What Does Duality Mean? (Probably Not What You Want)

Just what does duality mean? You’re ahead of the game if you know it’s not just a notion you can think about once or twice and then store away. Right now you’re privy to one of the worst expressions of duality creating stress and havoc wherever it goes.  Just focus on the extreme polarization popping up just about everywhere. I think it’s valuable and timely to take a fresh look at not only what duality is, but how its power impacts your daily life.

In America and other places around the world, you can observe what’s happening in the wake of two opposing viewpoints locked in battle. The result is a seemingly unending stalemate with no apparent way out. Regardless of which opposing perspective you align with, this scenario demonstrates the downside of duality.  I’ll get to the upside in just a minute.  But first, let’s look more closely at what duality, also referred to as the law of polarity, indicates is true for all things.

The Law Of Polarity

The Law of Polarity is also referred to as one of  7 Universal Laws. It’s believed that these natural laws, like gravity, are the 7 ruling laws of the universe. Everything that rests within this Universe is governed by these laws. Their purpose is to monitor the balance and harmony throughout.

The interesting part is that these laws also govern you – especially in your daily life. And you can verify the truth of this hypothesis for yourself.

Now here’s the good part. Several of these laws can’t be changed at all.  But the Law of Polarity is malleable.  You can learn to navigate its presence in a way that serves your happiness, rather than disrupting it. In other words, with the right perspective, duality, or opposing viewpoints, have the prowess to do more than creating stalemates, wreaking havoc, and generally evoking stress, conflict, and undue stress and unhappiness.

Without knowing how to navigate the law of polarity, the nature of polar opposites will greatly restrict your freedom to be happy.  Paying attention to the role polarities play in your decision-making frees you to move through daily life with less stress and more presence and awareness.  The law reads like this:

“Everything exists in duality, everything has poles, everything has its opposite, however opposites are
identical in their nature and different only in degree’.

It’s not too difficult to understand intellectually. For example, hot and cold exist as an inseparable polar pair because they are identical in their substance but differ only in the amount of warmth or coolness each one offers. Night and day are inseparable because they too are identical in their substance but differ only in the amount of light or darkness each one offers.

Using this perspective allows you to become attentive to how duality influences the way you relate to the flow of your daily life, opening the way to new ways of viewing things. The way you approach polarities has an enormous impact on whether you’re happy and accepting of your life, or complaining and feeling rejected by life. The law of polarity regulates one of the most influential patterns shaping how you experience the events of your ordinary day.

You can learn how to make this pattern work for you instead of against you. This results in the delivery of some powerful insights and astonishing guidance for a greater degree of happiness and a new dimension of inner peace.

Who Cares About Understanding Polar Opposites?

There are four general groups that already acknowledge the power of this law:

1. People interested in manifestation embrace this law. They use it to intentionally draw what they wish to have into their lives. You may remember the movie The Secret from years back. It focused on discovering this law and how to use it to manifest a better life.
2. Various spiritual paths offer non-duality as the way to a better and more spiritually informed way of life.  Non-duality is offered as a way to manage this law by transcending it and focusing on its illusory nature.
3. Scholars and others who delight in intellectual expertise acknowledge the law of polarity as powerful and worthy of note.
4. The newest group includes individuals, like yourself, interested in expanding your capacity for conscious living and conscious leadership.

Duality & Decision-Making

Sometimes people assume that acknowledging the existence of opposite forces is adequate.  This is a mistake. It generates paying lip-service to duality. It leads to resting in the conclusion that there is no further need to investigate the role of polarities in daily life – mental or experiential.

But here’s the thing. Duality definitely permeates your decision-making abilities when you’re in the grips of a dilemma.  When you face making a decision with only two options, you’re facing duality in action. Here are a few common examples:

Love or Hate / Liberal or Conservative / Right or Wrong / Accept or Reject / Win or Lose / Alone or Together / Separate or Connected / Free or Imprisoned / Good or Bad / Fair or Unjust / Smart or Stupid / Happy or Sad / Bored or Inspired / Active or Passive / Fearful or Courageous / Beautiful or Ugly / Rich or Poor / Joy or Sorrow

Because duality is a pattern scattered throughout the fabric of your life, wisdom dictates learning how to recognize its presence and the best and most mindful way to live with it.

“Either This Or That” In Action

Duality permeates six major categories of your daily life. Take a few moments and explore what kinds of dilemmas stress you out in each of these areas. What do you feel in the presence of these dilemmas? How do you choose what to decide?

1. The Way You Navigate Your Relationships / My needs or Your Needs
2. Your Quest For Personal Happiness / Get What I Want or Get Something I Don’t Want
3. Your Desire For Personal Power / Feeling Strong or Feeling Weak
4. Managing Your Drive For Success / Winning or Losing
5. Finding And Following Your Purpose / Useful or Useless
6. Faith Or Trust In Something Larger Than You / Doubtful or Convinced

Because duality/polar opposites in the form of either/or decisions are so pervasive, it’s empowering to know how to do these 3 things:

1. Recognize dilemmas as the source of most daily stress
2. Realize you’re in their grip when you feel that inner-tug-of-war between two options
3. Apply the new strategy you’ve discovered to manage their demand for action

When you decide to explore the nature of duality in your daily life, you begin to recognize its unharnessed power – and how that power swells when polar opposites are free to roam through your daily life unattended and undirected.

Recognizing “This Or That?”When It Comes Knocking On Your Door

How do you recognize when this Law of Polarity shows up in your life? Are you aware of that feeling that arises when it starts to swoop in, forcing you to polarize?  When I say “polarize” I mean pick a side or take a stand. And then set it up against its opposite.  What can do you do when that happens?

Without awareness, polar opposites will simply force you to begin arguing for the side or stand you’ve chosen. Now that’s not bad at all. But what makes it untenable is the amount of emotional turmoil it starts generating. And that turmoil feeds the polarization, making the side you picked or the stand you took seem more and more correct, right, or the truth. And this usually leaves the other side being perceived as incorrect, wrong, or false.

Everyone is overstressed these days.  Explore this little piece of wisdom to see if it’s true.

“…To set up what you like against what dis-like, is the dis-ease of the mind….”
Sengsten, 3rd Zen Patriarch – Verses On A Faith Mind

Check it out.  If you find this reflects what you’re doing, learning how to navigate the effects of the Law of Polarity can help you change the way you move through your day.

For more information, please check out my FREE mini-course on Centered 24-7 – Leading From The Eye Of The Storm. It gives you a solid introduction to duality, how to recognize it in your daily life, and how you can start approaching it differently right now.  Just CLICK HERE to watch this 4-Video series.

Please enjoy and stay as safe and healthy as you can.
Much love,
Ragini

**all free images compliments of www.Pixabay.com