Balance in the Force

It’s in the giving and the receiving.

The following is adapted from a talk I gave at Unity Lincoln (Nebraska) on August 7, 2022.

You might recognize the image above. It’s the Yin and Yang symbol

The Yin and Yang originated in China and literally means “dark-light” or “positive-negative.” The yin is the dark/negative and the yang is the light/positive.

When I first encountered the symbol, I had a consciousness of duality. I thought “dark” meant sinister and evil. Negativity meant pessimistic thoughts or sorrowful emotions. The light meant love and goodness.

In short, I thought the symbol meant that life is equal parts good and bad. And that there was some bad even in the good and some good even in the bad. in the words of the theme song of a 1980s tv series, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life.”

Well, as years went by I realized I was factually wrong about the meaning of the yin and yang. According to the (hopefully accurate) Wikipedia, the symbol “describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another