Whatever you say "no" to goes into your shadow and comes back to haunt you with symptoms, suffering and illness. All "don’ts" are ultimately are aimed at protecting and enhancing ego survival. Even prohibitions against killing are conditional, relative and qualified. Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a season for all things.

Both "yes" and "no" are relative, conditional, qualified, mutually exclusive, finite reponses to the polarities of existence. Beyond, within and around all relative "yes" and "no" choices is the Unconditonal Infinite Yes. All finite experiences are experiences of God in form. How can we afford to say anything but Yes to the Infinite.

All "no’s" and "have to’s" arise from resistance, fear and control programming, and are symptom and illness producing. The "Yes" of life itself is unqualified, unconditional, inclusive, infinite, eternal and health-producing. All human stories are polarized and split into "I" versus "Not-I" value judgments, strategies, and perceptions. All "Not I" perceptions are built upon the belief that fear, pain and victimization are real and must be guarded against. We are on guard lest we be hurt, deprived, rejected, trapped, and separated from our Good. We believe that our Good exists somewhere outside of us and so outside forces can give it to us or take it away. And so we get into saying "no" to anything or anyone which might "threaten" our conflicted beliefs about the Good, the True and the Beautiful. When we give real power to the bad, the false and the ugly, we set ourselves up for illness.

Each person’s world is divided up into "good" and "bad" , me and not-me, pro-survival and non-survival. Yet all of our "goods" contain "bad" and all of our "bads" contain good.

When we learn to embrace all of life, we are moving toward health. When we reject any part of life, we will have pain, symptoms and illness to signify this rejection, and to invite us to re-visit, re-experience, re-vision, and transform this negativized energy into new energy forms. All negations are merely mis-interpreted gifts. In our polarized story about ourselves and the world, all problems contain solutions and all solutions contain problems. Health contains illness and illness contains health. Every perception and behavior has its cost and payoff, its disadvantage and advantage, its healthiness and its unhealthiness—because every story contains fact and fiction. Every story is polarized and incomplete. Something is missing no matter which fork in the road you choose. Duality is inevitable in the constricted world of our story of finite form.

Each side of any given polarity is finite and each side contains the

Iinfinite, and both sides together comprise the Infinite.

1. The first step is to find the infinite in the polarity with which you are identified by saying an unconditional "Yes" to yourself and to your position

   Of course, no one can do this without enlightenment, because every human being is committed to his story of I and Not I, good and evil, acceptance and rejection. Everyone is in conflict with himself. An unconditional "yes" to yourself would require an acceptance and an investigation of the meaning of your conflicts. We prefer to fool ourselves and to pretend that we have no conflicts except with others. Every conflict with another is fundamentally self-conflict. No one can give an unqualified "Yes" to his own position.

2. The second step is to find the infinite in the polarity with which you are dis-identified by saying an unconditional "Yes" to the other and to their position. No one can do this without enlightenment because we have attributed non-conflict to the other also. We tend to assume that others are either black or white. To find health we have to see the black-and-white world in the other and in oneself, without giving absolute value to either one. Whenever we give absolute value to anything finite, we are into sick thinking and sickness itself results.

When we try to live in a "yes-versus-no" world, we invite illness because "yes-versus-no" is sick, incomplete, unholy and frustrating thinking. When we move into the Yes world, we invite health because the Self and the True World Realization is whole, complete, holy and satisfying.

Several years ago I read a very comical, unholy sounding book entitled fuck, YES! by Reverend Wing Fu Fing. It is a very irreverent book about saying Yes to life all the time. Rev Fing said: "There are only two ways to live: You can be safe. Or you can be sane. We must ask ourselves, you and I, which way we will live, safely or sanely. We can only choose one, because when we choose one, the other goes out of reach for us. It becomes a past opportunity. But before we choose, we should ask ourselves this question: Where do we find yes ? Do we find it in safety? Do we find it in sanity? Where does yes live? Let me share the answer with you. Yes lives in sanity. Sanity is dangerous. The idea of being safe is an illusion, a dream. Yes, when we realize that safety is only a dream, then suddenly we are sane. When we say yes to the dangers of life, then suddenly we can live peacefully, knowing that life is going to beat the *#!* out of us as it pushes us ever onward toward our final destination, our home in the bosom of the Cosmic Yes.

When we say "NO" to a situation, we are usually trying to protect our self-concept. Almost anything can threaten our self-concept, which is a highly polarized state of mind. We have set up all kinds of resistances to protect the comfort zone in which our self-concept abides. We seem to like habits, non-change, security, and control. But growth(change) is our nature, due to the fact that we are infinite beings.

Most marriage problems are power struggles in which each person is trying to hang on to some mythical sense of security based upon getting one’s way. Each person’s "own way" is limited and restrictive, and points to a Greater Way which can be released only by a Yes. Life requires continual growth for each individual and for the relationship. Early on, opposites attract, but unless each party grows into his polar opposite side, each spouse may begin to dig in and to protect their old style of adaptation. They begin to say "no" to themselves and to each other because they are saying "no" to growth and change. The Infinite Self requires that we continually expand, stretch and grow. There is nothing to lose except self-confinement and false security. The tighter we hold onto the old the more symptoms, pain and illness we acquire.

Awareness and understanding of inner conflict and relationship conflict is necessary for such growth. Growth requires that we expand into the unknown and the unknown often pushes our fear and control buttons. Generally in our story we handle conflict poorly. Conflict is always initially internal, and if it erupts into the external, then we may try to dominate or submit in order to reduce the stress inherent in conflict. However, conflict is just the tension of rejected opposites. We have lined up with one side of a polarity as "I’ and rejected the other side as "not-I." Both sides of every polarity is I, and both sides are God in form, and both sides are symbolic of the Good, properly understood, and we can learn to say "Yes." This is tough on the "for and against" ego system, but necessary for our growth and health. Every symptom is a sign of an unexamined conflict, a defensive "no." "I can’t stand controversy" is a set up for illness just as much as "I can’t stand peace." Awareness of inner conflict is our source for growth because it shows how we have rejected and weakened some vital part of our self. We have settled for less. We have narrowed our world of experience. We have cut off Infinity.

Couples need to ask how they are alike and how they are different. All laws and rules can be reduced to one dread: victimization. All victimization dreads can be cured by self-acceptance and unconditional love. With the practice of "yes" we can reduce all conflicts to oneness, health and prosperity. Byron Katie practices the power of "Yes" by saying "I love reality."