On duality

Aphorism 92

Life and death; good and evil; mind and body; male and female; time and space; science and religion; real and imaginary; truth and falsity; pain and pleasure; love and hate; past and future; rational and irrational; free-will and determinism; finite and infinite; internal and external; logic and emotion; being and becoming; spirit and matter; chaos and structure; fact and fiction; comedy and tragedy; heaven and hell; virtue and vice; subject and object…

Aphorism 93

There is not a single, not one, dichotomy which does not have some gray area that calls into question the original hard-nosed distinction. We must learn to accept that we cannot live by light alone, nor by darkness alone. Twilight is the true essence of reality and it is where we must learn to reside.

Aphorism 94

Dualisms are methods of organizing, simplifying, and stabilizing what is otherwise an unruly, complex, and mercurial reality. Any duality is merely a pair of concepts that are direct opposition to one another. As instruments of negotiating reality and surviving within it, they are invaluable. Dualities sort out the world into very black and white terms that are easy to follow, easy to understand, and easy to use—thus they are excellent facilitators of survival. But once an individual has reached a state of comfort and luxury where survival is no longer the primary concern, dualities begin to hurt more than they help.

Aphorism 95

The most common way of dealing with dualities falls into two categories. One can polarize oneself into an absolutist that completely denies the existence or validity of the other end of the spectrum, such as a materialist. Or one can be a strict dualist that acknowledges the existence of both ends of the spectrum but is completely ignorant of the gradient in-between them, such as Cartesians. In truth, these are only two different forms of one idea—absolutism: The difference between the two is that one denies the existence of its opposite while the other accepts the existence of its opposite but relegates it to a completely different and distinct realm.

Aphorism 96

The creation of the dichotomy of Form and Matter was popularized by Plato. Plato’s philosophy was an attempt to reconcile the philosophies of Heraclitus and Parmenides, which emphasized flux and fixity respectively. His attempt was unsuccessful at reconciling the two differences in thought, but it was inadvertently successful in creating an intellectual atmosphere that was friendly towards dualism of any variety. Platonism became the womb in which Christianity could grow. Christianity further promulgated the idea that there was a fundamental split in reality between spirit and matter, vilifying the latter. Then the father of modern thought, Descartes responded in reaction to Christianity with his own duality, that of mind and matter. Descartes took Christianity’s philosophy and gave it teeth by creating a scientific atmosphere for it. Some of the biggest and most important names in history are responsible for the privation of creative thinking that the current age exhibits.

Aphorism 97

The importance of understanding that conceptual categories, such as dualisms, exist only in the mind and do not exist independently of us cannot be stressed enough.

Aphorism 98

Reality is a continuum…

Aphorism 99

Absolutists deny reality. They play with half a deck. Absolutists are not only unimaginative, they are dangerous. Their lack of creativity is rivaled only by their hubris. Absolutists bend reality by denying reality—whatever does not fit their categorical concept is abandoned, ignored, or vilified.

Aphorism 100

There were two old men who were friends at a distance. They would correspond through hand written letters. One old man slept from dusk till dawn and worked all day during the sunlight hours; he had never stayed up beyond the light. The other man slept from dawn till dusk and worked all during the night, never having seen the sun. One day the daywalker wrote to the nightwalker about the sky.

“There is a giant yellow star in the sky. It is beautiful.”

The nightwalker wrote back. “I do not understand you. The sky has no such star. It is scattered with a million small white stars.”

“Now I do not understand you. For I can clearly count and there is but one star in the sky.”

“No my friend, there are a million.”

After this conversation the two old men promptly ended their friendship because of their disagreement.

Aphorism 101

During the equinox, there are twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. But this is not entirely true. In the morning before the sunrise and in the evening before the sunset, there are a few moments, however brief, in which neither light nor darkness dominates. These are moments of uncertainty and vagueness, moments of pure transition. There is no such thing as a straight and clean transition. Reality does not function like a light switch with two settings. Twilight is real, even if it is quick. The temporal length of a phenomenon is no judge of its reality. In fact, in the grand over arching scheme of things, all events—your love affairs, your childhood, the melting of the glaciers, continental drift, the building up of the mountains, the life of a fruit fly, the burning of a candle—last but the blink of an eye, just long enough for you to watch it transition…

Aphorism 102

Because of our inveterate habit of creating patterns in reality, our morality has come to mimic our practical life. Light and darkness have become symbols to represent good and evil. And because light and darkness are associated with the passing of daylight into nighttime, and because we are usually oblivious to those moments of twilight, we have created a moral environment that is dangerously simplified. There are many of us who can only think of the world in the absolute terms of Good and Evil. If only things were that simple. Maybe if we could lengthen the time of twilight so that it occupied a significant portion of the day we could have a morality that was more aware of the vicissitudes and complexities of life. These dualists of Good and Evil cite Gandhi and Nazism as the paradigmatic examples of their point without ever acknowledging the spectrum between the two.  

Aphorism 103

Dualists divide—they divide people, nations, ideas, experiences, and histories. They force one to take a stance and to deny any relationship between polarities.

Aphorism 104

Boundary-dissolvers multiply.

Aphorism 105

Dualists have a full deck but play with only one half at a time. 

Aphorism 106

The appeal to duality is one made by a spirit that is: unreflective, scared, isolated,—or lazy. Dichotomies are a painful and dangerous simplification of processes that are infinitely complex and complicated. They are a way for simple people to do deal with a complex reality.

Aphorism 107

Between every duality there is a bridge. It is scary to be on the bridge. It is rickety, dilapidated, and rundown—poorly maintained. The breeze over the bridge is strong causing it to sway hazardously. The structure creeks and squeaks. There is nothing below one’s feet and nothing above one’s head. There is no stable ground, no foundation. It is wobbly, uncertain, and dangerous—almost excitingly so! Most people flee to one end of the bridge or the other, preferring to live on stable ground even if it means isolation from others. But there are a few spirits who like danger. There are those who like to laugh and dance in the face of uncertainty. Those few spirits that can summon enough strength of will to live in between worlds, with openness below, above, and around them, live in a richer environment than those people for whom the bridge is too scary. Not to mention, the view of the horizon from the bridge is unmatched in its beauty.    

Aphorism 108

Boundary dissolution is, at its very core, the reconciliation and overcoming of dichotomies. Between every dichotomy lies an impenetrable wall artificially set in place to keep to things that are related at distinct odds. Reality is a seamless web of information that is artificially funneled off and distorted by our sense organs, our mental categories, and our cultures. Melt away the boundaries between you and your world and you will reawaken in a world that is greater than you could have ever imagined.

Aphorism 109

We, as spiritual beings, living in the shroud of mystery but also pursuing whatever enlightenment can be attain by creatures as finite and paltry as us, have an obligation to live beyond ourselves, beyond our old notions, beyond life and death, black and white, real and imaginary, science and religion, good and evil, to embrace reality for what it is, how it is, and to what degree it is. It is our duty as spiritual beings to live beyond dualities, in fact, to emphatically dissolve them, so that we may come ever closer and closer to indulging in the aesthetic quality of reality that it is forever and constantly exuding.

Aphorism 110

It is neither day nor night, neither heat nor cold, neither love nor hate, that make reality truly special. It is twilight. The interplay of opposites, the ambiguities of life, the strenuous tension—this is the way reality functions. It is the existence of unlike terms that leads to struggle, strife, and overcoming. Harmony is what happens when unlike terms interact with one another.

Aphorism 111

Life is messy and complicated and all attempts at codifying it into a rational conceptual scheme will necessarily end in paradox. Paradox is the playground out of which emerges reality.