Duality and Oneness

I am intrigued by the concept of duality and oneness.

It appears to me that there is no duality. It only appears that way. There is only oneness. This has interesting repercussions for diagnosing and solving problems.

Look at the moon. It appears that there is the lighted moon and the dark moon. Two moons. Not so, right? It is the same moon. The dark side is where the light does not shine.

By the same token, there is no hate - love dichotomy. Hate is where there is no love. Put love into the relationship and it will diminish hate. Like bringing light to the dark side of the moon; it  suddenly turns into…moonlight.

There is no cold-hot dichotomy. It is cold because heat is missing.

There is no rich-poor dichotomy.

Now a question:

Are people poor because they do not have money? So all we have to do is give them money to become rich?

You heard about poor people who won a lottery. For how long were they rich?

Now take a rich person, not one who inherited the money but one who is a self made man. Now take his money away. Does he become poor?

I suggest to you that he is broke but not poor. He has what it takes to regain his financial footing.  Being poor is a frame of mind, not only a bank statement.

This approach has repercussions for policy making, for how we treat poverty.

I was just talking to a prominent and knowledgeable man who was recently in Haiti. He says that foreign aid has done damage. All the food coming in as aid is destroying the indigenous capabilities of people to feed themselves.

So giving fish to a hungry man does not make him full. You need to teach him to fish.

The difference between rich and poor is not how much money one has.  But rather it is how one relates to money.  The frame of mind is as important as possession of tools and information.

There is no effective-ineffective differentiation.

Think:  What would you eliminate to make an effective system ineffective? Or better: What would you add to an ineffective system to make it effective?

Take the problem of crime.  The dichotomy is crime versus righteous living.

If we agree with the hypothesis of oneness, where one side is the same as the other, but without an ingredient, then crime exists because there is no conscience that governs behavior. In that case, you do not fight crime by punishment. It is almost as if you were saying ,you fight illegitimate crime with legitimate “crime”. You fight fire with fire.

You have to inject what is missing.  Crime should be treated by increasing conscience? That is what is missing…

Is it not what Jesus preached: Fight hate with love?

Then there is no God - Devil dichotomy either. The Devil rules when God is absent. It is one and the same conscious energy. One is the absent mirror of the other. When one force is missing the opposite force will take its place. As if the energy is fixed. When positive energy is missing negative energy will take its place. When air is missing a vacuum will replace it.

The more I think about this concept of oneness the clearer the concept becomes. But its application is still elusive to me.

What do you think?

Pick any opposites.

Think what is missing in one opposite that creates the other.

Think whether putting the missing part will change the phenomenon, like bringing light to a dark moon. Or bringing God to chase away the Devil.

Does it work?

Sincerely, Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes