WoonZai

Duality

When beauty is abstracted
Then ugliness has been implied;
When good is abstracted
Then evil has been implied.So alive and dead are abstracted from nature,
Difficult and easy abstracted from progress,
Long and short abstracted from contrast,
High and low abstracted from depth,
Song and speech abstracted from melody,
After and before abstracted from sequence.

The sage experiences without abstraction,
And accomplishes without action;
He accepts the ebb and flow of things,
Nurtures them, but does not own them,
And lives, but does not dwell.

-Peter Merel, Online Translations of the Tao Te Ching. Chapter 2

It striked me how much duality exist in our lives, and the pain it has caused for people that failed to understand its concept. We are all trained to label things (eg events, activities and objects) as good/evil, beautiful/ugly, hardworking/lazy, smart/stupid, easy/difficult, exciting/boring, success/failure, selfish/generous, rich/poor etc?

Has it ever occured to you that if no beautiful people exist in the world, that you will stop labeling other people as ugly? Or the reason why you call someone fat is because you have seen someone thin? Has it ever occured to you that if you stop labeling any work as easy, you won’t find any work difficult? If you have not experienced any excitement in your life, you will not find that you are bored? Have you ever wondered why your life seems to be unfulfilled? Would you find your life unfulfilled if you have never seeked fulfillment in your life before?

The problem comes when we condition our mind to the emotional outcome of the situation. We have been trained to think that we should work towards the ideal >> Success, smart, good-looking, productive etc. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) exist to push us towards this ideal, and this is what I find unhealthy about it. NLP believes that with we can condition our mind towards these desirable traits that everyone in society seeks. Improper use of NLP can damage a person physically, emotionally and mentally.

Our lives open up when we start to accept and embrace duality in our nature. We complete our work without thinking whether it’s easy or difficult. We accept people for who they are without thinking whether they are ugly or beautiful. We accept our lifes without seeking excitement because we never find our lives boring.

The mistakes made by most NLP practitioners is their intense desire to tap onto the need of unrefined human beings to feel successful and accomplished. I believe that NLP practitioners who wants to condition their mind into a constant “state of success” will fall greater into depression with each passing day. An over-attachment to a certain ideal state will tilt the balance in their life. The classification of achieving certain desirable vs undesirable traits is the making of their undoing. They start to suffer from the winner’s curse, where your past success impose a very heavy load on you to keep up with that success. There is only so much a rubber-band can stretch itself. Can you imagine it if an expert NLP practitioner were to come up to you and say they are depressed?

One is most receptive to learning when the mind is emptied. Compare your current state of mind to a glass of green water (present knowledge). I give you a jug of blue water (new knowledge in a totally unfamiliar discipline), and want you to make the glass of green water blue (ie learn a new skill). What do you do?

If you do not empty the glass (ie by unlearning what you have learnt), you will not be able to get a glass of blue water (ie learning a new skill). Theoretically you can fill the glass with an enormous amount of blue water so that the blue water overpowers the green (keep learning). But what is likely to happen? The capacity of our brain is finite, just like the glass is finite. The water will over-flow when filled to the brim. Think about the effects of this on your brain.

This concept is what NLP is based on. One key element to learning is to emulate another person’s abilities if you want to learn something new. By matching their breathing pattern, their state of mind, their physical actions, you lose yourself in the process thus clearing your frame of mind. Because you are focused on being that person to learn from him, you have effectively emptied your mind and thus acquired a new skill in the process.

My friends - Embrace duality and accept things (including yourself) as what they are without being attached emotionally to the outcome.