't we simply classify that as muscular impulse—that the object we move is an extension of ourselves?  Coincidentally, we do have the power of will over matter.  We move our bodies at will, lifting our arms to take the sugar.  We exercise our vocal cords at will and ask our table guests to pass the sugar.  Our understanding and manipulation of our environment is that force.

Of course we can make some things disappear.  We can make our chosen distinctions disappear.  Can we make something more substantive disappear?  In Conflict we implied that the park is really only a distinct physical thing exactly because we distinguish specific function in it as opposed to other places in our lives.  Can we make the park disappear?  Aside from the possibility we've left open in all our discussions that we do not have final say over all the distinctions in our lives, and therefore possibly not over the park, a more compelling reason for our not commonly being able to make the park disappear is that it functions for a lot more than strolling and relaxing.  If the park really did become completely irrelevant, one certainly might question whether it exists at all.  But other of our distinctions ensure its relevance, for example through its function for people directly or indirectly in our lives and therefore for us.  And along the lines of reasoning we applied on prediction, who is to say the changes in our physical lives are not in fact application of our prestidigitatorial skill?  When I move my arm, am I making it disappear from one spot and making it reappear in another?  In fact, if the world is that which I am not, when I simply move from one room to another, which party changed, the room or me?

Perhaps this example lacks the truly exciting sense of magic.  When I move my arm or the entire Earth below my feet they do not reappear in completely unrelated places.  Can we say though that the fact that they only move in such predictable ways is exactly what characterizes them as physical things?  The supposedly non-physical things such as ownership or destination certainly change in the apparently unconnected ways that the location of a rabbit does in a magician's act.  When people transfer ownership on the condition of the roll of a pair of dice, that recognizable thing, ownership, does change hands in an essentially unpredictable way.  Does choice of destination, whether a favorite place for recreation or immediate stop for supplies, qualify as a thing that I can move to disparate places?  If a physical thing such as mass is recognized by the force it exerts, when I change my choices thereby changing where my strength lies, does the disparate object of the force of my strength indicate a disparate change in a physical thing?

We can hardly expect to identify in words what it is to be beautiful or sublime, but when it feels magical some part of it is putting us face to face with impossibility.  When we see come into existence as if from nowhere something that has great meaning to us it should not come as a surprise that we experience at least a bit of shock if not an actual moment of sublimity.  When what was once an ordinary collection of clouds, sun and horizon becomes something new, a sunset containing within it its own patterns and interrelations, we see the appearance of something that wasn't there, yet was all along.  It was there in its parts but became recognizable as beautiful in some paradoxical moment.

Maybe all beauty is magical.  When a person says something beautiful, are they simply making possible for you something that was not possible before, showing you a distinction you didn't realize you were capable of drawing?  If you weren't capable before its communication to you, perhaps you are now a new person, for the same person to have and not have a capability is a contradiction.  This still does not remove the aspect of contradiction since seeing ourselves anew has the magic of impossibility all over it.  How can we be anything other than what we are, yet there we are, a new person.

It may as well be that magic is real as so much of our lives carries exactly the essence of magic.  Being defined as the impossible, it surely isn't real, but being in evidence before us, we may be forced simply to recognize in which context the magical is impossible and in which it becomes the real.  Recognizing magic as ordinary and at the same time actually present has freeing benefits of both dethroning the impossible and elevating our own capability.  So, though the question of whether we can become magicians for real may be obscured by the many contexts from which we must look at the question, just by recognizing the miracles we perform and participate in everyday we can make greater effect of the strength we already possess.

How strong are we?  How free?  Can we overcome the limitations on us?  One who has concluded that all can be seen as right and that by changing our understanding we can change our reality, would certainly be tempted to conclude that all limitations on us are of our own making.  This would secure for us triumph over all our conflicts, complete freedom.  It doesn't appear that we have exactly that conclusion at our fingers.  We see limitations around us everywhere, in the weather, the traffic, our captivity to our drives for nourishment, rest and love, and to a less inevitable extent, in certain efforts to improve our lives that never seem to come to fruition—getting the most money, getting the best of any thing.  Sometimes we don't even want the best, but just something in particular that remains elusive.  These obstacles may not be insurmountable regardless of whether these impositions are from outside or within ourselves because, even if there are impossibilities, we can see in them a paradox that provides the context freeing us of their limitation.

