The Substructure of the Play that is Duality

The true essence of love is the very essence of the Universe. It is what all matter is made of. Matter is energy and energy is Universal Light or Essence resonating at a dense frequency, and yet it is still energy. We know it in its molecular form as particles, comprised of protons, neutrons, and the nucleus. These particles that make up the atoms create the different molecules we are aware of. In essence, matter and all within the Universe is Light energy, resonating at different frequencies. And Light energy is Love energy. There is no difference between the two. They are the same essence.

Eckhart Tolle said in his book, Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth that "Love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality." In seeking after love, we seek the oneness that exists within the essence of the Universe, forgetting that we are never separate from it, except in the experience of the thinking mind. And from our minds, we seek that oneness because we need, from a place of mind, to eliminate death, which is the beginning of all fear. In union, we instinctually know that death has no power, and we seek to cling to the mind that created itself so that it may experience through us.

To be loved is the greatest desire of the majority of beings on earth. Those who reject love do so because they have learned to believe in the use of fear over love to such an extent that they devalue love, and so they seek to control in whatever form that control may take. But for most to be loved is to survive, to live and hopefully thrive. It is both an instinct and a yearning to seek love, even from infancy, in order to survive. As the child roots at it's mother's breast, or seeks the rubber of a bottle nipple, so we seek for love. And as we seek to be loved, we often seek to love.

In juxtaposition of Love is Fear. Fear causes the fight or flight response from the place of our brains, situated in the amygdala, eventually causing stress hormones to flood our bodies and causing us to make choices that contradict all the aspects of love. We may think that it is love that causes us to run into the street to rescue our child from an oncoming car, and certainly love plays its part, yet fear is the momentum that pulls us forward, as we reach towards life, in the fear of death. Love is limited in our physical experience, because as we seek to love, we often fear, and fear clouds over love and distorts it.

Fear has many faces. We know it as anxiety, mistrust, frustration and impatience, anger, depression, hate, self-degradation, and arrogance, to name a few substrata of the emotion. Those things that we think are not fear, are actually linked to fear in intimate ways. As an example, arrogance and aggressiveness may not appear to be fear, and look like power to us, but is expressed from a place of fear because we fear that we are not enough, and so we puff ourselves up to show others that we are better versions of them. We use it, and the other substrata of fear, as a shield.

This is true in other behaviors, as well, such as in refusing to trust others, even though nobody is perfect and everyone may hurt us intentionally or unintentionally, at one point or another. It is true in degrading ourselves in the hope that the pain will be lessened, so that others may be less likely to abuse us. It is true when we find ourselves often impatient, even in little things, such as when we drop a cup and it breaks. We swear and pout over the effect while we are forced to clean it, or reach a breaking point, turn and throw our fist through the wall or door. This is fear of imperfection. If we are constantly destroying things, we subconsciously fear that the little destructions may lead to bigger destruction, because in our imperfection we believe that nothing will work out for us, and therefore this will lead to death.

Many aspects within our cultures speak to the power that fear holds over us. Even our very languages suggest a modus operandi of fear. We say, "Do not forget!", but we forget to say, "You will remember!", thinking that if we say 'do not' we will remember better. We say, "I don't want to go to the party.", instead of, "I love myself, so I will rest." Or we say, "My cat is driving me crazy cause he won't stop meowing.", instead of, "Let momma cuddle you, okay? I know you want attention." It is the negative frame work of our languages that leads to a kind of violence and a denial of love, choosing fear in the half of its very structure, rather than to choose words that are supportive and uplifting.

It is not easy to access love when the normal operations of our psyche sit in and live within fear. This is especially true if we have experienced trauma. It could be safely said that almost everyone has experienced trauma, from the cruel teasing on the playgrounds we may experience as children, to the abuse, subtle, or otherwise, that may occur in our homes or places of employment. And even if our homes are loving and good, there is still the use of language that is often violent by its very nature, simply because it is a conditioned response to our environment. Though our language holds the dualities of love and fear within it, it is often the instinctual, conditioned fear that comes out, enhanced through generational priming of learned language.

Love and fear sit in duality of each other, yet it is one aspect of a quality that we call life. We live and exist and therefore we love. We fear death, because we want to live, and so we fear. Both sit on opposite ends of the measurement of duality that is life. Love is at one side of this measurement because it is the essence that makes up life. But fear is at the other side of this measurement, because it stems from the instinct within the mind to live. It is automatic, because it is part of the framework of our physical bodies, both for ourselves and for the animal kingdom.

To die, is to experience the nullification of the ego, which is a structure of the physical mind. Ego is thought, that in its basic form is simply a tool the mind uses to navigate through life. But ego is first experienced, from the womb, as the mind learns to process information and think, from before birth to death. And society continues this belief in conditioning that tells us the thinking mind is who we are, when in reality we are the being behind the thought. We identify with thought, because ego believes, from the very beginnings of the human experience, that thought is everything.

To the thinking mind, thought is awareness, is understanding, and is being. However, thought, as ego is none of these. Thought, as ego, is limited because as a tool it is only as powerful as the mind that has absorbed knowledge, and uses it. And knowledge is finite. We cannot know and understand everything. And even if we could know massive amounts of information, until that information travels from our heads to our hearts and shifts our paradigms, we cannot truly activate it. Thought, as ego often leads us astray, causes us to act in ways that can be detrimental to ourselves and others.

Learning to minimize fear and actualize unconditional love for ourselves and others is possible. It requires practice and sitting in meditation, using mindfulness practices to slowly recondition the mind towards life that does not fear death, but understands the oneness of all things. It requires a gentleness with ourselves, forgiving ourselves for our imperfections and the existence of the ego, thinking mind.

It is a slow learning that takes time and effort and bravery, and a shifting and healing of paradigms that allows us to realize love more often in our lives. It takes hard lessons that bring us low, but eventually points to love, even if the lessons do not appear to be loving, as they are experienced. And it takes loving, and therefore accepting ourselves, at our most basic and primal levels.

To love self is to accept self, is to integrate shadow, and to understand who we are both, in the measurement of our strengths and weaknesses, that sit on the same line of degrees. As an extension, this love we learn to develop for ourselves, will eventually reach out to others and we will learn how to love fully, unconditionally, and from a place of the essence that is the Universe. We will learn and grow in love and fear will not have power over us, for it will be quieted within the love that is our essence. In this learning, we will begin to experience the oneness within love that exists whether we do or not, for the Universe, in its essence, is oneness. And oneness is love.