"There is absolutely nothing wrong with contemplating duality as long as you know it to be an idea. If duality cannot introduce itself to you and explain how it works without you assisting in the matter through comparisons and judgments – it has no separate existence. While many contemplate the nature of separation or attempt to bring polarity into balance, they have yet to see each attempt as a journey toward the other side of the same idea. In reality, you cannot travel to the opposite side of an idea without discovering another one. The point is not to dissolve separation, but to directly see it as an idea. If separation existed, your fingers could miss each other, or fight for a dominant position. Instead, each digit works in harmony with the intelligence of the hand for the well-being of your body. To experience the difference between reality and ideas, you can ask yourself: “Do the things that I label know themselves by these labels, or is it merely a reflection of how I was taught to label things?” “Am I seeing things as they are, or simply how I was taught to view each label?” “Can I see the things I’ve labeled, along with each opposite counterpart, do not know itself as such things?” “Maybe day and night do not call itself day or night, perhaps only I do?” “What if reality is serving the freedom of my journey by becoming in my experience whatever I insist about it?” “No matter how life is seen, perhaps it’s only this way to me?” “If I suspended each label and merely noticed each sight, sound, and feeling as experiences of sight, sound, and feeling, how does my experience change?” Even the notions of non-duality is not the arrival of truth, but a sense of contrast felt when momentarily freed from ideas of duality. If you wish to explore freedom from duality or separation, just acknowledge both as ideas. They aren’t good or bad, in need of being cleared, or a challenge to overcome. They are merely ideas arising in a mind, awaiting your willingness to return to love. Since the mind tends to be as noisy or fearful as the heart is closed, it is your willingness to love what arises that resolves each spiritual argument that can only free you from one idea by escorting you into another. This process is known as reframing. In order to experience the true joy of liberation, it can be as simple as recognizing each idea, as an opportunity to love the one hiding in ideas, as they have never been loved before. In the end, you may come to see how true clarity and liberation has nothing to do with ending duality, overcoming separation, or waiting for something else to begin. It is through your willingness to honor ideas, as simply being ideas, which provide endless degrees of experience as gifts for your adventure. If your experience seems anything less than the adventure it is destined to become, I invite you to surrender to love by embracing the one who thinks, acts, and feels however you appear to be." - Matt Kahn
