Duality and Diversity
Duality and Diversity
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – December 13,2021
Outside, there's diversity, there’s polarity, there’s duality, out to compete with each other for power and dominance. As always, the people, the innocent, the good-hearted are caught in the crossfire. And this is practically the kind of world we are living in today. We live in a world of plurality and multiplicity that is highly competitive and ruthless.
This divisive kind of world compartmentalizes people into this and that such as Democrats and Republicans, Nationalists and Liberals, Communists and Capitalists, Christians and non-Christians, Jews and Arabs, theists and atheists, black and white, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, civilized and uncivilized.
We can be aggravating this fiercely uncompassionate world if we stubbornly hold on to the dictum that we are unique, distinct, and different from others: "I am not one with them." In this case, we practically separate ourselves from others.
A holier-than-thou attitude? This could be an inevitable consequence. If this becomes the dominant view in society, we segregate people in terms of their beliefs and affiliations.
The obstacles to personal growth and social transformation will remain as long as this isolationist mode of thinking prevails in our mind. But what can we do?
There's nothing much we can do at the moment. We don't have other alternatives yet available to us. This is our only world. And we are forced to associate and mingle with people and institutions outside if we are to survive, and meeting them requires some protocols.
The only way we can go around this tricky world is to go inside us. When communing with ourselves in solitude and silence, there's only awareness and consciousness. In this state, there's no class distinction, no religious affiliation, no political affiliation, no racial discrimination, no gender differentiation, no ideological compartmentalization.
It is when we are in this inner state of our being and essence that separation becomes union, diversity becomes unity, isolation becomes socialization, islands become archipelagos and continents, borders become limitless horizons, time becomes timeless. Inside us, there's only one; the two and the many become one. We become one. And this inner world of oneness becomes projected to the outside world.
Outside this, everything is a delusion. Albert Einstein described this as follows: "This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Quantum physics say that inside each one of us, the observer and the observed become so intertwined that there is no more distinction between the two. Inside us, the two and the many become one and the same. This insider view of oneness, interrelatedness, and interconnectedness might be the only key that can open a new world where we humans and all creatures are interdependent, able to survive and prosper only if we become more compassionate with each other.
As Philosopher Albert Camus said: "In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm."