The Challenging and Misunderstood Duality

How did we end up here? A place where Duality is seen as a negative thing that must be squashed?

Ok. yes I am being a little over-dramatic here, but the truth is there does seem to be some misunderstandings around Dualities and what it means to work within Dualities from my perspective.

It all started when I was searching for a specific meme – what I was confronted with was several memes discussing the toxicity of Duality. I even got a warning box from Google that the concept of duality creates division and harm to others.

Then I was having a discussion with one of my students on another topic that drifted to understanding Dualities in order to use both sides to achieve a certain outcome. She is more well versed in Eastern/ Buddhist traditions then I am, so when I brought up the issues in the memes I saw, she said it sounded like a distorted understanding of Non-Dualism.

I am really just a surface dweller here, not an expert on their tradition/ philosophy, but after some research and listening to some voices within that culture, I see now how easy it could be for someone to misinterpret/ misrepresent the importance of Duality which led to the specific memes I saw. It seems they took the horse (the movement and how) but forgot the cart (the reason why you are moving).

Why We Need Duality

Everything sits within a Duality. Two extreme sides of the same system. Sun and Moon. Light and Dark. Masculine and Feminine. Love and Fear. Suffering and Contentment. On and on, a world made in Dualities. Things that do not, and can not exist without the other. If we only had day light, then night would not even be a concept.

Every Duality in the world also exists within us in some form. As above so Below. As within, so with-out. Masculine and Feminine are two extreme sides of one duality, and we hold both within us. For me, the Feminine holds the Soul, the unseen, the mystical – the reason “why” we live, move, and act. The Masculine is the Body, the seen and material world – the “how” we are able to live, move, and act. Neither exists in the world, on this physical plane, without the other. The Body houses the Soul, giving it the means to experience the world of matter. Without the energy of the Soul, the Body is inanimate. Both are needed in order to have the human experience.

The problem isn’t with the Duality itself. The larger problem comes in how we present them, work within them, and label one side positive and one side negative.

The Issues

Dualities are presented in the form of opposites because they are, but that is not all they are. To be a Duality they must also be bound together – One Pattern with two sides.

If you think about a Venn Diagram, a set of two opposites, yet in the middle is all this overlapping space, the place they share and work in alignment together. This is how I see dualities and where the work begins. To understand the alignment in the middle, we must first understand the extremes.

This is where I feel the memes failed – they skipped to the unity and alignment aspect, but seemed to ignore the base understanding needed to have that unity. The tradition of Non-Dualism seems to understand this, because it is stated over and over that it is not about ignoring Duality at play, that we need to understand the depths of each side in order to find all the places of Unity within them.

We often hear this is a “western” problem. Only taking the surface context, not understanding the deeper concepts that lead to that surface, and then running with it. I am inclined to say this type of movement is a human thing in our current world, because I see people from all walks of life and places doing it. It may even stem from this “instant gratification” mindset that grows as our technology grows.

We also have an issue with extremes, standing on one side of a Duality or the other. The reality is though, a duality is neither either/ or, it is always this AND that, because one does not exist without the other. This division of the Duality in this way then leads to the concept of a “good side” and a “bad side.” A Duality though is not split into good and bad, because good and bad are subjective and vary person to person – a Duality just is. Both extremes, and the Duality as a whole, hold positives and negatives – we are the ones who determine which, based on how we perceive it and use it.

A great example of positive and negative comes in the form of killing. Many belief systems and societal systems hold the belief that killing another person is wrong – negative – bad. Yet many also place situational allowances on the act – in self defense, protecting another human, only confined to offing other humans, and so forth. In those instances the act is good and courageous. The Duality is between Life and Death – it is our actions, movements, perceptions, and the why behind them that shifts the perspective.

Alignment, Not Balance

Too often, when I say “balanced” people think of a scale, and balancing until each side is in equal measure. Which I think may also be perpetuating this idea that Non-Dualism is about removing the separation in the form of not acknowledging the Duality and only seeing the unity. The Unity though is the balanced/ aligned end product we are wanting to achieve, but you have to know and understand the Duality before you can get there.

I say “balanced” a lot but my balance isn’t about an equal measure of both sides of a Duality. It is more situational and complex then that. It is about the overall movement with a Duality – because sometimes when need more dark then light and vice versa – but we also don’t want to fall into the trap of using one side way more then the other, creating an extremist mindset. Remember here, we are talking about the Duality itself, not the actions we are creating from it.

What I mean when I say “balanced” is really more about harmonious alignment of the two opposing sides. It is a battle of language that I am still working on.

Working in Dualities

A primary foundation of my work is in Dualities. To see the divisions, in order to see the possible alignments. To understand how each side works, in order to know how to shift and move them for the desired outcome. I do not stay in the divisions, but it is necessary to know and understand them in order to find the right Unity for the purpose at hand.

So why did I take you on this rambling journey? It was not the memes, they just pointed out an issue that had to be addresses first. Nope, it is because I want to go deeper into the Soul Runes. Showing different ways to use them and why they have become a central aspect in my magical practice and living life. Before I could do that though, I had to give a better foundation for how I see and work in Dualities – because they are the Duality between Soul and Body – inward and outward movement. Each individual one holding their own Duality, and the Dualities between them when combined.

That is what is coming next.