Dualistic Cartoon!

Richard Rohr writes in The Naked Now:

"With dualistic minds it is always one or the other--it can never be both. The result is that we still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become 'spiritual,' when the Christian revelation was precisely that you are already spiritual ('in God'), and your difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human. Jesus came to model the full integration for us and, in effect, told us that Divinity looked just like him--while he looked ordinarily human to everybody!

"It is in our humanity that we are still so wounded, so needy, so unloving, so self-hating, and so in need of enlightenment. We seem to have spawned centuries of people trying to be spiritual and religious, whereas our record on basic humanness is rather pitiful." (69)

Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2009.

By Bob Seal

The troubled mind cannot decide between "good/bad" or "right/wrong." That's how we automatically think in dualistic terms. It is much harder to observe non-judgmentally, as the dog is thinking in the cartoon.

Dualistic Thinking can be Death

"Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus but as threat, danger, competition. It is the death that comes to all who try to live by bread alone. This is the death that the Bible fears and gives us good reason to fear. It is not the final departure we usually think of when we speak of truth; it is that purposeless, empty existence devoid of genuine human relationships and filled with anxiety, silence, and loneliness."

~~Dorothee Soelle, Death by Bread Alone, p. 4.

This reminds me of dualistic thinking as described by Richard Rohr. I heard him say at that conference:

"God cannot 'get in' when we are in a moral, judging, worthiness contest."

When I put myself higher or lower than someone else, I am blocking my perception of God in them and in me. That is dualistic thinking and is a trap I fall into, especially since I think my enneagram number is six and doubting oneself is one of its (my) failings. But then I may be a nine, so nine or six is my conundrum.

AND

THE SHINING WORD
“AND”

teaches us to say yes

And allows us to be both-and
And keeps us from either-or
And teaches us to be patient and long suffering
And is willing to wait for insight and integration
And keeps us from dualistic thinking
And does not divide the field of the moment
And helps us to live in the always imperfect now
And keeps us inclusive and compassionate toward everything
And demands that our contemplation become action
And insists that our action is also contemplative
And heals our racism, our sexism, heterosexism, and our classism
And keeps us from the false choice of liberal or conservative
And allows us to critique both sides of things
And allows us to enjoy both sides of things
And is far beyond any one political party
And helps us face and accept our own dark side
And allows us to ask for forgiveness and to apologize
And is the mystery of paradox in all things
And is the way of mercy
And makes daily, practical love possible
And does not trust love if it is not also justice
And does not trust justice if it is not also love
And is far beyond my religion versus your religion
And allows us to be both distinct and yet united
And is the very Mystery of Trinity
And is why we are called the
Center for Action AND Contemplation

This comes from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, which can be subscribed to here.

Dualistic Thinking

Dualistic thinking is the way most Western people automatically think--in opposites and in comparing. Good/bad; right/wrong; night/day; either/or. Richard Rohr stresses that contemplation gives one the openness of non-dual thinking. Since some bloggers asked about this from my post about Richard Rohr, I looked up some more about him and dualistic thinking. Thus, I found an interview in Australia on November 12, 2006. (Click on "show transcript.") Here is a specific excerpt where Fr. Richard answered a question about dualistic thinking:

"Stephen Crittenden: Let's go back to what do we mean by dualistic thinking, us and then principally, is that right?

"Richard Rohr: Yes. That the dual mind, which is the egoic operating system that we're all operating out of, knows by comparison, by differentiation, by distinction and by separation, it says 'I am not that'. It's a process of affirmation and denial, the classic Western debate and the smarter person is supposed to win. Dual thinking is very good in the world of science, mathematics, ordinary logic of getting you through the day. But once you approach mystery, infinity, eternity, God, the great concepts like freedom, the dualistic mind falls utterly short. It can't deal with it, it can't know it, it divides the field. You see, dualistic thinking is inherently a self-cancelling system. It always divides in the field. What contemplation does, and contemplation is simply my word for non-dual thinking, where you pull back and get your own ego and fear and agenda out of the way, and you look at things as they are, not as you want them to be, not as you need them to be, it just is what it is what it is. And you let that affront you and confront you. That's always a humiliation for the ego. So that's why people don't like to grow up into the contemplative mind, or non-dual thinking, because it is experienced as a loss of control."