What My mistress told me about enlightenment

by Alan Steinborn

The hilarious joker and great American composer, Duke Ellington, was famous for many things.
He was famous for his compositions. He was famous for keeping a big band of renegade jazz musicians
together for over 50 years! Heck, he is even famous for once having barely enough money to split a
hotdog between him and 4 of his band members one cold and lean night in New York City in 1925!

He was famous for all this and much more, but it was something
he once said that makes him famous for me!

The Duke is famous for exclaiming to his exhausted
wife: "I have a mistress. Music is my MISTRESS!"

That is something me and Duke have in common.

Music has been my mistress my whole life!

I had my first Beatles 8 track at age 4 and I haven't stopped since.
For the past 15 years I have played sax with as much passion as is
in me and I intend to keep it going!

My mistress, like all great love affairs, has provided moments of robust JOY.

One such JOY moment happened a few days ago.

Read this story carefully!

This story holds a key to YOUR robust JOY!

It happened after a two week span of NO SAX!!!

I picked up my sax and started to play. I played for about 15 minutes.

Then I began to notice something amazing!

The sounds of the sax were alive and fresh.

It was as if I had never heard the sax before!

Every wave of sound, every honk, every squeak was a vibrant and astonishing mystery!

That was amazing in itself, but what blew me away was even though I experienced
the music with the fresh ears of a new born baby, I was *AT THAT VERY SAME
MOMENT* a capable sax player with 15 years of experience so that I could shape
the sound the way my baby ears desired!

That got me thinking.

My skill with the sax has come from years of experience.

So how was it possible that I could hear the sax for the very first time at the very same moment???

Doesn't it seem like a contradiction?

Doesn't it seem like hearing the sax for the first time is the opposite of having
15 years of experience playing the sax?!?!?

How is it possible to be able to have seeming opposites at the same moment?

Then I realized something profound.

JOY happens whenever you experience the union of supposed opposites.

To help understand what I mean here, think about these 4 pair of supposed opposites:

1. Time and Money
2. Youthful Energy and Experiential Wisdom
3. Work and Relaxation
4. Giving and Receiving
   

Most of us aspire to bring these four pair together for our happiness and JOY.

We all would like to get the 'both/and' of these four pair.

Typically,though, what we get is not the 'both/and', but the 'either/or'.

People usually get either time or money; rarely both simultaneously.

Usually youthful energy is used on youthful folly and experiential wisdom is used up at the local barbershop!

Usually we are either at work or at relaxation. How many can say they are completely relaxed today at work?

Usually we are either giving or receiving. For many of us, life seems like a zero sum game in which to get ahead, we need to take more than we give. Of course, that is why we face many of the environmental crises we face today! And that is also why so many relationships are in turmoil.

These are just 4 examples of either/ors that we desire to be both/ands.

In fact every idea and desire has its opposite, and they ALWAYS
exist at the same time.

We suffer and not experience our INHERENT JOY when we insist on one side
of the opposite at the EXCLUSION of the other side.

We see life in either/or terms, and then we insist on having it one way over the other!

Since life is never one way or the other, but one way AND the other, this is how we create resistance,
interpersonal strife, stress, disease, poverty and all the other words that describe YUCK.

All the supposed opposite ideas and desires of our lives are like pendulums we try to make swing one way.

But life teaches us these pendulums of duality swing both ways.

For example, it will come as no surprise to you when I tell you that your body will one day die.

Yet, while most of us think it is great that we were born, how many of us feel that great
about the idea of death?

So the big question: How can we learn to embrace both sides?

I am going to be writing several newsletters on this tricky and essential topic.

The first step, however is to develop a neutral mind which simply witnesses life as it is and holds no preferences.

A simple way to develop neutral mind is to simply sit in a chair for 5 minutes a day and do nothing with no outward stimulation and let yourself think what you think and feel what you feel and by and by you will develop a powerful focus that can embrace opposites in such a way that you will begin to live out your natural power which is the essence of JOY!

As your neutral mind develops you will soak in the mystery my mistress showed me the other day. That you are a marvelous baby thriving in a fabulous mystery full of wealth unimaginable while being a functioning adult with an up to date driver's licence at the very same moment!

Please email me at alan@speaknow.biz and tell me some of the opposites in your life that you would like to bring together!

If you see the benefit of creating an unconditional/all conditional JOY in your life check out our services to accelerate and deepen your progress greatly!

Yours in Presence,

Alan Steinborn

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Alan Steinborn, All Rights Reserved, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006