Parallel Paths and Polar Opposites …

Have you ever had the thought that just maybe there are people around us who are living parallel paths to our own? That perhaps they, simply by living their own lives, grant us an opportunity, to see the choices we did NOT make, the paths we did not take?

I have had someone who has lived mostly on the periphery of my life who has done a beautiful job of playing that role for me, and for her, I am eternally grateful.

This dear friend, my heart/soul sister, has taught me so much, just through giving me the opportunity to observe that part of me that she represents to me. Through her, even from a distance, I have been able to observe “me” as if I had ventured down her path instead of my own.

Because we are alike in so many ways; her path has beautifully, sometimes eerily, reflected my own, with so many similarities in common such as family dynamics, and our work in the world, and yet we are, in many ways, exact opposites.

I had  the chance recently to visit with my friend after an eighteen year separation. It was immediate and palpable between us, the presence of our ‘forever’ connection, we both commented on the feeling, as if it had been only yesterday since we were last together – the sense that no matter how many miles or years may have come between us, nothing had changed in our deep love for and comfort level with one another. Yes, it was as palpable as ever, and so “weepingly sweet,” to be together for a few minutes again after so many years apart. (Although thanks to facebook and internet, we have been able to stay somewhat connected.)

And yet, within moments of our sweet reunion, we were at it again, with that lighthearted sort of oppositional banter that exact opposites often resort to with one another. We are indeed SO alike in our differences!

Starting with our physiques, my tall angularity stands in stark contrast to her soft, small, ultra-feminine frame and provides the first clue of exactly just how opposite we are. We are both aware of our polarized paths and talked about it that very evening over Thai food – marveling over how polar opposite we are and yet, so alike … . We spoke about how her style and teaching is much more lunar, stirring the dark waters of the ancient mysteries, and the inner psyche using ritual, and the tools that go with it, such as drums, rattles, feathers, and stones, as compared to my more solar and masculine, matter-of-fact approach.

While she works with the dark feminine intuitive powers within the psyche, I work with the mind, unveiling our unhappy beliefs and learning concrete, palpable tools and basic guiding principles to help us align with Reality and the way things are.

There is no judgment here. I am not saying one is better or worse, one right, the other wrong … just that they are simply opposite approaches, styles, ways of being.

How lucky am I to have someone in my life so like me in many ways, and yet so different … someone who can model for me my opposite self!

I am reminded of some recent research in physics I read about. Evidently it has been established through experimental research that every particle in the human body has an equal and opposite anti-particle. The two, particle, and anti-particle, are identical except that they are exact opposites. The particle stays home (in the body), while the anti-particle travels out into the energy field playing the role of a sort of “look-out,” and a messenger.

This “messenger's” job is to constantly report its findings out in the field back to its particle back home. AND here’s something really cool – they have found anti-particles as far as a football field away from their particle opposites in the body! Think about the implications of that energetically speaking!

We are made up of millions of these particles, paired up with their roving, data-carrying, anti-particles, who are busily traveling out, creating an energetic field that radiates out, who knows how far away from us, that is constantly relaying messages through electrical impulses back and forth to us “faster than the speed of light.” We are being kept ‘energetically’ informed and ever in touch with the world around us.

In that same research it was also found that whenever we encounter another person, we exchange anti-particles with them. We literally walk away with particles of their energy in our energy field. You could say, we “take them with us.” (See I told you they can never really leave us. ;))

Perhaps this constant back and forth exchange between particles and anti-particles explains how whales and people are able to relay information to one another across continents.

Such research leads me to ponder the possibility of the role that my precious friend and I may be playing for one another…. Perhaps, like an anti-particle to my particle self (and vice-versa) it is her job, and my job for her, to allow each other the opportunity to learn not only from the path we are presently walking but, through our “anti-particle sister”, we also have the opportunity to learn from the path we did not choose.

I don’t know if any of this is true or not. I only know it brings me radiant joy to think it so. Blessings, Lynne