"Only that which is the other gives us fully unto ourselves" Sri Yogananda

"Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence."~William Blake

Buddhist philosophy teaches that it is the otherness of mara, our inner struggles, the adversity of our natures, that allows us to truly become a stronger individual, to achieve our bhodisattva nature and eventually our buddhahood. When we harness the darker side of our existence, the impatience, the weaknesses, and the anger and flip the mirror we can bring out the best and strongest self.I find that a comforting and universally true principle. Shakyamuni wasn't the Buddha for nothing. When we apply this philosophy during the roughest moments in our daily lives it allows us to rise above what Latter-Day Saints call the "natural" man or woman. We can take that which most frustrates, overwhelms, and challenges us about our own habits and traits and turn them into tools of self-discovery. We can be refined like gold through the fiery furnace of our own weaknesses and unavoidable obstacles life perpetually places in our way. And through the dual nature of existence,like Blake so poetically described it, through the full experience of love and hate or reason and energy, we can truly know the capacity we have to strive for the highest within us.