duality

Posted on by bert0001
november roses .. (click to enlarge ..)
november roses .. (click to enlarge ..)

in my head:
love versus fear;
only inside the experiencing self,
which I call I

is there really a duality?
or
is there a spectrum encompassing both?
or
is there really nothing at all, and is my experience an empty dream?

Picture by bvdb (whoisbert) november 2015 – @home – Nikon D3300 – ex_dsc_4234

24 thoughts on “duality”

  1. Could be that the answer is yes to all these questions… it doesn’t help, saying that I know. A kind of consciousness beyond words, all-inclusive, an immensity.

    Reply

    • “There is a love that exists beyond duality”
      Perhaps, or perhaps not. If you always look through that glass, you will never realize whether it is true (or not).

      Reply

  4. For some people, fear precipitates and perpetuates what they call love. Anyway, it’s always one feeling at a time – this moment a kind of love, then a moment of fear, then indifference, etc. It’s a spectrum over time, but never simultaneously. Perception is sequential and serial. Is that right Bert?

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    • Yes, I can follow your line of thought on emotions and ‘mind’ does that sequentially. But didn’t you ever have the experience during a ‘brain’storm that many things where produced in that brain at the same time. Then you had to wait or switch it off to know what needed to be done?

      Reply

      • I think that’s a very complex issue Bert, because (as you know) what we think of as everyday consciousness is for the most part a series of highly selective, time-shifted, meta-level representations hewn from countless sensory datum, and whilst in one sense we can say “many things were produced in that brain at the same time” – because that is how it appeared to us – they were really just discrete moments of perception.

        An example: we take a glass of water and bring it to our mouth for a sip. It seems for all the world that we are simultaneously aware of seeing the glass, of feeling our arm reach out for it, and then next of noticing the drinking action in the mouth and throat whilst again simultaneously looking out of the kitchen window and perhaps hearing the birds outside. The whole is apprehended as a seamless blend of phenomena, each of which we must describe separately. If we then do the whole process again, yet with a calm and quietened mind, we see the sequential nature of perception; we see that in fact we never did simultaneously feel and see and hear and taste all at once. The everyday (speeded-up) mind creates that illusion through its meta-level representations imagining a seamless apprehending. In other words, there are a series of sensory representations, interspersed with meta-level representations which are just imagination (thoughts), and it is the latter which creates the illusion of our taking the world in all at once, all of a piece.

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        • yes … but what happens when one is not looking through the meta-level spectacles? Interpreting via meta-level-vision removes all other interpretations, while it is just one of millions … And it doesn’t matter: you didn’t say anything about ‘switching off’ the sequence or the simultaneousness of events, thoughts and emotions — neither does it matter that you can never switch it off entirely. 🙂

          Reply

          • ” . . . what happens when one is not looking through the meta-level spectacles?”

            I think I answered that (in my own way) in having said this Bert:

            “If we then do the whole process again, yet with a calm and quietened mind, we see the sequential nature of perception; we see that in fact we never did simultaneously feel and see and hear and taste all at once. The everyday (speeded-up) mind creates that illusion through its meta-level representations imagining a seamless apprehending.”

            Reply

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