Oneness of Day and Night

(Posted on July 19, 2013 by David McMillin)

[NOTE: While serving as mentor for an online verion of "A Search For God" study group and working on the Day and Night lesson, a class member shared a powerful meditation experience involving various dualities/polarites and came to the blissful experience of Oneness in the eternal now. Here is my reflection on that experience and how it relates to the central theme of the lesson. – David McMillin]

… thanks for sharing your meditation experience for this lesson. Certainly, it is a fascinating and challenging one, from various perspectives. I really appreciate how you have taken the lesson to heart and wrestled with it in your inner being.

Interestingly, the affirmation for this lesson does address both the OUTER and INNER experience of life and how they each have a role to play. The OUTER experience involves the DAILY activities in the world for material sustenance; the INNER experience of the soul each NIGHT involves communion with its spiritual Source through sleep and dreams. A wonderful rhythm for the soul, like breathing out and breathing in.  Consider this explanation of the lesson affirmation that was provided to one of the members of the first study group:

(Q) Please explain to me the affirmation given in this lesson [Day and Night], that I may be able to apply it in my activities better.
(A) As in the material life there is the day, in which the activities of the body are put in motion to supply the material things of the earth, and – as shown – such materials add to the abilities of the body to carry on in its daily activities, through the sustenance gained by the attitudes of self in the daily activity; so it is seen in the same association and connection that the night becomes the period of meditation, rest, associations of those ideas through the activities of the day; which are the gift not of self, not of self's abilities, but from the source from which mercies, truth, love, knowledge, understanding, arise. (262-55)

As with many of the lessons in the course, a theme is repeated and elaborated in subsequent lessons much like octaves on a piano. This particular lesson echoes the Oneness theme from a previous lesson. The affirmation and its explanation emphasize Oneness – that Day and Night, both symbolically and practically, each have their rightful place in human experience in the Search For God. As you have observed, this is true for many of the experiences of life that appear as opposites or dualities. Ultimately all of life is part of the Whole that is God – in the eternal now, as you have experienced it in attunement through meditation. Blessings, Dave