Exploring Life's Depths

There was a time when I thought meaning would arrive like a thunderclap—something undeniable, something final. I imagined an event so significant it would shake me awake, some grand revelation that would make everything clear.

And for years, I waited.

I looked for it in the looming threats of history, in apocalyptic warnings and global crises. Wars, disasters, economic collapses—each time, a part of me wondered: Is this it? Will this be the moment that finally reveals the truth?

But meaning never arrived that way.

It wasn’t waiting in some far-off catastrophe. It was already here, woven into the fabric of my own life. Not in the monumental, but in the quiet weight of everyday questions:

"Is it too late?"

"Am I on the right path?"

"Will I ever be enough?"

These questions don’t need the world to end to feel like an ending. They don’t need a disaster to shake the ground beneath us. They do it on their own—pulling at something deeper, something we avoid looking at for too long.

At first, we try to answer them by searching. We look outward—toward success, knowledge, relationships, belief systems—hoping that if we just find the right piece, everything will make sense.

And then we start seeing that the searching itself is part of the answer. It unfolds. It reveals itself slowly, in the process of how we live, how we question, how we are moving through what we do not yet understand.

And that process—the one shaping us even when we resist it—is asking something of us.

It’s asking us to see.

When we play with a child for example, its a natural exaggerating of emotions—widening our eyes in pretend surprise, deepening our frowns in mock sorrow, or laughing a little louder than we need to.

We are not just playing; Through contrast, the child begins to recognise emotions for themselves. Begins to feel them.

And life, does the same to us.

It stretches us between joy and sorrow, hope and despair, loss and renewal—not to break us, but to develop our ability to sense. To bring us into greater awareness of what it means to be.

It’s asking if we’re paying attention.

For most of my life, I chased meaning without knowing where it was to be found. The more I searched, the more I felt that the act of searching itself was keeping me from seeing.

Because at 38, I was on my knees in hopelessness. I had searched high and low, and no meaning had been given. It was a dark question to face.

The world had broken me, and I sat in the stillness of nothing.

There was no revelation. No sudden light. Just silence.

And yet—somewhere between breaths, between the weight of despair and the fact that I was still alive and still desiring—something opened.

Meaning wasn’t given to me as an answer. It was revealed in the absence of one—

It’s only obscured by us.

By our resistance. By our desire for control. By the way we give external events the power to define what we feel, rather than seeing meaning as something we participate in creating.

Left to its own devices, the mind will assign meaning to everything. It will build entire realities out of assumptions, fears, beliefs—convincing us that we know what life is, what it means, how it should unfold.

But if we were to step back, even for a moment, we’d see that life isn’t something happening to us. It’s happening within us.

Not in what occurs around us, but in how we come to see what occurs.

And that—more than anything—is what changes meaning itself.

We live in a world of opposites and the forces that shape reality are not at war with each other—they are in relationship.

And so are we.

But we don’t always see it that way.

We experience reality as fragmented, chaotic, divided—because we ourselves are divided. Our desires pull in different directions. Our understanding feels incomplete.

But if we could shift our perception, even slightly, we would see that life itself is guiding us toward wholeness.

That everything—every challenge, every question, every loss—is part of a process unfolding to develop our capacity to see.

That meaning is not something waiting to be revealed, but something we uncover in the way we meet life itself.

It asks us to show up.

It asks us to engage.

And if we can do that—if we can hold our questions without demanding immediate answers, if we can allow the unknown to shape us instead of fearing it—then maybe, we will come to understand who and what we are.

.

And maybe that’s why words are so hard to find until you’ve experienced them for yourself.

For years, I would try to explain what I was going through and never quite get it right. I’d listen to others, read books, study, but the truth that would set me free, always felt just slightly out of reach—like I could almost grasp it, but never fully hold it.

And then, slowly, life gave me the words.

Not in a single moment. Not all at once. But through the contrast of experience—through the push and pull of living in the questions.

I would like to share something with you.

A piece that began in 2021 and only completed in jan 2025.

It’s not an explanation, and it’s not a conclusion.

It’s a piece that grew with me, and for me, carries the essence of my journey, and the words to share it.

It isn’t about proving something or defining anything.

It’s about seeing.

The Alchemy of Polarity

You feel it, don’t you?

That tension. That pull. That dance.

Masculine and feminine. Light and shadow. You and me.

Opposites stretching across the universe—Yet whispering the same truth:

We are not divided.

We are not broken.

Every duality you’ve ever known is a story.

A story written in the stars, mirrored in your breath.

The sun rises, the moon reflects.

Action meets stillness.

Purpose meets surrender.

These aren’t opposites—they’re lovers,

Locked in an eternal embrace,

Two sides of the same infinite coin.

You’ve been told to choose.

Be this, not that.

Be strong, not soft.

Be logical, not intuitive.

But what if that choice was never real?

What if the fire in your chest and the quiet in your soul

Are not at war, But moving in harmony?

Look inside.

Do you feel the push to build? That’s the masculine.

Do you hear the call to dream? That’s the feminine.

They are not two.

They are one—moving as you, breathing as you, Creating as you.

The love you’re chasing?

It’s not out there.

It’s in you.

Not just the love you give,

But the love you are.

It’s the force that spins galaxies,

The energy that blooms in the smallest flower,

The bridge that connects every heart, every being, every soul.

It’s the heartbeat of the universe—And it’s beating in you.

But we’ve forgotten.

We’ve bought the lie that we are separate.

That these boundaries—self and other—Are real.

They are not real.

They are walls made of smoke.

And the moment you question them, they crumble.

The moment you step into them, you remember.

You are not just one or the other.

You are all of it.

The fire and the glow,

The action and the stillness,

The infinite wrapped in human form.

Your wholeness is not a goal; it is your birthright.

And the world needs that wholeness—Not a smaller version, not a polished version, But the fullness of who you are.

So here’s the invitation:

Embrace your fire.

Balance your energies.

Let love be your bridge.

Because everything you seek—Connection, purpose, unity—Is already here.

It is already you.

In the unity of all things, You will discover the infinite truth:

You are whole.

You are love.

You are one.

And the moment you believe that...

The world will never be the same.

Bradley J Cleary