Today I’m going to attempt to give you a top line overview of how I conceptualise duality and unity consciousness. These are ideas I’ve been exploring for a number of years, yet only recently feel I’m coming to a level of understanding that is functional - particularly when it comes to thinking about how we heal. Let’s dive in.
Dualism, or duality, is a concept that has its origins in ancient religious and philosophical thought that sought to explain the world as the interplay of opposing forces. People usually think of it as polar opposites - good and evil, light and dark, activity and stillness. While at the simplest level this is true, I think a more useable way of thinking about it is ‘what is, and what isn’t’.
What I mean by that is things are as much defined by what they are not as by what they are. I believe that it’s this definition - the literal definite boundary between these two sides, that gives rise to all form and structure in existence - whether physical or psychological. What is, and isn’t ‘allowed’, what is and isn’t any specific object, etc.
Take a chair, for example. The idea of a chair is a concept - it’s a human creation and has evolved, and been refined, for long enough that most of us should be able to recognise one - no matter how abstract or unusual any specific chair’s form might be.
But if you didn’t know what a chair was, what would you see? If it was made of wood, from a certain perspective it might simply appear as an odd bundle of sticks. At an atomic level, it’s no more than a configuration of carbon atoms.
Each of these statements is a perspective - it’s a reduction of information into a useable form depending on your need. It’s these perspectives that enable us to create and interact with the world. There’s a situation where it’s most functional to focus our perspective on the idea of a chair. There’s an equally valid situation where awareness of the atomic makeup is useful. Neither of them are absolute truth, however they are both relatively true and consistent enough to be useable.
What I’m getting at is that it’s impossible to remove the relative, subjective perspective from how we communicate any situation - and as a result, it’s never the whole story. Just as an eye is unable to look at itself, all of your experiences of life are limited by the frame through which you are looking at them. Everything we conceptualise requires reality to be sliced in a specific way to maintain its integrity and hold form. This is what gives it stability as a concept.
Now, while none of these concepts are absolutely true, there are many that are universal enough that most humans will agree on them. In psychology, these are referred to as consensus reality - the concepts that are unconsciously agreed upon to the point that we function within their rules ‘as if’ they are real.
Consensus reality can also function at different levels - with ingrained beliefs that are held as absolute truth within different social structures (which are also themselves concepts). There may be beliefs like this within your relationship or family, within your town, country, subculture, continent, race, gender, etc.. as well as things that could be considered as near universal for most of humanity.
Take language for example. Language is a concept - a shared frame between all those who speak it. Language is an overlay on top of reality that enables us to interact and share information - the word bird is not a bird, yet our agreed meaning means we’re able to point one out to each other.
Every language has its own words and rules about what is and isn’t allowed - it’s very hard to communicate, or even be aware of something, if the language you speak doesn’t have words for it. This is why it’s possible for multi-linguists to gain new insight and perspective by switching the language used to think about a problem. They are literally shifting the way they conceptualise things.
Our entire experience of reality and even our sense of self is created by the interplay of countless concepts of what is and isn’t. Who, or what we are, and what we are not. And the really wild thing is we only notice the behaviours, traits or aspects of others that we do not currently accept, or allow in ourselves - both positively or negatively.
For example, if I’m a man, I do not judge the aspect of being a man in others - but I still notice all of their other traits that do not conform to me. Or conversely, if I do not perceive myself as beautiful, say, I will be acutely aware of those I believe to be so.
My sense of self as an individual is literally created by the interplay of all the concepts I believe I am ‘allowed’ to be. It’s the accumulation of my ideas of what is and isn’t acceptable for me to be that creates, and limits, my reality.
Of course, most of these concepts were given to us - formed in whatever way the universe formed and passed down through generations since that dawn of existence. Initially, we can’t see the frames because we’ve lived our entire lives within their borders.
The experience that people describe as spiritual awakening is really a moment where one of these frames is shattered - our experience has obliterated a belief structure we have been living within, where we suddenly expand our awareness to a new perspective that enables us to move much more freely in our environment. It’s still not ‘real’, although there’s a real chance of becoming attached to this new perspective because it can feel so much more empowering and different to what came before.
There are always new, more empowering perspectives to be found. The point is not to find the ‘real’ one, because that doesn’t exist. But if you can start to see the framework at play here, there’s a chance to start choosing how you interact with it - rather than being dragged around unconsciously. Every time you let go of a judgement, you expand and are able to contain more of the whole of existence.
We can also flip this and look at it from the other side - if you take the idea of unity consciousness, the idea that we are all a single consciousness experiencing itself through different lenses, to it’s conclusion, the only truth that can be regarded as absolute is the oneness of the universe.
From this starting point, it’s through the introduction of perspectives - what is, and isn’t, allowed, accepted, welcomed, wanted… that gives rise to the illusion of separation. Just as a single egg cell splits over and over again until a baby is formed, the form of the universe exists because of these splits, introducing evermore new perspectives.
How to work with this
I could go way deeper into this. I’m working on an extensive exploration for my YouTube to help turn this into a functional framework that you can use to begin reclaiming a bit more agency and awareness over the concepts you’re currently living within. For now, I’d like to bring it back to a few therapeutic examples so you can see how this impacts you.
When things feel wrong in our lives, it’s really because these unconscious concepts we hold about reality are no longer functioning well within the context of the wider collective. I might have beliefs about how to behave that kept me safe in the unpredictable world of my childhood, yet they become severely limiting to my social life as an adult. And yet, if I am bound to them, I will unconsciously do everything in my power to maintain them.
These boundaries create energetic fields that have tangible structure. You can feel the limit when you try to do something you’ve learned is shameful - your body reacts like walking too close to the edge of a cliff.
For example, if I learned that ‘boys don’t cry’, the ‘rules’ of that concept are something like, “I must remain stoic and emotionless, appearing strong and in control at all times”. That’s what’s allowed. What’s not allowed is any authentic expression of negative emotion, or anything that might be perceived as weakness.
You can clearly see here the boundary that separates what is, and isn’t allowed. And that the concept is not ‘real’. Certainly there might be situations where it is functional, even useful - I could be persuaded that in certain military settings it might be necessary. And I would argue that there are situations where it might be more beneficial for a man to hold his emotions back while he does what needs to be done, until he can find a more suitable time to process.
For a man with that belief, he will likely fight to hold back his tears, and feel justified in attacking someone who is provoking him into an emotional state. From within that belief, his actions are justified. And yet, for him to heal - for him to integrate more of his authentic expression and become more whole, he needs to be able to question the belief and find safety to do the opposite. He needs to be shown it’s ok to cry.
This is true for any limiting belief - whether you learned your needs were not important, you learned you’re only worthy of love if you are successful, you had to be the strong one to look after everyone, or any thing else.
Often it might require finding a safe environment to explore doing the opposite of what we learned was needed to keep us safe. Sometimes it might look like fully feeling an emotion we learned was not welcome. It’s also possible to work energetically to soften the boundaries and allow our expression to flow more freely.
In this way, integration is really a process of identifying the concepts we live within, that are currently limiting our existence, and finding ways to poke holes in their structure to enable us to expand and move more freely in the world. It’s an ongoing journey of acceptance, expansion, and a return to wholeness.
You are the whole universe experiencing itself. You have to let go of what you think you know to experience it.
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Thanks for reading.
James Garside is a psychotherapist and men’s group facilitator based in Kettering, Northants. To enquire about psychotherapy services in-person or online over Zoom, get in touch.