Black and white, yin and yang, good and bad. Each of these concepts constitutes an opposite, but what does that truly mean?
In the case of light and dark, good and evil, we like to say that the darkness must be there to show us the light, and that good could not exist without evil. While this is true, there is much more to it.
We all know of that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This law applies not only to a pendulum swing, but to the universe itself. In order for anything to exist, it must be supplied by its opposite.
Darkness could not exist without the light, and evil could not exist without good.
Think about it: if you were to take all of the good out of the world, there would no longer be a need for a good/bad distinction, because everything in the world would simply be bad.
Similarly, if you took all of the darkness out of the world, there would be no light, because light would be all there is. There would be no need for a definition, because there would be nothing to compare it to.
For every noise, there is the silence. For every movement, there is stillness, and for every something, there is nothing.
We rarely, if ever, take the time to acknowledge the importance of this law in our lives. Not only does it allow us to appreciate good things, and to acknowledge the light, but it is also the foundation of our human experience.
There would be no humanity if there were no duality.
Duality is defined as an instance of opposition or contrast between two concepts or two aspects of something. I love this definition because it reveals another universal truth: everything is connected. If duality represents two sides of the same coin, as this definition suggests, then light and dark are merely aspects of the same concept.
In quantum physics, dualism describes something that can behave as both a wave and a particle, such as light itself.
This fascinating phenomenon reveals both the basis for human life and the problem with it: we live in a world of duality, but, paradoxically, we are oblivious to it.
Our minds, or rather our egos, are the center of our dual perspective. We cannot think outside of duality. Every night when you go to sleep, you decide whether that day was good or bad. This decision is based on duality: You can’t say something is bad unless you’ve already experienced something better. That ‘better’ is also reliant on your experience of something worse.
In this way, good is dependent on bad, and bad is dependent on good.
It is a never-ending circle, and it mirrors what goes on inside your mind. On the days when you are stressed, and stuck in your head, you go through a cycle.
Let’s say you have to stay late at work, even though you have a million things to do when you get home. You begin to stress, telling yourself that the present moment is not okay because of what will happen in the future. You aren’t going to get everything done, which makes the situation you are in extremely stressful.
But let’s analyze that for a moment. Who decided the situation was stressful? In effect, it was your mind. Your ego saw two situations: what was really happening and what could have been happening (getting off of work in time to get everything done). When your ego noticed the difference in the two scenarios it created stress.
You are not going to be able to get everything done (which is what you ‘should’ be doing), and so the ego labels the situation as stressful. But notice: there is a best-case scenario, and a worse-case scenario. Yet, you do not know what will happen in the future. You have no proof that you will not be able to get everything done if you stay late at work.
So why are you labeling the situation as bad or stressful?
Your ego exists in the most detrimental duality of all: past and future. Without the past, there could be no future, and without the future there would be no past. But what happens when you take away the past, or explore the space before the future?
You find the present.
The present moment represents somewhere the ego cannot go. The ego feeds on good and bad, light and dark, black and white. There is no grey area in the ego, no neutral zone, and certainly no present. This is because in the present moment, duality does not exist. There is no past or future, there simply is.
This is why meditation is such a powerful practice: it takes you out of duality into the now. Into simply being. In this state of being, you begin to see through the duality of human life.
It is in the present that you can notice that good and bad truly are two sides of the same coin, and that good and evil are just two destinations on the same spectrum.
Recognizing the duality of human life presents an interesting opportunity: to let go of labelling. When you begin to live in the present, when you allow yourself to simply be, there is no good and evil. There is no light and dark.
There simply is.
Imagine how many stressful situations could be dissolved when that label is dropped. As beautiful as that concept sounds, it often creates resistance. We live in a world of duality, and it can be hard to see beyond the separation.
Duality is, in essence, a chance to see that what we believe is a separation is not actually there. What we perceive as light and dark, good and evil, black and white is simply a product of our minds. Labels the ego produces to make life on earth make more sense.
Duality can be dissolved by truly accepting one statement: It is what it is.
