Essay for
July 2004

Duality Entrapment

Duality encompasses your entire life, filling each moment with opportunity. It is rarely seen or experienced as an opportunity as it can and does bring conflict, pain and destruction. Duality in its condensed meaning is learning, and learning is not always appreciated or even wanted. But the duality within living maintains evolutionary learning, which you cannot avoid. It is an unrecognized pointer at the foundation of your existence. Living duality creates markers in your life, constantly maintaining movement from one marker to the next. If you get stuck in a marker, the energy of the duality you are lodged within will release you, albeit with a fair degree of suffering.

The largest living duality you exist within is spirit reality and physical reality. This duality then contains dualities within other dualities as a growing mechanism. At conception - not birth - your spirit and physical reality are joined as one. Spirit reality is consciousness (non-graspable); physical reality is the body (graspable). Each gives life to the other. That statement may be difficult to appreciate until you experience the indestructibility and consistency of consciousness. With that experience the temporary union is seen and known as indeed temporary. But the temporary is what sets the stage for the eternalization of indestructible consciousness. And duality is the force that keeps the entire lot moving.

Everything exists within a duality. Color or no color, left and right, front and back etc. are physical learning dualities of how to survive in the world. Spirit learning dualities all fall within restriction or non-restriction, the largest learning dualities of consciousness. Restriction builds borders of learning - constructs and beliefs - that provide safety and security, also creating entrapment within the borders. Non-restriction opens the borders - flexibility of constructs and beliefs - freeing the spirit imprisoned within. This malleability maintains directional freedom of evolutionary movement. Restriction on its own will perpetually create conflict, wars and destruction on multiple levels of existence, resulting in endless pain, sorrow, anxiety and suffering. Non-restriction on its own creates ephemeral emotional connections that have no foundation, crumpling with the smallest pressure, resulting equally in endless pain, sorrow, anxiety and suffering. Both are the merry-go-rounds of unresolved dualities. Both create endless forms of internal and external pollution. And pollution contains the potential to kill both the physical and spiritual.

Entrapment in a restrictive or non-restrictive duality will always, without fail, cause pain, anxiety and suffering in some fashion. The pain, in turn, will maintain itself, which is the failsafe mechanism of a duality. Ignore the pain and it will reinvent itself within another situation other than the one now being experienced. Attempting to resolve the pain, while still remaining in the duality, can appear to alleviate it. You can trick yourself, but you cannot trick the duality. It is like attempting to repair a crumbling dam. Just when one part is repaired another part ruptures and so it goes on. Within the ceaseless anxiety of constant repair you keep asking, 'Why is this occurring or why is this always happening to me'? When your vision is locked within a duality, you have imprisoned yourself without even being aware of the imprisonment. The duality in absolute kindness is attempting to demonstrate that imprisonment. The pain and suffering is that kindness, but is rarely if ever, seen or appreciated as such.

Creating internal borders of learning is growth that can become borders of stagnation. The stagnation creates pollution, and the pollution potentially destroys. It's a sequence of events that continually recycle. The entrapment unknowingly creates the pain. Internal borders of learning are always held in restriction, which is natural and normal. Or, you believe the learning, which becomes the glue, holding that learning as indisputable fact. The glue and not the learning becomes the problem. If these borders are not allowed to expand or maintain flexibility, they solidify into rock hard internal patterns of living that you reference for your existence. The rocks form the walls, creating the prison you live within. It is secure, safe and dark as the light of your existence is slowly being veiled. But your light can never be extinguished, only veiled. It is the veiling that dims your vision, but your light is always fully on. The shadow-world of your existence lives within the darkness of your self-created or adopted veils. Remove the veils and your light shines brilliantly of its own accord.

These created or adopted patterns of living, creating your shadow-world with continued use and reliance, become solid imprints. The imprints become the mortar binding the patterns together, blocking any light from escaping or penetrating. It is the dark end of living in a duality, but the duality cannot be imprisoned, and it struggles for its freedom. The struggle creates the self-inflicted pain that always eventuates. You may only recognize the pain when it is upon you, but the cause can elude you. Your own veiling has blocked your vision, and the created darkness limits your vision to what you have created. It is entrapment within entrapment, and you did it all to yourself. The pain and suffering is the duality attempting to free itself. The stronger the borders, the greater the pain. But the pain and suffering is in reality support, as it is attempting to open your vision beyond your self-created imprisonment.

Therapy and medication may enter somewhere around here, which can be either supportive, or else create a new prison. If the therapist is caught within a duality it is very difficult to support another out of entrapment if the therapist is equally entrapped, albeit in a different prison. The entrapment is self-created. Accepting a new form of imprisonment by accepting a new pattern of living that is more personally or sociability acceptable is simply another form of entrapment. That entrapment will require constant maintaining or rebuilding, as your immediate environment is always in constant change. Your changing environment brings back the same pain and suffering in another form. It will simply not end unless you look at the imprisonment and what caused it.

