Embracing Contradiction

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes."

Walt Whitman

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

One of the things that is most fascinating about life is the fact that we as human beings are a bundle of contradictions. We sense a stable core at the center of our beings, but are carried away by a thousand passions. We want to conform to a singular view of Life, but Life itself keeps showing up as a many-sided jewel. Every truth implies its opposite. Oneness keeps shapeshifting into multiplicity and multiplicity continually transforms into Oneness. Eternity is in love with time, and time forever seeks to partner with the Eternal. Light cannot reveal itself without some degree of shadow, and vice versa. "We are gods with anuses," as cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker famously declared. It's no wonder that quite a few indigenous tribes celebrate a trickster side to the Creator. Raven, Crow, Coyote, Iktomi the Spider. The best thing we can do is throw our heads back and LAUGH at the wonder of it all :)

Photos: (Top) Rose Crown / Queen's Crown and West Glacier Lake; (Middle) Subalpine Arnica, a quartzite block, and Medicine Bow Peak; These two photos were taken in Wyoming's Snowy Range on August 22-23, 2015; (Bottom) Subalpine Aster (Erigeron) and Notchtop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 25, 2015