– updated September 2026

Alexius explore how to match our perception with the brain’s duality fantasy to feel complete through twofoldness.

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.

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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Recognising opposites at play doesn’t mean everything is literally twofold in a world of duality. When you hammer a nail into the wall, the nail itself is not twofold. But if you don’t edit your reaction to your hammering experience, it’s twofold, for instance, easy and exhausting. That’s the way of duality.

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Many people attempt to reproduce non-duality in a dualistic world by chasing one-sided states, such as experiencing only positivity. But in a world of duality, every experience comes in pairs of contrasting elements that define each other, so experiencing only positivity is impossible except in fantasy. Furthermore, non-duality contains no positivity, as that requires more than one.

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Those who talk about a specific emotion, like pure love, haven’t felt it, because the nature of a feeling is revealed as twofold when it’s felt wholly. 

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A common reason for suppressing negative feelings is the fear that expressing them is dangerous. For instance, as a child, Alexius was punished for expressing anything his father deemed offensive. So he became afraid to express negative emotions, even accidentally. But just as negative and positive charges are both vital in electricity, we need negative feelings as much as positive ones. If we avoid the negative ones, we’ll deteriorate – if we accept them, we’ll blossom.

That doesn’t mean Alexius should have shared his anger with his father. It could have been fatal. Instead, if Alexius had accepted his negativity, it could have interacted with positivity. Because his negativity was twofold, he had no explicit negativity to express that could offend his father. Ergo, Alexius had nothing to fear.

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Many think avoiding bad vibes brings healing. Yet stones like amethyst and infrared pads heal by producing negative ions, which spark positive moods and ease stress. In other words, what we call ‘negative’ can actually heal.

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You must recognise something as unpleasant to know when you experience something pleasant. However, since most people exclude their unpleasant feelings from their awareness, they have no unpleasantness to define their pleasant experience. Instead, they develop a concept of pleasantness that they can talk about but not experience.

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Suffering is a choice

In a world of duality, you suffer if you insist on singular experiences and opinions. For instance, if you see success only as the absence of failure, failing will hurt. On the other hand, because duality is twofold by its very nature, you’re not affected by failure if you view it as complemented by success, like two sides of the same coin. Hence, you’re beyond suffering.

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Suffering derives from the meaning you assign to your reaction to a particular event. Therefore, undoing suffering involves shifting your perception rather than changing circumstances. When you think your response to an event is sadness, you perceive this specific feeling as ‘it is what it is’. Then you see that sadness is not alone but coupled with happiness. Hence, you neither feel distinctly sad nor happy. Instead, you’re vitalised by their constant interaction.

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If you feel miserable, it’s because you identify as a separate self. But when you see yourself as nobody in particular, somebody does not suffer.

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You have to stand by duality to hack it

If you feel miserable, it’s because you identify as a separate self. But when you see yourself as nobody in particular, somebody does not suffer.

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To feel is not to live because it takes more than one to feel something, and life is that which is One. In other words, it’s 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’re reading this. This means you believe it’s possible to be and have more than one, and you uphold this belief as ‘real’ by feeling it.

Hence, you undo this misconception by recognising what you feel. Next, you perceive your reaction to it as ‘it is what it is’, revealing that your response is not singular but twofold. Then, you don’t focus on the two polar elements, but rather on their interaction: ‘it is what it is’. Remaining in this current, you feel so complete that you eventually forget to uphold the belief in more than one

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The duality flow makes you feel complete

The basic self knows that every experience is twofold in a world of duality. Thus, it feels complete in the interaction of opposites: ‘it is what it is’. However, in its attempt to avoid unpleasant feelings, the special self admits only pleasant ones to its awareness, thus feeling incomplete.

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Like a criminal, the basic self doesn’t operate within the framework of right or wrong. However, unlike a criminal, it doesn’t replace these categories with a calculation of what it can get away with. Instead, it remains in the interaction of right and wrong, thus in ‘it is what it is’, liberated from moral judgment.