Beautiful Balance~ Why opposition is needful
Beautiful Balance Watercolor by Nikki Andreasen Beautiful Balance Why opposition is needful Ancient Chinese philosophy teaches that for life to be balanced and whole, there is a need for opposition. They call this Yin and Yang: Two opposing and contrary forces mirrored to create a whole. Each side of the whole is a complete contrast to the other: a light and a dark, a positive and a negative, a coming and a going, a living/growing and a dying. Though obviously opposite and contrary, they are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they each give rise to the other as they interrelate to one another. You can’t have one without the other. I had never really given the Yin and Yang symbol much thought until I started to learn more about it and to understand the role of Yin (what I previously might have considered as the “bad” or “dark” side). At a meditation course I attended, I learned that nothing is fundamentally bad nor good