I am sitting on my yoga mat listening to my breath after a steady yoga practice. My eyes are focused at the tip of my nose, practicing the muscles of the eyes to look inward to develop and strengthen the third eye, located in the area just behind the point between the eyebrows. This area is usually the pineal gland, a small endocrine gland in the brain, which has been thought to be the “seat of the soul†or the spiritual gateway to all realms and all dimensions. On the physiological level, the pineal gland is the small endocrine gland that produces melatonin, a hormone that affects the modulations of wake-sleep patterns. But wait, this article is not about the Third Eye.
So there I am looking at the tip of my nose, cross-eyed, when suddenly my gaze lock on to images of “smiling sun†icons. No, it is no metaphysical drama, but I am staring at two-printed round smiling sun icons on my yoga mat. And I am still cross-eyed staring at two vibrating suns smiling at me.
In that brief moment, the concept of duality flashes before me. And I think: all the issues of our world today stem from this concept of duality — where you and I are separate people, where the world outside is different from our inner world inside. And the separatist attitude of me, mine, you, yours, they, theirs, either-or is ever present. Or black-white, male-female, yin-yang, night-day, the higher-the lower, the body versus the spirit, death-life, refined-unrefined, masculine-feminine, the sacred-the profane, poverty-wealth, health-illness, an upper-a downer, a smile-a frown, the winner-the loser…and we can go on, naming, theorizing, judging and experiencing the opposites.
Our world is a world of duality. The drama of life is built on duality’s opposing perspectives and point of view. If we don’t have this drama, how can we push-pull against comparisons that allow us to define who we are, where we are going and how we want to become? The opposite allows us to enjoy its opposite, from the lower to the higher: stressful business into rest, dirty soiled clothes to clean crisp outfits. The opposite helps us seek the other: city spaces of pollution to countryside clean air, free sex to loving relationships, junk food to healthy tasty food, noise and chatter for silence. The imbalance of the opposites have made our world, sadly, in the state it is in: where the haves keep the power, and the poor become poorer; where money has become the definitive focus and the spirit is pooh-poohed away and the physical body revel as temple to narcissistic delights.
Duality has two things in common: that there is judgment, and that there must be a resolution that comes from it. So we continue to fight wars, get angry with others, keep focused on the body’s desires. There can be no truth, for each side will say theirs is the only truth.
Suddenly while I am sitting there, still mesmerized, I slowly see the two suns coming together, half of each other crossing over into the other. For the fundamentalist who reasons through black and white lenses, there is the gray area that will always bother his or her comfort zones. It is that shadow space between two worlds, the limbo, the time awaiting for the decision to be made, the air travel between destinations, the healing process of an injury, the spirit of the law moving across the letter of the law, the human life beyond the statistics, women slowly becoming empowered, men comfortable as stay-at-home-dads. In this in-between space, there is much magic, learning, wisdom and connection that can actually be discovered — about ourselves as individuals and as part of this global human family. Can we be more patient? Can we allow awe and wonder to allow whatever is arising to arise with no judgment?
As my eyes focus, the two vibrating sun icons merge as one happy face, the sun on my yoga mat smiling up at me. When we read myths, the gods that possess both male and female forces are considered more powerful. Or even characters like Wonder Woman celebrates a woman’s strong side, or Superman having his alter ego, a geeky gentle Clark Kent. The strength comes when they bring both opposing forces together. Can two contradictory forces or points of view manage to exist together? Can there be a win-win for all? Can we move from exclusion to inclusion towards collaborations? Business will make imperative corporate social responsibility as the ethics and conscience buffer the industries, social enterprises strengthen as they bring in new definition to profit by equally adding people and planet concerns, life will have meaning when people follow their passions and enjoy what they do, holistic healing is slowly being accepted by the medical profession, the mind-body-spirit connection is being brought into the medical, food, health industries, businesses embrace sustainable practices taking into account ecological concerns, and even quantum physics now shows the living intelligence of the universe in a single molecule.
In time we will come to the ancient dictum: what is above is as below, what is inside is just an expression of the world we see outside us.