On perceived duality of life (yin yang, complementarity)…

But one of life’s greatest confusions stems from our tendency to divide the world into polarities, an immensely limiting impulse.

When confronted with the world’s complexity, we default into navigating it by creating artificial binaries, perceiving contradiction where they might in fact only be complementarity.

Dichotomous black and white thinking entails an unnatural rigidity leaving no room to consider the ‘grays’ of reality.

“Two things can be true at once — even opposing truths.”

~ Cheryl Strayed

Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics, formulated an expression of the wholeness inherent in dualism. He called his expression of this wholeness complementarity. What you see depends on what facet you look at, which is why in quantum physics, light, energy and matter appear to be behaving as quanta in some experiments and as waves in others. The wavelike and particle-like properties of light, energy and matter complement each other and both are necessary for understanding them.

Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek considers this paradoxical notion of complementarity not only as raw material for the philosophical and the poetic but as one of the four cornerstones of modern physics, alongside relativity, symmetry, and invariance.

There can be no energy without opposites.

Complementarity — the idea that two different ways of regarding reality can both be true, but not at the same time, so in order to describe reality we must choose between the two because the internal validity and coherence of one would interfere with that of the other — is a centerpiece of quantum theory.

“For every inside there is an outside, and for every outside there is an inside; though they are different, they go together.”

~ Alan Watts

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell”

~ Carl Jung

The idea that components of wholeness is not new. Ancient Eastern cultures incorporated it as an integral part of their worldview. This is demonstrated in the concept of yin yang.

It is said that the symbol of Yin Yang is a representation of two dragons swallowing each other (ouroboros) in a constant rotation, never ending without any beginning.

The symbol of the yin yang is a circle with a S curve (sin wave) separating one side of the circle called yin (black) and the other side called yang (white).

One is defined by the absence of the other (i.e. cold is simple the absence of heat) but they cannot exist alone.

Where there is yin, there is yang.

Only the union of yin yang forms a whole.

Where there is order, there is also chaos.

Where there is low, there is also high.

Where there is night, there is also day.

Where there is birth, there is also death.

There can be no love without the ever-present possibility of loss; no truth without the foil of error and falsehood; no goodness without the possibility of choosing evil.

A whole person integrates yin (feminine traits, right brain, emotion, intuition, darkness, cold, wetness) with yang (masculine traits, left brain, reason, logic, light, heats, dryness). Each has aspects of the other.

Yin and yang describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

It is not for us to try to eliminate something that is opposed to us, but to understand that it is necessary for that view to exist in order for ours to.

One must exist in order to create the other.

It is only in relation to the opposite that each is defined.

The yin yang symbolizes the principle of complementarity.

Yang represents that in nature, there exists an equal polar dichotomy, which co-exists to form everything within nature.

It is the interaction of these two complementary forces, which articulates the dynamic movement and shape of the variety of life that we see around us.

In order for something to exist, there must also exist the opposite.

These exist as a spectrum rather than a dichotomy, hence they are not actually opposites per se, but gradations of the same essence.

life and death

love and hate

good and evil

inside and outside

conscious and subconscious

happy and sad

strong and weak

pleasure and pain

microcosm and macrocosm

stability and flexibility

matter and antimatter

You can’t possibly conceive of one without the other.

We tend to see the world in terms of right and wrong, true and false, and all sorts of 'dualistic' concepts.

I think that a key part of 'enlightenment' as breaking out of that limiting view of life.

Supposed polarities such as thinking and feeling, form and content, ethics and aesthetics, and consciousness and sensuousness could in fact simply be looked at as aspects of each other — much like the pile on the velvet that, upon reversing one’s touch, provides two textures and two ways of feeling, two shades and two ways of perceiving.

True enlightenment is nothing but the nature of one’s own self being fully realized, that it is one with the Tao. The self and the Tao. Duality once more.

Seeing that what is false is sometimes true and what is true is sometimes false.

Reality is relative and depends on the observer.

To judge darkness as bad or wrong is akin to judging whether up is better than down, or whether blue is better than red.

Reality is not black and white but gray, not digital/discrete/separate but analog/joined/combined.

All things co-exist, opposites are actually complementary and one can learn to create a harmonious balance.

The universe in which you live and the universe in your mind form am integrated whole.

Nothing is all good. Nothing is all bad. Everything is balance. All things are both "good" and "bad" at the same time. All things are both "good" and "bad" in equal measure.

For every action, there is a benefit of some kind. For every action, there is some cost paid. And the cost paid is something equally important to the person making the decision. Any time someone gains something, they give up a different thing that they valued equally. Conversely, any time someone sacrifices something, it benefits them in a way they need just as much. The cost and benefit are always equal to each other. There is no situation in which an action is all or even mostly benefit, without meaningful cost. There is no situation where an event is all sacrifice, without bringing something useful and needed. There are no "good" and "bad" choices. Everything is both. Equally. This is balance.

You cannot really know love without first experiencing loneliness, beauty without ugliness, nor faith without doubt. And these pains need to be preserved within those pleasures in order for the latter to remain meaningful.

Ancient Chinese writings say:

“In the beginning there was only vital energy, qi, consisting of yin and yang. These opposing forces moved and circulated… As this movement gained speed, a mass was pushed together and, since there was no outlet for this, it consolidated to form the matter in the center of the universe.”

Sounds sorta of familiar doesn’t it?

“Heaven and Earth have no preference. A man may choose one over another but to Heaven and Earth all are the same. The high, the low, the great, the small— all are given light, all get a place to rest. The Sage is like Heaven and Earth. To him none are especially dear nor is there anyone he disfavors. He gives and gives without condition offering his treasure to everyone.”

~ Tao te Ching