The first time I really thought about the concept of duality was during my first reading of A Course in Miracles. The introduction says, “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” The first part of that statement resonated with me; the second part was too elusive for me to understand at the time. I’ve heard it said that there are only two basic emotions, love and fear. All positive emotions and states of mind stem from love while the negative ones come out of fear. Examples include joy, happiness, gratitude, hope, peace, understanding and compassion, all which stem from love, while anger, grief, shame, guilt, envy, doubt and frustration stem from fear.
The duality of love versus fear became a mild obsession. I wanted to discover the secret to removing fear from my life and living from a place of pure love. Who wouldn’t want to experience all those positive emotions without all the negative ones? After taking an entire year to read A Course in Miracles, I would summarize the book by saying that love is like the sun, which is ever present and always shining brightly. Fear, then, is simply just the clouds that roll in and attempt to block the sun’s rays. Often, those clouds are effective in their efforts but eventually the sun will shine through again. In this way, love always surrounds us. Fear is simply a temporary block that prevents us from acknowledging the presence of love. I think my summary was on the right track, but somehow after the first reading I saw love and fear as opposites and a form of duality.
On Day 15 we discussed the concept of separation which Erich Fromm called the “problem of human existence” in The Art of Loving. A Course in Miracles calls separation a “detour into fear,” suggesting that love is always there, yet when we allow ourselves to succumb to fear we experience a feeling of separation. This can also be described as identification with our ego, as an individual identity disconnected from the whole. A lonely feeling!
To me, this meant that attachment to my ego was creating blocks to love and identification with feelings and emotions produced by fear. I decided that I wanted to learn how to peel back the layers of ego and fear until I could finally experience the pure love underneath that A Course in Miracles seemed to promise. This was the basis for the lotus flower becoming part of the name for this blog. One by one, I would peel back the petals of the lotus until there was nothing left but the love that remains at the center.
All of this is still a work in process. The more I work on myself and the more discussions I have with others on the journey, including both teachers and other seekers further along than me, the more I am seeing that duality is an illusion. Love is not the opposite of fear. Love is always there, and fear simply tries to block our awareness of it. I had initially failed to see the second part of the quote in the introduction of A Course in Miracles, “what is all encompassing can have no opposite.” Life comes complete with both the positive and the negative emotions and they work together to make us who we are. Yes, I’m trying peel back the petals of the lotus, but we have to remember that it’s the petals that make the flower so beautiful.
Photo by Jay Castor on Unsplash
