Duality
Duality separates; perhaps, at times, it is essential. To see one thing as such and another thing as not so is a fundamental way by which we know reality. The blue sheath of the sky is different from the night; one we call day, the other night. Duality is a kind of recognition of opposites: male and female, masculine and feminine, up and down, near and far, life and death.
It is an important tool, the analytics of the mind that participate in the development of rigorous science and exploration, for we can never know what something is apart from knowing what it is not. Often, it is an unconscious assumption, perhaps a kind of presupposition that we do not find the need to challenge, for it is so obvious as to be assumed. This being rightly so, duality gives us permission to see, explore, and know. To some extent, it is the underlying intelligence that permeates much of our knowledge.
Yet, duality also participates in a diversionary class that often perpetuates a kind of harm to ourselves, others, and the world. It may be apparently obvious to acknowledge differences within the human species, yet if some of those differences become a kind of abstraction whereby we believe those differences somehow constitute a reality unto themselves, and we create a system of thought around that abstraction, then we have distanced ourselves from what actually is and become victims of an ideology rather than dealing directly with the ever-pervasive reality before us.
My suggestion, and modest contention, is to recognize that dualism is often an essential piece of knowledge. Yet when elevated into a continuum that embodies categories of further separation, it is these kinds of separations that create disorder and disharmony. For how could they not? They have participated in life as an unreality masquerading itself as truth.
Non-duality is a kind of exploration of the mind. Though often thought of as a form of spiritual awareness (and it certainly takes practice, the development of many faculties, and a kind of letting go of scripts), non-duality is also a method of coming to terms with the unity of opposites. Masculine is knowable because it has an opposite: feminine. Each exercises its will against the other as a means of differentiation; call this diversity. Yet within that separation, each is only meaningful within what is whole. The part belongs only because it has a relation to its opposite; therefore, empirically, there exists a unity.
Without the knowledge of the inevitable unity of things, the mind moves toward alienation and separation, and thereby toward its own kind of death. It has nothing by which to know itself other than a consuming narrative that positions itself against another in order to define its own identity. This is the cycle of war, within and without.
Unity and diversity are expressions of oneness, for they exist within the same whole structure. The dualism found in recognizing opposites is essential. Yet what also remains imperturbably true is that such opposites exist within a non-duality. One exists within the other, and to isolate one against the other is a breakdown of order. Such is the case both societally and personally. The mind of the individual and the mind of the community are meant to be mapped as opposites and in relation. A split in either direction—toward duality or toward pure non-duality—creates a further divide. It is only in recognizing that each—the part and the whole, unity and diversity, top and bottom—though in opposition, also exists as one.
Developing the mind that can take in both the opposite and the whole is essential. This roadmap creates emotional resilience, grounds participation in reality, and fosters a nuanced map of the mind. What follows is integration toward greater islands of stability that move one’s life and the whole together upward in harmony, toward greater cohesion and a way of being that beckons one back home.