As was pointed out in Strength, that you can change your options is contradictory.  If we have the option to create a new option, then at least in some sense we had that new option all along.  It isn't a mere mistake of language creating this contradiction.  An option truly is not ours to choose if we don't realize we have it, though through the change of recognition we come to realize and therefore have the option.  Taking the contradiction as actual, and indicative of multiple contexts, rather than change as actual and the contradiction a mere mistaken identification of states before and after a change, we simplify our understanding of our lives.  It also shows us a way to recast our limitations as not limiting, and therefore as contradictions that point to a wider context free of those limitations.  Below we will first explain how contradiction can function without creating meaninglessness, and then look at the implications that has on our ability to achieve what we want.

Why should we take contradiction to exist, allowing language to state and us to conceive paradoxes, rather than take them as misnomers, mistaken identification of distinct things?  One compelling reason is that we can reason with contexts to disambiguate contradictions, but we can't remove contradictions from language.  As was pointed out in All Is Right, the Liar's Paradox makes contradiction unavoidable.  First, let us briefly consider why we normally cannot take contradictions to be actual.

Traditional logic and just plain common sense tells us we cannot allow contradictions to be true.  “If you are going to take something patently impossible to be true, you may as well take anything your wild imagination desires to be true, which will no doubt be great fun until the imagined facts fail to line up with reality once too often!”  In traditional logic, the discussion can be summarized as follows:

I.  If you are given two statements and told at least one of them is true,

and further told that the first statement is false,

what do you conclude?  That the second is true,

because one of the two must be and the first is not.  We can infer (c) from (a) and (b).

II.  At the same time, whenever you are given that some one statement is true,

you can take any other statement, true or not, and claim truthfully that at least one of the two is true.

We can take Statement 2 to be ‘2 + 2 = 5’, thus deducing “Statement 1 or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true”.  There is no problem here because we know Statement 1 is true, so yes at least one of those two statements is true even though ‘2 + 2 = 5’ clearly is not.  We can infer (e) from (d).

The problem with contradictions is that they allow us to conclude anything at all using these two methods of inference.  Suppose we have a statement, call it Paradoxical Statement, that is both true and false.  Given Paradoxical Statement is true, we first can infer “Paradoxical Statement or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true” following method II.  Then, given “Paradoxical Statement or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true”, which we just proved, and that also Paradoxical Statement is false, we can infer ‘2 + 2 = 5’ following method I.  We deduced from Paradoxical Statement that ‘2 + 2 = 5’.  So from any contradiction we can conclude two plus two equals five, or anything else for that matter, true or false.

When we suggest taking contradictions as actual we aren't denying the reasoning just given.  The above analysis depicts our world as having one state described by a division into two categories, true and false.  We need the above analysis to hold true.  It provides the correspondences in the duality of our distinctions.  Where we discover a contradiction for which there is no context we would choose to resolve it with, we must conclude the statement accurately reflects a categorization of false, and is merely posited, not actual.  But it should not surprise us that not everything can be categorized by any one system.  Conceptually we are perfectly welcome to and do try.  Where the categorization fails, we must choose new categories or systems, what we have been calling contexts, to cope with the phenomena encountered.  Making that choice can be seen as change itself.  The choosing of a new context in resolving our contradictions removes the degree of freedom held when the contradiction was still actual and the option of which resolution to choose was not exercised.  This closely mirrors our experience of time where a moment in time separates two distinct states, one which is already chosen and one that still contains options.  We can affect our future states, but not our past.  Though this principle applies not only to time, but anywhere we see change.

But how can we choose our way out of the toughest of our limitations?  Let us revisit for a moment our statement that reality is born of distinction.  Even if one feels this isn't a fair analysis, it seems hard to contest that for all effective purposes this is true.  Certainly all things that are distinguishable, which include all in our reality, contain distinctions, and where no distinction has been drawn by us, the relevance of any distinction we might have made disappears, for if a thing has a discernible impact on us, it is distinguished by us.  The only question that remains, are all the distinguishable features of our lives of our own making?

The originator of a distinction chooses that distinction.  The things born of distinction, the objects distinguished, it may be thought, do not have choice over their form.  The question then presents itself, are we the distinctions of another observer?  As we mentioned earlier, there are distinctive elements of our lives that certainly seem to admit no choice by ourselves.  But if reality, the place where we are, is exactly everything that we are not, there is not room for a second observer, except possibly that mirror image of ourselves, reality itself.  If there is only ourselves, can we change that border between ourselves and everything else?  Is it arbitrarily stuck where ever it fell?  If we have no choice over it, it seems to tell of another observer, but that would tell us of our distinguishing another in our our reality—a creation of our own making choices for us.  This is one of those situations that regresses infinitely.  We know certain of our own distinctions carry limiting implications of their own, and when we do not recognize the source of one of our own limitations it is exactly as if the limitation were externally imposed.  So us or them, it doesn't really matter.  Let us here consider impositions as externally imposed, and look for ways of discovering that they in fact are not, thereby freeing ourselves from them.  In our limitation is a contradiction that gives us hope of changing it.  Contradiction is visible in the question, how can we ever be denied a choice?  If a choice is denied, it is not ours to be had, and therefore not a choice.  Let us look at how we can see a choice and its denial as an opportunity to overcome limitation.

