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Transdual View
 
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:
  1. 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.


  2. 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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