Alexius explore how to match our perception with the brain’s duality fantasy to feel complete through twofoldness.
Feeling inferior makes us appear incomplete. However, our emotions depend on how we choose to interpret what happens around us. So if our interpretation is not singular but twofold, we feel as inferior as superior, thus complete. [Photo: Alexius]
From Duality Hack #8.5 in the free eBook Alexius’ Duality Hacks.
»If you’re sitting in a safe and comfortable position, close your eyes and try to feel your heart beating in your chest. Can you, without moving your hands to take your pulse, feel each movement and count its rhythm? Or do you struggle to detect anything at all? This simple test is just one way to assess your ‘interoception’ – your brain’s perception of your body’s state, transmitted from receptors on all your internal organs … There’s a constant communication dialogue between the brain and the viscera (internal organs).«
This test, described in The Guardian’s article Interoception: the hidden sense that shapes wellbeing, assesses whether the connection between the body and the brain is functioning. The article notes that, much like Alexius’ Duality Hacks, many people sever the link between the body and the brain, leaving the body without guidance.
Alexius’ Duality Hacks argue that we need to restore this link so the brain can guide the body. In contrast, The Guardian article suggests we should master our bodies to get in touch with their signals and, therefore, with our feelings, which it claims reside within the body.
Yet the pursuit of mastering our bodies to get in tune with our feelings is a futile endeavour. Feelings, intangible and elusive, reside in the airy psychological sphere, not in the body’s density. They seem tangible and lasting only when we perceive them as connected to the body rather than as fleeting clouds in the psychological expanse.
Besides, we’re all products and puppets of the brain. So, if we mistakenly assume the role of a master, not a servant, we feel unfit, for only the brain comprehends what we are. Thankfully, when we engage in the brain’s duality game, we feel recharged, much like the pleasure of abiding by a video game’s rules.
Of course, we can step out of the duality game if it no longer fits us – but to exit, we must first participate. And since participation requires us to feel the nature of dualism, we continue by investigating the sphere of feelings.
As usual, we don’t start from a fixed point or end with a tidy conclusion. Alexius’ Duality Hacks have nothing to establish, since they’re as illusory as anything else in a world of duality. Still, reading the ragbag of clips below may help you live wholly in duality and, thus, undo it fully.
You do not need to balance breathing in and out. It happens by itself if you do not intervene. Likewise, the brain automatically takes care of the physical and psychological zone if you do not try to integrate them per body-mind ideas. [Photo: Alexius]
In the duality fantasy, every experience is twofold
As reading this requires more than one, you’ve replaced non-duality with duality. This is why this Duality Hack (#8.5) is about acknowledging duality so you can correct your mistake. Fortunately, it’s easy when you don’t suppress unwanted feelings, such as aggression, and accept that aggression interacts with peace, much as you accept the interaction of breathing in and out. This puts you in the duality flow, which, like a river, rushes back to its source: non-duality.
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In the game of duality, the brain is the game master. You cannot change that, but you have plenty of fun in its duality game if you play by its rule: to perceive every experience as twofold. [Photo: Alexius]
>>>>> This Duality Hack (#8.5) is not about enlightenment or the reality of oneness but twofoldness because, seeing more than one, you must have opted for duality instead of non-duality. To undo your decision entirely, you must live by duality completely. Thankfully, it is easy when you do not suppress feelings, for example, aggression, but follow the interaction of aggression and peace, like you follow breathing in and out.
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Acknowledging the interplay of opposites makes you feel sound. That does not mean that everything is twofold in a world of duality. If you hammer a nail into the wall, the nail is not twofold. But if you do not edit your hammer experience, it is twofold, for example, easy and difficult.
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Many try to replicate non-duality in a world of duality by being solely positive. However, since their positivity depends on excluding negativity, they establish separation, not non-duality. Ergo, they feel incomplete instead of complete in the constant collaboration between positivity and negativity.
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A common reason for suppressing negative feelings is that one fears they are dangerous to express. For example, when Alexius was a kid, his father beat him if he said or did something judged offensive by his father. Thus, Alexius was afraid to voice his negative emotions accidentally.
But just like the negative pole in electricity is as important as the positive one, you need negative feelings as much as positive ones. When you avoid the negative ones, you deteriorate and blossom if you approve of them.
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If you feel like a loser, you do not solve it by blaming others but by completely being it. Since that does not make room for anything else, there is nothing to contrast it and, thus, nothing to define it. So, since you do not feel something specific, you are in the bliss of nothing.
When somebody triggers an old feeling of rejection in the special self, it first interprets it as an attack. Next, it blames the perceived attacker for having caused it. Therefore, since the unpleasant feeling seems to originate in the attacker, the special self concludes it has nothing to do with itself.
If the perceived attacker exposes this self-deception, the special self points out something from the past that makes the attacker feel wrong. Hence, the special self seems off the hook, assured that it is okay and the attacker is not.
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Is life suffering, as some say? No life is non-duality, and it takes more than one to suffer. However, in a world of duality, you suffer if you want to have singular experiences because duality is twofold.
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Nobody but yourself has the power to make you suffer. Therefore, if you feel bad, it is because you see yourself as somebody. Thankfully, seeing yourself as nobody means no one suffers.
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Trouble always follows in the footsteps of somebody, whereas the bliss of nothing comes in the wake of nobody.
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Negativity is just as crucial as positivity. A computer, for example, only operates when connected to the negative and positive poles in an electrical wire. Likewise, you only function when you perceive your experiences as twofold. In contrast, a singular perception entails brain fog. [Photo: Alexius]
Suffering comes not from something but from how you interpret your response to something. However, you do not fix that by making another interpretation because you probably choose a singular one, which is the root of your misery. Fortunately, if you perceive your suffering as ‘it is what it is,’ you see it is not specific but coupled with contentment. Hence, you neither feel specifically hurt nor content but vitalised by their constant interaction.
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If you want to undo the belief in duality, denying feelings by focusing on their energies is not helpful because the experience of duality rests on feeling it.
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To feel is not to exist because it takes more than one to feel something, and life is that which is One. In other words, it is only possible to feel something if you imagine being in a world with more than one. Can you feel it? Of course, you can. You are reading this. That means you think it is possible to be and have more than that which is One, and you uphold the illusion as ‘real’ by feeling something.
You undo this mistake by acknowledging what you feel. Next, you perceive your reaction to it as ‘it is what it is,’ revealing your response is not singular but twofold. Then, you do not focus on the two polarity elements but go with their interaction, which is the duality flow. Remaining in the flow, you feel so complete that you eventually dismiss the experience of more than one as real.
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Unlike the special self, the basic one does not wish to modify or change anything. So, although it is scary when the brain’s script brings it down, the basic self knows fear contains joy because everything is twofold in a world of duality.
In the interaction of fear and joy, the basic self gets the thrill of the duality flow. On the other hand, the special self does not get it because it bans fear from its awareness to feel joy only. But there is no joy without fear, so it feels dissatisfied.
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The special self gets upset when it sees something it judges as wrong, thus imprisoning itself by its rules. In contrast, the basic self does not see anything as precisely right or wrong because it is in the constant interaction of opposites. So, it is free to be in the present as it is.
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Like a criminal, the basic self does not think in terms of right or wrong. But unlike a criminal, it does not replace these categories with a calculation of what it can get away with. Instead, it remains in the interaction of right or wrong, thus in the duality flow.
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