Let's analyze this by treating this outside source as a real individual.  Let's describe the individual as an opponent in a contest with us.  Suppose our opponent has imposed on us a limitation that defeats our efforts, setting up an illusory choice that no matter what course we take, comes to the same result.  We believe we have options X and Y, and make our plans on the results of choosing X.  We expect some advantage, some leverage in our life, to ensue from that choice.  We are invested in it.  We can end our frustration and see a way of frustrating our opponent, by recognizing that individual is invested in our attempting to acquire X.  It's not difficult.  It doesn't require great discipline.  We ask ourselves, if we do not have some particular option, do we really want it?  The only “option” there is Y.  We can recognize that our option is not desirable to us in the first place, thereby changing our desire for it.  When we wish for contradictions, it's not that we can't have them, but that they either present contexts that change what we want or change us into someone with new options.

When moving to create our new options, we can take advantage of the fact that ceasing to struggle with an imposition not only frustrates our opponent's dependence on our struggle, but gives us a reverse form of leverage.  We can use that leverage not to enslave our opponent to our desires, but to inform our use of the techniques we described in All Is Right to find a solution that detaches us from our pursuer, finding a sustainable solution.  In any case, by not accepting the illusion and not making our plans on X we will at least take away our opponent's appetite for deceiving us, just as we've lost our appetite for the illusion.

Why couch our description of overcoming limitation in the language of contradiction?  Because contradictions are inevitable.  They defeat any systematic approach we may choose to take.  The complications involved in the alternate approach of finding strategies with contingencies for every turn still leave open the possibility of the completeness of our approach being contradicted.  As we pointed out in Virtuosity, there is freedom gained in the observation that to every advantage possessed by one possible future there corresponds disadvantages.  So to make ourselves dependent on particular futures which do not offer a compelling possibility of composure is not so costly to decline as we might fear, just as failing to move on an opportunity for fear of unforeseen consequences denies that we may get what we really wanted, and to the extent we did not get what we wanted, that there may be as much opportunity anyway.  So to maintain freedom over our choices, accepting the inevitability of contradiction, rather than relying on fragile and easily manipulated plans provides a much more sustainable and composed approach.

We still have not answered the question of whether our limitations are of our own making.  We know certainly some are, and there is always a context in which we can view ourselves to be the source of all our distinctions, so whether or not there is another, it would seem sound advice to counter our opponent in a way allowing that individual as much freedom as possible.  We may turn out to be freeing ourselves.

Why this, why now, why?  Common questions when we are faced with seemingly arbitrary facts.  When circumstances seem particular yet not compelled by some organizing principle, we become wary that we do not understand all at play.  At the deepest level we ask, “why am I?”  We cannot answer why we are exactly what we are, but we can simplify the problem.  We will explore here how the world—“everything”—can appear to us in one particular configuration of circumstances yet still hold the amazing possibility we would expect from a concept of “everything”.  Our answer at essence is that everything, or all that is, is in fact all that can be, not just some arbitrary subset of it.  Everything includes all that could ever be conceived.  There are implications to this—understandings, freeing principles to this conception of reality.  Recognizing all possibilities exist, we no longer wonder why only this one exists as this one includes within it all others.  We lose our wariness, and we place new value on our conception while losing an unnecessary deference to seeming harsh facts restricting us.  We gain an understanding and a source of meaning in the loss of the arbitrary.

We discussed briefly in Being Free that whether we believe it to be true or not, life being born from distinction is effectively true.  We argued that all that has a discernible impact on us is distinguished by us, and all that we distinguish necessarily contains distinction.  And this leaves only distinction in our reality.  However, before we can treat distinction as a model of life with compelling descriptive power, a question must be answered.  Why this particular collection of distinctions?  We have observed there appear to be distinctions not chosen by ourselves—and that even our own distinctions contain implications that we do not choose.  These impositions from outside ourselves are in some way the real universe in which we move.  Why are they what they are?  What is everything?  What is reality?

When we ask, “what is reality”, we are compelled to answer, “all that is”.  This answer is generally dismissed as uninformative.  One asks, “‘all that is’ in distinction with what?”  Or, “then, what is not?”  And if we recognize alternatives to “what is”, how can those alternatives not exist if th