THE DILEMMA OF DUALISTIC THINKING

Have you ever been in a situation where there just didn’t seem to be any good choices?

Every once in awhile, we find ourselves in the middle of a situation, being asked to choose one way or another, and we know we don’t want to choose either. That’s a terrible feeling to have, because it seems there is no right way to go. In those cases, we often make choices we regret, but often the alternative still seems no better; it’s like we made one of a set of poor choices.

The confusion this causes often leads to illness, as our nervous stress damages the functioning of our immune system. If you read Louise Hay, she says that a cold is a sign of confusion. Cold germs are something we always have with us - we don’t need to ‘catch’ them - but they can take root and cause illness whenever our immune system gets weakened. Such weakening can be caused by stress of any sort - and a mental dilemma, being confused as to which way to take, is one such cause of stress.

Here is where the world around us and its thinking really challenges us. When Jesus said, “Be in the world, but do not be OF it”, he may have been talking about getting caught up in the choices that others expect us to make. Certainly he counseled many people to ignore the expectations of others.

When we ignore what others expect of us, we become a lightning rod for criticism. We are regarded as being callous and uncaring when we don’t act together with what seems obvious to our friends. This is some of heaviest pressure a person can ever feel, because it gets right at our own self-worth.

We all want to be considered kind, good and caring. Our personal self-worth may be tied up in our being able to feel that way. When we cannot choose the way our friends have done, whatever our reason, we become a disappointment to them. How can we stay knowing that their feelings are their own to have? Our empathy draws us in to share those feelings, even though they are not ours by right. Our own self-esteem takes a beating if others feel we are out of step with them.

We are born as individuals in order that the Universal Power may experience individuality through our being. As a Unity, it can know nothing of differences in thought, in feeling. Only through our individualized selves can this be known. Life, or spirit, can only know itself through individualising. An infinite entity cannot have a viewpoint - since a viewpoint implies that there is something outside of itself to view.

As individuals we follow a complex and widely different series of goals, motivations and priorities. It is almost guaranteed that we will come to different conclusions about many things. If these conclusions are important to us, and many are, we are bound to be frustrated when others conclude differently. We may suspect them of not sharing our objectives, of not caring about our priorities. We may feel they are not for us, but against us.

This last thought is the trap of duality. Duality is the separation of the world, of events, of things and people, into Good and Evil, For and Against, Bad and Good. Finally, it is the separation into Them and Us.

Duality is an illusion, created by our perception of the world. It is not the underlying truth of things. The underlying truth is Unity of all things, of Past and Future, of Them and Us. The Truth is, Them and Us is One.