Yinfinity

To-day I get to talk about Yin and Yang.  We’ve been learning about them in class lately, an “Eastern Theories” class at a massage therapy school.  Wikipedia describes it as “a method with which one can describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.”  This is the same way it’s presented in my class.  And it’s driving me SO crazy.  I need to say something, so I’m saying it here.  The problem is that while balance is nice to have in some areas - like homeostasis in health or gender percentage in population – most of the things that are listed as polar opposites under Yin and Yang (and have been for thousands of years based on observation and research) are NOT ACTUALLY interdependent like they mean.

Firstly, it’s almost impossible to give the qualifications for what makes one thing Yin and the other Yang.  You can kind of get a general idea after awhile, as values assigned to Yin tend to be darker like night, and colder, like… uh.. cold… and values assigned to Yang tend to be brighter like day and warmer, like heat.  Here’s a few examples:

Yin                                                      

Darkness

Moon

Feminine

Shade

Rest

West (Sunset)

North

Earth

Right

Flat (like Earth)

Matter

More material/dense

Evil

Yang

Light

Sun

Masculine

Brightness

Activity

East (Sunrise)

South

Heaven

Left

Round (like Heaven)

Energy

Non-material, rarified

Good

See how the values in each field DO intuitively go with each other, such as light going with dark and so forth.  And you can also intuitively guess what MIGHT be Yin and what MIGHT be Yang.  But then, some of these values seem slightly more arbitrary, such as masculine being Yang while feminine being Yin.  At a glance, it seems like fitting females into the Yin category makes them darker or evil.  But it doesn’t actually say that – in fact the concept of Yin and Yang hinges on the presumption that there aught to be a balance between the values in Yin and the values in Yang.  The premise is that you can have too much of one extreme.  This is my problem.

Eastern Theories like to think that because it’s been around and taken seriously for a very long time means it’s a valid point of view.  It can be that way with intuitive things, but when it comes to categorizations of people, it's really easy for almost any idea a person invents to seem more true the longer they research it.  How can there be so many different maps of energy (Qi) fields, and so many different ways of categorizing personality and body types without them butting heads with each other?  I don't actually have an answer to that, except to say that in my experience, most people have hair, and some of it is blond.

Also, is it just me, or is it kind of a large leap to conclude that heat and electric energy means there is manipulable universal life energy? 

All things ARE made up of differing kinds of energy,in fact, and a lot of it IS manipulable.  But the TRUTH about them is only clear and evident when things are put in their proper place.  I'll continue.

Notice that the Earth is flat while Heaven is round; and also that Heaven and Earth are opposites rather than, say, Heaven and Hell.  This is because what we are actually talking about is perceivable Earth down below our feet where we can reach while bending downward at the pelvis, and the perceivable sky (where Heaven was believed to reside back then) which we cannot reach, stretching our arms up as high as we can. 

Notice next that it seems to imply that light and dark, and heat and cold are dependent upon each other.  We know through science this is not so.  Cold is an absence of heat, and you can therefore have cold without the existence of heat.  You DO want a balance here in order to exist.  But they are not equal forces.  You cannot add coldness, you can only subtract heat.  The same goes for lightness and dark.  You cannot add darkness, you can only subtract heat.  The difference here is that you don’t die in darkness.  Whole creatures live on Earth without eyes or any other way to recognize light waves. 

Notice next that it SEEMS to imply that there can’t be too much good.  What does it mean to be TOO good?  One might say “being too giving of yourself at your own expense,” or something along those lines.  I can make two arguments to this.  One is that being too giving at the expense of your self can hardly be said to be “good.”  It’s not evil, but it’s still a bad thing.  If you plugged right and wrong onto the Yin Yang list (and you could very easily) you could VERY easily accidentally get the impression just from the context that there automatically needs to be a balance between right and wrong.  But that in itself is totally wrong, as is an assumption that wrong and right are interdependent and intertwined.  I WANT to assert that right is the absence of wrong; and that we WANT the complete absence of wrong (or that’s what we aught to want if we only we knew why). 

I started to say that we want an absence of wrong because that’s what’s good for us.  But since I’m arguing against the concept of Yin and Yang within its own context, I’ve become too extreme in the direction of Yang and therefore have invalidated my own words.  Hopefully you can see why that’s a problem.  

