Dualism gone good

One of my recent fav quotes came from a dear friend who emailed me, "I don't really understand this "dualism" thing you talk about, but I get it that it's a bad thing."

Ain't necessarily so. If all truly is one, then a little dualism here and there ain't all bad - even if we see a unity underlying it.

I see a spectrum of dualistic responses, here through the lens of "It feels like something is going wrong."

1. A mis-perceived dualism - it looks like something is going wrong, when this really misses the point.
   
   e.g. when Don, the administrator at Jubilee, called me yesterday morning to say that there was a conflict around rooms for my weekly Wednesday Life Lived More Deeply ongoing group (http://www.llmdongoing.blogspot.com/), and that I would have to be out of our room by 6:45 p.m. - when we are scheduled to end at 7 - that initially felt to me like a threat, an encroachment on our turf. It didn't take me long, though, to make the connection that almost every week somebody in our group needs to leave early. What if it might actually be better timing if we started a little earlier and ended a little earlier? This was a connection I never had made - and might not have, for a while at least, without this "conflict". That night I polled the group and all but one person said they would prefer this earlier end time, and no one had a problem with starting earlier. I had had an emotional reaction that this was a "bad thing" - that something was going wrong. But I was wrong.
   
2. An accurate dualism - something actually is going wrong.
   
   e.g. When you're crossing the street and suddenly a car is coming at you, there's a realistic basis for feeling like something is going wrong. This is not a time, unless you are some extraordinarily developed ninja, for blending your energy with that car - it's a time for keeping that car the hell separate.
   
   e.g. the other morning, as I was driving into town from my place in the country, I became aware of having judgments about the way the guy in front of me was driving. Now, I am prone to judgmental thoughts about the way people drive, and I thought, "There you go again - you and your judgmental mind." Well, my assessment that something was going wrong in my thought process turned out to be wrong - because something was actually going wrong in the way this guy was driving. The further I followed him, he was totally all over the road - frequently weaving into the oncoming lane. And he had no license plate. I came to the conclusion that his driving was in some way impaired - and called the highway patrol.
   
3. A dualism ignored or denied - something is going wrong, but we aren't seeing it.
   
   E.g. a friend asked me the other evening, "Hey, what finally came of those medical tests you had a ways back?" It was only at that moment that I realized that I had not told one person about the repeat biopsy I was having the next day - I had not even considered it. I really didn't have a tremendous amount of anxiety about it. I was pretty sure the results would be fine (which they did turn out to be) - but I did have some anxiety, some concern that something might be going wrong. But I was ignoring it, denying it - oh, let's just say it, suppressing it. My friend made the great suggestion that I send out an email to my handful of closest friends, alerting them of this procedure - so I could have a chance to get some support around it. I had had a little, unacknowledged concern that something might be going wrong, which had some basis in reality - and it was valuable for me to finally acknowledge this, but I had erred on the side of not paying attention to it.
   
   e.g. This pattern of not ever realizing that this is a situation in which I might want to ask for support is a very strong one in me. Something is kinda going wrong there, in this stuck pattern, but I tend not to notice it, which makes it harder to change it.
   

The thing that can most powerfully help us weave our way through this maze of false duality/accurate duality/ignored duality is present-moment awareness - a primary tool for which is to get grounded in our bodies.

This spectrum of dualities also applies to the related question, "Should we try to be positive all the time?" For me, this kind of "trying", this attempt to rigidly control the contents of our consciousness, just complicates our lives - as well as making it hard for us to perceive the genuine threats or problems around us and inside us.

So, does all this indicate, then, that "dualism is the truth - just the way things are"? Not to me - I still believe and more-and-more experience an underlying unity in all of life, including some of these things that are apparently "going wrong". I may not always see the connections - but I do know, for instance, that the way my friend punctured my excessive self-reliance around that medical procedure has put the whole issue of self-care (and asking for help) very much on the front burner for me. And I'm really grateful for that.