What maintains stasis is really unreconciled conflict between differences. Differences are essentially defined in terms of black and white, darkness and light, evil and good, and impurity with danger (tebhel) and purity. Resistance and complacency often lead us to believe that we are resolving and reconciling differences, but we really are not. Instead, we remain in conflict with the tension apart from reconciliation resulting in fear which leads to anxiety and other emotional and psychological issues.
Somewhere in Plato’s cave, when we are at the bottom or even the middle of it, we see ourselves only there for we see the delusion of light (the fire behind us). Only when we climb near the top or even to the top, then we realize that the light that we saw was not the true light at all. Often when we see the true light (the sun), we are dazzled by it, and feeling pain from it will drive us back to darkness for a time depending on each of our dispositions.
(c) Copyright 2022 George Hage
Counseling From The Heart
Suzanne Deakins, Ph.D., H.W.M.