My other argument about “being too giving of yourself at your own expense” is the life of Christ.  Christ lived and spoke more extremely in the yang in terms of good and right than I’d ever be willing to, and He proved it by being “too giving of himself at his own expense.”  He gave of Himself to the death, and then – just to push the Yang farther – He didn’t stay down.  He came back to life(yang), granted us all eternal life(yang), then ascended upwards(yang) into Heaven(yang) where He remains active(yang) in the lives of God’s children.  Furthermore, Jesus Christ paid special attention to a character most priests to-day don’t like to even touch because it puts people off: Satan.  He is called evil(yin), the father of lies(yin) and the prince of darkness(yin).  Satan, in scripture, along with Lucifer, demons, and any Antichrists, are very definitely written to be completely one hundred percent avoided.  NOT included in some sort of balance.

In conclusion to this section, balance is a WONDERFUL thing to have.  You SHOULD have a yinyang of balance of your acid/alkaline levels.  You should have just enough heat and not too much.  You should have both rest and also activity.  Moderation isn’t exactly a tight-rope walk, and it’s not a foreign concept.  But the Yin Yang concept is in no way appropriate for all things.  As in most Eastern theories I’ve encountered so far, it needs very desperately to be put in it’s place, and maybe a bit more clearly defined.  Although faith is beautiful in the absence of understanding, confusion is not welcome.

Everything needs to be put in its place.

There’s been a lesbian march here recently, following New York’s green light on gay marriage.  I remember in the good old days when bisexual girls were only bisexuals because they couldn’t get a boyfriend and wanted to do something to stand out.  Now it’s a political movement and bisexual girls are being motivated by a mixture of wanting to be open minded, wanting to be supportive, and wanting to be contrary.  Throw in a little crowd mentality, why not?  Some people are actually attracted sexually to their own gender.  Some people are even sexually attracted to both.  Hell, some people are attracted to animals.  I've seen the internet.  I'm not ignorant.  I went to lunch at a friend of mine's house who is a lesbian, lovely girl, and their cat started raping the other cat.  She said "a lot of animals are naturally homo."  I said "And apparently also rapists."  We had a good laugh over that.  Lesbians are hot.  Rapists are not hot. 

Some people who claim any level of homosexual tendencies do not actually have that in their nature and are choosing this path.  I'm not speculating one way or another on a possible genetic predisposition for gayness, I'm only saying flat out that sometimes it's very obviously been a choice on an individual's part.  When scripture mentions homosexuality, it only mentions it as an action - not as a character trait, orientation, or lifestyle. 

I don't have a personal problem with any of it, per say, not any more than I have a problem with masturbation, But I DO have to wonder what effects identifying with a bedroom habit (sex) might be having on the individual psychology.   The person whose entire life purpose at a given moment is based on an inherently sexual value allows this to be their master.  If you haven’t already read my blog about masters, you probably should. Sex, and all it's categories aught to also be put in their place as they make a very flimsy god.

As a Christian, it’s important to me that all my brothers and sisters on this planet meet our Father, the creator God, so that they know how to follow me Home.  It’s rather difficult when the established church feels that gay people should be straightened out BEFORE being saved.  Bad move.  Even after a person gets lead to Christ, the rest of his sinful behavior (and EVERYONE has sinful behavior, don’t kid yourself) is between them and God.  Salvation is priority here, no matter what.  What if a guy is a serial killer?  Salvation first.  We have a limited perspective on what death is, so we can't speculate on the severity of the crime of murder, and anyways, it's the authorities and God's job to convict them for murder, and it is Jesus and the rest of God's children to help him find his way Home.

Being open minded is good for innovation, but can be be deadly by way disintegration.  A child can ask you to be open minded about staying up till twelve.  A murderer can ask you to consider his point of view on why the neighbor had it coming.

Someone somewhere has got to use their head.  It matters more that something is True than that it is useful or interesting, and the truth doesn’t lie in a synthesis of truth and lie.  Not all paths lead to the same place – that’s silly.  Going towards the sun leads to the sun, and going away from it leads you away from it.  There is no being open minded about it.

It’s good news, you know, that the right is the absence of wrong.  It means that the world was created good, and what is good will be all that remains in the end. 

Here’s a good one:“if God can do anything, can he create a boulder that even God can’t lift?” 

Here’s the answer: “Obviously if God can do one seemingly paradoxical thing by creating a boulder even he can’t lift, there is nothing stopping him from doing another seemingly paradoxical thing by lifting it.”

--J.m. Gatewood

Christian