Living duality gives life and it can take it away. It is always your choice, even though it may not be recognized as a choice. You created the imprisonment and you can free yourself from it, and no one but you can do it. Others can point at what to do, but it is you who must make the decision to act upon the pointing. If the pointing is equally locked within a prison, and you accept that form of pointing, you are simply changing shackles. Little will have been accomplished even if it appears as if it has. You will know if you have simply changed shackles, as the pain and suffering will return in another disguise. Being shackled within a duality is a restrictive prison. Being unshackled in a non-restrictive duality is equally a prison. In this instance the walls are transparent, but are still walls. You simply cannot see them. Restrictive walls are very visible while non-restrictive walls are transparent. Walls are walls and they will cause endless forms of pain and suffering somewhere and sometime in your life.

It may appear as if there is no way out of this seemingly endless cycle of entrapment, but there is. The living duality of restriction and non-restriction is the evolution of consciousness, that you either work with or fight against. It is a choice. But to even appreciate that it is a choice, you must be willing to investigate your existence. It is in the investigation of existence where all your held constructs, beliefs, patterns and imprints come under threat. The investigation appears to threaten them as they are all restrictively held - including the non-restrictive ones - providing you with safety and security. It is that safety and security that feels as if it is being attacked, but it is not, it is only your created restrictive energy coming under investigation. The apparent threats to the safety and security in your beliefs, constructs, patterns and imprints do create anxiety and fear. Anything that threatens your safety and security is not an easy encounter. That encounter is a choice, and if you can continually recall that the encounter is aimed at the created energy of restriction and not your beliefs, constructs, patterns and imprints, the investigation may be easier to endure. Even though the encounter may alter your beliefs, constructs, patterns and imprints, the alteration still maintains your safety and security, as they still exist - simply in a less restricted or more malleable form.

As your investigation continues, all those beliefs, constructs, patterns and imprints held in restriction gain flexibility, altering their form. The flexibility is allowing non-restriction into restriction, and living duality once again is on its own evolutionary pathway. Allowing non-restriction into restriction does not destroy, it creates a greater depth of understanding of what restriction has constructed. As the understanding deepens patterns and imprints begin to dissolve and a new security and safety emerges to take their place: trust. Trust is non-restriction within restrictively held beliefs and constructs, opening up or freeing those beliefs and constructs, freeing the prisoner within. But this new emerging trust is not the old trust in restrictively held beliefs, constructs or imprints. It's a trust in the natural and ongoing evolution of consciousness. This form of trust may feel ephemeral or not lodged anywhere, free of restriction. But it is centered. That center is the self-creation of a new emerging compassionate base, where all are held and treated with equality within an open innocence of trust. This new form of trust does feel different from the trust in constructs or beliefs. And can be witnessed as non-judgmental, supportive and totally unguarded. The unguarded aspect of this trust is its finest attribute.

Trust is the duality to fear. You will discover the majority of your held beliefs and constructs have been established out of fear, creating patterns and imprints that control your life by that fear. If you care to look deeper, you will discover a most revealing paradox: the fear is based upon trust. You trust your constructs, beliefs and imprints, and that trust creates fear of loss or change of what you trust. The trust is fine; it is the fear that creates all the problems. Or, trust has been defined with fear. This has been going on for centuries, and one only has to look around to see the results.

Trusting your own investigative power is having faith in yourself, and faith is trust, which is trusting your chosen direction. This new inward heading journey allows light into the dark prison you have constructed, illuminating the deception of false safety and security. That deception created the pain and anxiety. And that false imposter can be exposed as not what you are. To discover 'what and who you are' the false imposter must be seen as the entity that causes all the pain and suffering, and that takes effort. The effort is a choice. The choice always exists and is yours alone, as no one anywhere can coerce you, even though many may try. The choice can take the hard road by establishing equanimity of dualities within your life. This is a most difficult pathway, but intensely rewarding. Or, it can go straight to the heart of the matter and you live your life with simplicity and sincerity in all you do, which is living within absolute compassion. Both are difficult but parallel pathways to the same end. Ideally they are used together.

Trusting your choice of either investigation methods or compassionate insight, or both, creates an energy force that opens self-created closed doors through clarity of vision. Trust is a created spirit energy pattern, aligning or resonating with the spirit gravity patterns of creation, and the results of that alignment can be astounding. Trust opens endless pathways of unimpeded clarity and, if acted upon, creates evolutionary spirit value that eternalizes an indestructible consciousness.

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