Reflections related to transduality, duality and an integral view.
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Sunday, October 17, 2004
Music
Each piece of music has a very specific effect on the human mind and body. It reflects a certain experience (the one the composer was in when it was written/created) and also opens up for a similar experience in the listener.
Most stays within the limited personal, emotional realm. It can express/open up for a wide range of experiences, such as pleasure/delight, energy/focus, sentimentality (not grounded/resolved) or constriction (blockages).
And some goes far beyond the personal realm. This music opens up the heart and/or Big Mind, such as Allegri's Miserere, Rachmaninov's Vespers , the music of Sister Marie Keyrouz, and Bach's Art of Fugue.
08:43
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Friday, October 15, 2004
Two Orientations
There seems to be two basic orientations... And both are expressed in all of our lives, in different ways.
Blind Duality
First is the one that emerges from and creates a sense of blind duality, and it can take two expressions:
- Separation - not unity
We see separations and not the unity. We are caught up in a us vs. them view of the world.
We apply this orientation towards the inner world: something is me (what supports and fits with my conscious identity), and something else is not me (that which I am not aware of, or that I am marginally aware of but does not support or fit with my conscious image of myself - the shadow).
And we apply the orientation towards the outer world. My family is us, the community is them. Democrats are us, republicans are them. Freedom loving democratic people are us, terrorists are them. Humans are us, other species are them. Current human beings are us, future human beings are them. And we apply different guidelines for how we choose behaviors that impacts us and them.
We are blindly caught up in the relative world, and have little interest in the absolute.
- Unity - not differentiation
As infants, we (I assume) experience the world as a seamless whole, but we do so with very little conscious awareness. If we later on engage in blind unity (seeking the unity w/o the duality) it is usually in an altered state, or due to traumas. We seek to escape the relative world and seek the absolute. This may be expressed through addicitons, and there are elements of this approach in some spiritual traditions.
Additional thoughts
In both instances, we approach the world from a relatively rigid point of view. We embrace one end of the polarity (differentiation or unity) and discount the other. And we often justify this by creating or adopting elaborate ideologies that supports our orientation.
Transdual
We can also embrace, explore and bring into awareness both ends of the duality/unity polarity.
We deepen our ability to discern and analyze, and experience ourselves as a separate individual able to function well in the world. We also deepen our experience of the seamless whole we are embedded in. There are no absolute boundaries.
In relationship to ourselves, we are oriented towards welcoming and bringing new aspects our ourselves into awareness. We experience all emerging phenomena as part of the same inner whole - emotions, thoughts, sensations, independent of their particular characteristics.
We also perceive all emerging phenomena as part of the same larger whole. Emotions, thoughts, sensations, clouds, mountains, living beings, plants - are all part of the same seamless whole. Expressions of one process.
And there is a multitude of tools to help us experience the world in this way. To help us experience the world more as it is: beyond dualities of existence/nonexistence, mind/matter, life/death, living/nonliving, humans/nonhumans, and beyond dualities in our perceptions of good/evil, right/wrong, desirable/nondesireable.
Through this, we open up for a spacious and rich experience of the world. We align ourselves more with ourselves and the larger whole. We are able to discern, analyze and choose decisive action, w/o being blinded by false impressions of separation.
Additional thoughts
Through becoming intimate with both the relative (differentiation, change) and absolute (unity, no change) aspects of the world, we gain a new perspective on both.
Some typical effects: We can more easily let go of attachments, althought they will still arise as before. We recognize everything in the outer world as also there in the inner.
We open up for a deeper and spontaneous sense of ...
- Compassion
We recognize in ourselves what we see in the other. We are all human beings with the same basic human needs. We are in the same boat. (This does of course not exclude assertive action when needed, but now it is not from blindness .)
- Gratitude
We experience a deep gratitude for being a small part of this infinetely large and rich world.
- Humility
We are an infinetely small part of an infinete world. Our perceptions and "understandings" are always incomplete and very limited. Each of these opens our heart.
13:13
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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Links
to previous journaling...
16:36
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Monday, October 11, 2004
Evolution
There seems to be a trend in the evolution/development of consciousness (or rather how it is expressed)...
- Unconscious unity
Matter, plants, most species in infancy and adulthood, human infants, etc. - Conscious duality
Children and some non-human species awakening into it, human adults refine it - Conscious duality & conscious unity
The experience of both deepened and embodied. A trans-dual awakening. This is expressed by some humans, and humanity may move into it more fully at some point if we are around long enough. It is a process that is expressed on a macro-level (Universe, Earth and species as a whole) and a micro-level (individuals).
The Universe evolved/expressed consciousness, first a "sleeping" unity consciousness through matter and plants, then a half-awake duality through animals, and finally a more fully-awake transdual awareness through some human beings.
It seems that humanity as a whole has spent the last several millennia evolving and refining awareness of dualities, which has now reached a preliminary peak in the modern western mindset (people aware of differentiation, individuality and separation, and less aware of the unity). A coming phase in human evolution may be the natural unfolding of a more trans-dual awareness on a larger scale.
On an individual level, we need to explore and deepen our experience of the differentiation (and develop a personality able to function effectively in the world) as well as the unity - the seamless nature of existence. For me, I have found several approaches to be invaluable in this, for instance Zen, Big Mind, Breema and Process Work...
16:34
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Polarities
Existence is set up as an endless series of polarities: existence/nonexistence, matter/mind, etc. And they are all expressions of that which is beyond and embraces all dualities.
We habitually tend to embrace one end of each polarity and reject (or regard with less fondness) the other end of the polarity. Through this, we are creating a fragmented experience of the world for ourselves. We see the poles, but not the polarities. We see the fragments, but not the whole.
A spiritual path is to go deeper into both ends of all polarities. We explore and deepen our experience of...
- Our limited human animal nature (small mind) and our infinite nature (big mind). Through this, we experience the continuum they belong to.
- Differentiation (duality) and unity (non-duality) . Through this, we move into trans-duality.
- The "light" and "dark" aspects of ourselves. Embracing, relaxing into and bringing awareness into both, beyond notions of good and evil.
... by deepeining our experience of both ends of each polarity, we move into trans-duality.
16:19
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Saturday, October 02, 2004
Causality & Synchronicity
The Universe is a seamless whole. It is one dynamic process, one movement.
And this movement is expressed in changes in all parts of the whole, in all phenomena.
We perceive these movements as (a) causality (one part "causing" a change in another part), and (b) synchronicities (acausal meaningful coinsidences).
08:33
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