After guaranteeing, in my last post, that I’d get to the bottom of the duality question – I’m back with an update. First I’d like to retrace my steps and explain why this topic is of interest to me – and why I include it in the addiction help section of the blog.  To do that I’ll need to provide a little background on what I’ve  run into since deciding to write this website.

I wanted to write on the topic of addiction because 1) I’m an authority on the addiction side, and  2) I found a lot of stuff on the recovery side that seemed, as far as I can tell, to not work, or not be real. I decided that,  for myself,  this would set some criteria when practicing or suggesting any addiction recovery related ideas.  This “Is it real and does it work”  has become a sort of tenet.  The other thing I wanted to focus on was the principle of self determination. The self determined life calls for personal examination of everything that we’ve been told. I’ve been fairly exacting in my scrutiny. I’ve done my best, when writing about addiction and recovery, to relay ideas that can be examined and left the rest alone.

You  might be surprised how little there is to look at when you eliminate hearsay. Most of what people are reacting to today is just hearsay. Most of the personal trials and tribulations we experience in the United States and Europe is the result of our reactions to hearsay, or ignorance, rather than any action to investigate, solve problems and make things better. The rest of the worlds woes are, for the most part, the result of mankind’s meanness. I’ve found that if we take away the fantasies we develop from hearsay a lot of the cause of addiction disappears. That cause I classify as trauma and is covered in the first few chapters of “Life After Addiction”.

The other thing I find most important, in dealing with ourselves, is diet. As dull as it seems, for the addicted person, it’s a matter of life and death. And the difference between health and disease, mental health or craziness, for everyone else. So I always try and put the latest “Nutrition Stuff” here so people can be self determined where their own health is concerned.

Another huge phenomena I noticed in the addiction recovery community was the issue of dependence. It’s taught to recovering addicts as the way out of dependence. Whether intentional or not the message comes through and any long lasting freedom from addiction/dependence probably shouldn’t be built on a foundation of – Dependence. I should point out here that this is where the topic of duality first comes into the picture. Let me say that, in the area of cause and effect, I haven’t found any difference between addicts and the general population in the U.S.. What causes an addict to spend his life using drugs, causes others to spend their lives in pursuit of – whatever. It’s all the same and it all stems from the same place. You can cover most of this ground by reading about Belief and Motive and Happiness.

As I kept looking around and writing things for the addict and the recovery community it continued to become clearer that this really wasn’t an addiction help website – well not exclusively. There just weren’t any exclusive problems. They may manifest themselves in exclusive ways. In other words, they take different forms. But being dependent on adoration, social status or heroin all stems from the same stalk. So in the end what is included on this site is anything I think might be useful as tools toward personal and social improvement – for everyone and anyone who’s interested.  That’s why I write about stuff like understanding duality on an addiction help website.  That said – on to duality.

Why Bother with Understanding Duality

If as addicts,  we’ve ever been asked to examine our nature,  we’ll probably have some idea why understanding the concept of duality might be important.  Anyone who has looked into the idea of enlightenment, studied the ideas of higher consciousness, or even been interested in philosophy, religion, or the brain/mind connection has at least run into the concept of duality.  Anyone close to understanding it?  Not that I could find.  I went to a “Duality Website” and they said, “We don’t know…”.  I searched duality and got a lot of articles and opinions.  None of which made it any clearer.  None of which gave me something to practice.

My most recent dive into this topic is inspired by a recent interest in the end of time idea set forth by a long list of ancient prophecies, not least of which is the Mayan Calendar and the Hoopla surrounding 2012.  There is a movie coming out of Hollywood that is bound to make someone a ton of paper money. I’m going to go see it, but I’m not going to see if I can learn anything. I’m going to watch the amazing stuff that technology has brought to movie making.

