In a last piece I was pointing to the fact that this is a time with a great deal of polarization on many fronts. I pointed to the male-female conversation because I know it well but it’s only one of many polarized places. You know them - vaccines, the reactions to Trump, Dems and Republicans, Covid.
But beyond all that there’s another side: a Greater Unity. We’re connected to and immersed in a higher reality that transcends and includes the opposites. There are many names for it and also the recognition that it’s beyond names. I often call it Presence but the name doesn’t matter.
We live in these two separate realms, the polarity and the Greater Unity. The way our minds work it’s hard to escape seeing only one side or the other. It’s like the famous optical illusion of the old woman and the young girl.
You can see an old woman looking to her left with a white kerchief on and a big chin, OR a young woman’s profile and neck. (The old woman’s nose is the left cheek of the young woman; the old woman’s nose edge is the young woman’s jaw line.) The way our minds work it’s very hard or impossible to see both at the same time. I’m not sure the analogy perfectly demonstrates the capacity of our bicameral brain - perhaps it serves best as a metaphor - but it does reflect experience: We can’t see the Greater Unity and inhabit the polarity at the same time. On the one hand we’re in life, living it from a particular perspective, and on the other we’re reflecting upon it with another part of our intelligence.
This reminds me of a conversation I’ve been having over many years with an old friend - Woody. (John Wood). Woody’s a staunch advocate of the Greater Unity principle while I tell myself I’m arguing for it AND the polarities both. Woody and I’ve gone back and forth on this literally hundreds, many hundreds of hours over the years elucidating our respective views. Luckily we laugh along the way. I’m writing this post partly because Woody replied to my last post where I laid out the challenging polarity between women and men and what I see as the route forward.
I’ll explore this both-and here, knowing that Woody is very capable of speaking up for himself should he care to.
Can one of them come first, the Great Unity or the polarities . . . or are they like chicken and egg?
Or perhaps we’re enmeshed in a deeper mystery, like the polarity of women and men, who have different natures that are, and will surely remain, a beautiful and unfathomable mystery to each other? We couldn’t have a man or woman OR the Great Unity any of the three.
I’m a both-ist! So much so that I’ve gone back and forth in this Substack blog with Greater Unity and the polarities each nudging the other off the stage and taking over. Presence, Men and women, Presence, the other polarities of the present, Presence …?
Personally I hold onto both because both have been completly essential in my life. I couldn’t give either up and still remain myself. I live in both (and I project that we all do). Maybe it’s like being loyal both to God-by-whatever-name and to the other humans walking on the dusty road with us.
The polarities are not just women and men. I’m just as interested in the modern hour and it too is wrapped in polarity. Or polarities. Polarities all the way down.
One of the main expressions of the modern polarity is the question, Are we living in the Matrix? Is this a psyop? It’s a risky question for our unique, individual self. We can be so misunderstood. We can be cancelled by our friends, irritate our lovers. So many worldly things can happen, e.g., maybe CBDCs are going to be just like the Chinese social credit system (bad). Maybe there’ll be another pandemic, one deliberately seeded in order to bring us thoroughy to heal. Maybe AI will have unintended consequences. And more!
All this makes me and maybe us vulnerable or raises questions we may have trouble sharing with the ones we love.
And all the while there’s the Greater Unity, inviolable and ever-present. Loving, unconcerned, playful. The eternal source of all.
I’d love it if you can leave a comment or a like or share. It tells Substack, and other readers that there are live humans like you about.
Andrew, my friend, thank you for staying engaged in our conversation.
Let me declare that I would dearly like to be the writer you are and express, as you express your reality, express mine with such clarity.
I pondered how to respond to your reality without arguing - free of being right and making you wrong.
And I'm just wrapping up a fourth book called A World of Possibility ... recreating the world in which we relate, create, live work and play. It could have been written to respond to you but 400 pages is a tad long.
And it occurred to me that a piece I wrote - included in the book - might do the job. It's 253 words.
Love ... Woody
LIFE UNBRIDLED
Seeing beyond our frozen fears and imagined needs lies another realm,
a realm unrivalled.
Seeing beyond our beliefs, opinions and judgements,
of being right and making others wrong, is another state –
a state of wisdom and common sense.
Seeing beyond anger, violence, murder and mayhem –
our inner peace and equanimity reside.
Seeing beyond racism, nationalism, communism, capitalism – freed of all isms –
we live unhindered by our conditioned minds and hardened hearts.
Seeing beyond acceptance and tolerance is another world –
a world of kindness and understanding.
Seeing beyond theology, philosophy, science and certainty –
a life of openness exists.
Seeing beyond our need for more, better, different –
we discover satisfaction with what we have.
Seeing beyond our alcoholism, drug addiction, gluttony – all forms of self-harm –
we see what is and wake up.
And yes:
Seeing beyond our crimes, arrests, trials and incarcerations –
a pure heart is beating.
Seeing beyond all conflicts, wars, dominance, and control,
or simply a couple lost in their day-to-day disagreements –
our innate desire for peace remains.
And finally:
Seeing beyond this story, your story, their story – every story ever written or told –
our life is unbridled.
And there, before our lifelong accumulation,
an all-embracing warmth melts the edges of division,
dissolving the illusion of you and me, of them and us.
Our true self revealed – humanity’s innocence understood – the unknown embraced.
This internal, eternal universe is home – is love.
Our minds in peace, a new reality seen, a life fulfilled.
A life of decency, creating a world of Possibility.
Dear Andrew, it seems to me that if there's one thing that human beings are better at than creating a story, it is getting lost in the story they have just created.
When people get lost in their stories their minds quickly become calcified, resulting in kindness of mind flying clean out the window.
There is a simple question to be asked, and that is " is there anything that ails human beings in terms of how they get along with each other that a little bit of kindness, and consideration wouldn't solve?"
Now I am going to go out on a limb here " even at the risk of the limb breaking, and I landing on my backside " and say that kindness of mind is our default setting.
Everything else is learned behavior brought about by our conditioning,
The wonderful thing is all we have to do is SEE when we are getting lost in our stories, and our minds will quickly begin to decalcify, and our default setting will find us.
There is nothing to be learned, there is only something to be seen, and our emotions will do the seeing for us, we only have to listen to them.
Andrew I am not sure if any of this makes sense, but I enjoy explorative conversations it is how we will develop as intuitive beings rather than merely intellectual beings.
Andrew almost every afternoon about a half dozen magpies arrive at my patio door, and they sing a beautiful song in the hope that I will feed them, you see Maggie's are instinctual creatures, but we human beings are intuitive beings, Evething we need to live in harmony is in us, all we have to be is silent.
Kind regards Eamonn Leonard.