Dave Brisbin | 2.24.19
Talking about the mental gymnastics involved in moving from dualistic thinking to unitive thinking, once again, it’s not about become wholly one or the other, but a realization of the need for the balance of middle ground. Ultimately all our brains do—our left brains at least—is to differentiate: compare and contrast, find the edges of things to define and distinguish them from the background and the next thing, to place them in categories, divide light from dark, past from future, us from them. Without this ability, we don’t survive. All the tasks along our journey of life are dependent on the ability to think dualistically, and we need to take the tasks of life seriously. If we don’t, we’ll never find our purpose, meaning, and identity as humans. But at the same time, if we take the tasks of life too seriously, if we never stop differentiating and judging, if we become defined and identified with our tasks and accomplishments, then we never find meaning, purpose, identity either.
Talking about the mental gymnastics involved in moving from dualistic thinking to unitive thinking, once again, it’s not about become wholly one or the other, but a realization of the need for the balance of middle ground. Ultimately all our brains do—our left brains at least—is to differentiate: compare and contrast, find the edges of things to define and distinguish them from the background and the next thing, to place them in categories, divide light from dark, past from future, us from them. Without this ability, we don’t survive. All the tasks along our journey of life are dependent on the ability to think dualistically, and we need to take the tasks of life seriously. If we don’t, we’ll never find our purpose, meaning, and identity as humans. But at the same time, if we take the tasks of life too seriously, if we never stop differentiating and judging, if we become defined and identified with our tasks and accomplishments, then we never find meaning, purpose, identity either.
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We’re on this hero’s journey of life not to find and acquire our purpose, but to reach the point of release of all that we think the journey is about, and in that clearing realize the purpose, meaning, and identity that had always been ours from before we began. From Abraham to Moses to Solomon, to Jesus to Dorothy Gale in Oz to each of us, the journey is the same in shape and infinitely different in detail. A hero is not the one who completes the journey, but the one whom the journey completes.
