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Learning to Appreciate the Apparent Paradox of Duality
For those who abide in presence as presence continually, there is nothing here.
For those who see thoughts and feelings and emotions for what they are, there is nothing here for you.
But for those who sometimes have clarity and sometimes get caught in the gravitational pull of thinking mind and its mental activity, maybe there is something here. Maybe not.
“Duality” is essentially a “function” of language. “Duality” does not exist in actuality. Every word has its opposite embedded within it. There are a variety of ways to express this embedded duality.
“Matter / anti-matter.” “White / Black.” “Right / not right.”
I am partial to using “not”. “Real / not-real.” “Awakened / not-awakened.” “Alive / not-alive.” “Duality / non-duality.”
Whenever we speak to one another or “self-talk” internally, we tend to express only one side of the dash “/”. Whichever side that is, that is the “surface” for us. The unspoken “other side” is what lies “beneath the surface,” out of sight. But just because it is out of sight, doesn’t mean it’s not exerting influence.
“I want to awaken / I don’t want to awaken.” When both sides are of almost equal strength, one is deep in “ambiguity”, where “ambiguity” means “competing” thoughts, competing emotions, competing drives. A reason many people don’t awaken is because they are ambiguous about it, they don’t realize they may not really want to awaken from their dream of “me”.
A dream is a dream is a dream, except when it is not a dream. Perhaps we are human beings seeking spiritual experience. Or maybe we are spiritual beings, formless awareness, seeking human experience.
Remember, duality is a function of language and thinking mind. “Life is good / life is not good. Life is evil / life is not evil. Life is hopeless / life is not hopeless.” This is mind at work. This is mind at play. Before becoming wedded to “one side,” consider “giving voice” to the “other” in order to experience the still point of inner balance.
Duality is the domain of thinking mind. To see duality in operation every day is to see the depth and breadth of thinking mind, and its pervasive daily influence. Conceptual understanding is language-based. Non-conceptual understanding is not language based.
To be able to see both sides of an idea or concept is to be flexible, to see only one side is to be not flexible, rigid. Seeing that duality is truly a function of language, you may begin to pay more attention to what you say to others and what you say to yourself, and in the process move beyond the gravitational influence of thinking-mind.
Yes.
Of course.
:)
There is often an involuntary mental palm-slap to the head in an “of course!” moment when it is seen that “duality” is a “function” of language. But until that moment, I couldn’t walk a spiritual, not-spiritual straight path if my life depended / didn’t depend on it.
I discovered that seeing only one side of duality meant I was “imbalanced” right out of the box every morning when I got out of bed. And the peculiar / not-peculiar fact was how I accepted that “perceptual imbalance” as "normal." In essence I didn’t know I was looking at the world in an imbalanced / not-imbalanced way.
In fact, experimenting with seeing both sides at first felt wrong, not real, artificial / not-artificial, fake. There were too many ideas / non-ideas floating around; mind felt congested / not-congested, and I was confused by the process / non-process and effort / non-effort of discerning duality. It was sort of how learning to ride a bike was wobbly at first before it felt straight and steady and fast and balanced.
Many times now it turns out a feeling is just a feeling and a thought is just a thought.
Wow Tony!!!
Your post just helped to stimulate some understanding. If you look at life as being cyclical: constantly in motion like the Buddhist wheel, at some point everything becomes its opposite. Walking into the woods eventually becomes walking out of the woods. In the absence of time, there are no boundaries or a point where one becomes the other. Brillant Thanks for the in-sight.
Lucy,
The insight is within you. And the everchangingness is continuous. “Walking into the woods really does eventually become walking out of the woods.” A challenge is learning to live with “getting it” and “forgetting it” and coming to see that for every apparent “lost opportunity” in the moment there really is a “new beginning” in the moment. And why should it be otherwise?
A reminder to self is, "Tony, enjoy it while you can," where "it" may be health, employment, companionship, intimacy, shelter, youth, family, insights, because in an everchanging world you never know how the wheel is going to turn. I am happy for you.
At the moment, I/you know exactly what you/I mean.
But I'm sure that I'll/you'll have moments when I/you won't.
:)
Hi Tony,
Thank you for providing a very practical approach. It reminds me of Byron Katie's Work. It shows how nothing in the mind can ever be true because the opposite can also be true at some point or another. The positive and negitive cancel each other out or have equal weight...