Frida Kahlo, Roots (1943)
Seven Open Secrets About This Journey
1. The root system of the universe is incomprehensibly intricate.
2. Life, truth and beauty all share the same root with their opposites. You cannot experience any of them without experiencing their opposites. Cut off one stem of the root and you stunt the other
3. All is transitory. Without this utter transitoriness, life would not cherish itself. Without this utter transitoriness, beauty could not achieve the exquisite, nor truth arrive at the unspeakable.
4. At every twist and turn, you are given a choice between the pairs of opposites.
5. But it is not really a choice. Because you cannot choose until you have felt life, truth and beauty for yourself; and once you have felt them, you cannot choose their opposites. (Even if from within a twisted psyche you think you might choose the opposite, you are really only choosing what you imagine to be a nobler life, a deeper truth or a greater beauty.)
6. You cannot fully experience life, beauty or truth from within the polarity of the opposites; you can only fully experience them from the root, from the source itself.
7. The pairs of opposites are cooked away in the brew made from the great root at the source of all. When you sip that brew, the doors of perception are opened wide, and you experience life, truth and beauty from the indivisible point at which the transitory and the eternal are resolved into a timeless circle.
-- Richard Power