The real idea about the end of time is more accurately worded – the end of the age.  The age is as real as anything else in the Universe and it’s going to end.  In fact, it’s ended.  Ages don’t end like slamming on the brakes of a car.  They don’t come to a screeching halt and stop on a dime.  The Zodiac, which represents these ages, isn’t like the wheel of fortune on TV.  It moves at a speed that is out of, lets call it memory time.  No one even remembers the last end of an age.  We have some geological records that show the last half age change.  Since these cycles are elliptical there are two points in their cycle that have significant effect on earth stuff.  But that’s the physical aspect and I don’t want to spend that kind of time on a history paper.  What I’m interested in is the change in consciousness associated with the new age.  That new age is the Age of Aquarius.  This is where Jesus told his disciples to look for him in the bible stories.  This is supposed to be the age where all the old mythologies and religions point to in their “Christ Consciousness, or awakening” prophecies.  It is the quickening of the dead.  Contrary to some interpretation almost all these old stories, prophecies and myths weren’t referring to physical “dead”  stuff but rather the evolution of consciousness.  The old consciousness is dead.  So that is where I start my quest.

What is an evolution in consciousness?

That’s the big question.  If there is a higher consciousness, a preferred state of intelligence or being, can I “Be there” ?  What would I have to do?  See this is what the whole “Age of Aquarius” is supposed to be about.  How would I keep up with this universal shift in consciousness?  I mean, if this is what’s happening, it’s definitely what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.  So the first thing to find out is, is it happening.  Then, what can I do to be part of it.  What can I do to enjoy the possibilities to the full extent of reality?

What I’ve read and heard and watched from the people I have the most confidence in was that there is a – connection/separation issue – that has to do with the head and the heart.  This was all I could gather on duality.  It was the old Yin and Yang thing.  The masculine and the feminine and none of which really made any “Aha” bells go off.

Ive been doing one thing religiously and that is some sort of meditation practice.  Nothing fancy, just directing my attention to a specific thing.  Mainly being still.  Allowing  whatever was going on to go on and not get involved with it.  I guess this has allowed me to move with the movement, so to speak.   If I had a prayer it was, “Direct me to what is best”.  It was addressed to whatever might hear and done without expecting any particular outcome.  I just wanted to see where I ended up.  And here I am, looking at the possibility of something really cool happening.

I still wanted to find out something that would lend a little more clarity to the picture and so I could at least think along some lines that made sense.  Yesterday I was pretty much done with my website maintenance work, or completely tired of it, so I decided to watch a video I had with  Drunvalo Melchizedek.  He is one of the people I’ve decided not to discount although he is extremely hard to believe.  This inability to believe him comes from being so rooted in the physical world (a claimed result of duality consciousness) .  I just discount anything I can’t see.  Not that I deny the possibility, I just know how much trouble we can get into as a result of dwelling in the stories others invent for us.  That said I can’t go with the, “there’s nothing out there”, crowd because that would be very hard to make sense of. With physics where it is today “other dimensions” is science.  This is all there is – doesn’t stand up in the light of scientific discovery. What does stand up to discovery is the prophecy, art, historical writings and calendars of ancient civilizations.  We must prove, or disprove this for ourselves.  Everyone is responsible for their own investigations and scrutinizing.

So anyway I had this video that I hadn’t had time to watch and I wasn’t getting anywhere with my hunt for understanding duality. I hadn’t bagged any trophy explanations.  So far I didn’t have anything that I could put into words. I couldn’t say much of anything to anybody that I could call helpful.  So I put my feet up and turned on the video.  And there it was.  I’d been able to glean a little from the Dalia Lama and other people.  I got a lot out of J.Krishnamurti and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche ( see – the audio palylist ),  but I could never get the heart thing. – An evolution in consciousness that is centered in the heart?  That’s a foreign language and I no savvy.

What may have helped with the “click” was that I’d already watched, read and listened to all that other stuff. So instead of a lot to grasp it all at once it was more of another facet – something I’d been missing.  One part that will be greatly appreciated in our quest for understanding is the “Sound as Life”  idea.  We can read about that in the Cymatics.pdf at the PDF Library.

The why in the whole duality thing is that – although I can’t get a clear (enough)  definition or understanding of duality – all of the people I listen to say that what stands in the way of a clearer understanding and connection with “Everything That Is…”  is duality.  They also say that one can transcend duality without understanding it.  How?  Something to do with the heart (again), as in Chakras, sound and intention/creation.  If this is new to you – don’t expect to understand it today – just get started on the material available.

Am I going to end without finishing – again? Yeah, I guess I am.  This is not a  finished evolving – no one is done.  Here’s the movie that I watched yesterday (2012 )