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An odd and fabulous thing about our usual dualistic way of thinking is that it has a strange way of leading us straight toward Awakening.

You see, usually we don’t bother to think too much about the words and ideas we use to make sense of the world. We might go around saying ‘that’s an objective fact’, or ‘that’s totally subjective’. And we think we know what we’re talking about.

But do we?

As long as we think we do, everything is fine. We can keep right on using our usual definitions of the world, and make ourselves busy trying to fix all the problems they cause us. Fixing these problems gives meaning to our lives, and lets us pretty much ignore all of our deepest fears until the day that the doctor says ‘I’m sorry, but you’re dying.’ Then everything falls apart.

Doing this is an art. It’s called the Art of Unexamination. To do it, all you have to do is use words and ideas, and don’t think about them. Most of us are quite expert at this.

But what happens if we look at things more carefully? This can seem frightening, because even a little bit of basic observation shows us that we’re actually quite confused about how the world works. And that confusion is scary – it tells us that we’re not really in control, and reminds us of all sorts of uncomfortable things, such as that we don’t know who we really are, why we’re here, or what death means for us.

Perhaps it’s better to ignore these things until the last minute, when we have no choice. Heck, if we die quickly in a car accident or something, we’ll never have to deal with them!

But from another perspective, we can see that our ignorance affects our quality of life in major ways. Where we might have lived a life of joy and adventure, we end up living a life of cautious fear and desperate clinging. All because of our ignorance, which leaves us almost neurotic in our attempts to hide from our deepest fears and anxieties.

If we take the time to examine any of our ideas about the world, we can actually push through the confusion and come to a complete understanding of what our life is really about. But this takes a commitment to ‘leaving no stone unturned’.

Objective and Subjective

Let’s take a look at the ideas of objective and subjective. These are very important, because they let us make sense of a strange and perplexing world. Using these two words, I convince myself that there is a real, objective truth out there. Something we could call ‘fact’. And I also learn that people will have all sorts of subjective opinions about those facts. In short, I become reassured, because there is a real, live Truth out there. And I can make sense of all the conflict and fighting in the world, because everyone has these different subjective opinions.

All is fine so far. But we can get into some trouble if we examine these ideas a little bit. Soon we’re arguing about how to judge subjective experience, and what, if anything, can be called ‘objective’. And who the heck is right, anyway?

Let’s look for ourselves, and see if we can discover the root of the problem.

What’s Objective?

If something is objective, it is ‘real’. No one can argue with it. We like to think that maybe science is in the business of uncovering Real Facts, but one look at the history of science shows us that most of what we think of as Real Fact is just Current Perspective, or in many cases, Current Opinion. Theories change, studies contradict each other, and apparently all of us were wrong when we called Pluto a ‘planet’.

Instead of arguing about what is fact and what isn’t, we can become 100% objective and see what we really know. And if we do that honestly, we’ll find that the only thing we can actually know to be true is that there is something called ‘perception’ or ‘awareness’. In other words, there are electrical impulses in our brains that we call ‘sensory perceptions’. We can all sense these, and they are the only thing we know is ‘really there’.

If we say that those sensory perceptions correspond to objects ‘out in the world’, we’ve made an assumption – a leap of faith. In other words, I can say that there is a sensory impression in my head that I call ‘pumpkin’. But to say that the pumpkin is a real life object sitting across the way? That’s a leap of faith. Any possible evidence I can gather regarding that pumpkin is only Perception. What rule of the universe says there must be a ‘thing’ to perceive? There is absolutely no evidence for this, and to believe that there are ‘things’ is just that – a Belief.

A moment’s thought will show you that there is absolutely no way to prove that there is anything other than sensory experience (including thoughts, emotions, ideas, or anything else going on in our heads, such as the ‘electrical impulses in our brains’ I mentioned two paragraphs ago. Did you catch that?). If we look honestly, we’ll find that we can’t even posit a brain processing these sensory experiences unless we cross the threshold of Belief.

All we can claim as truly ‘real’ are the experiences themselves.

If we’re not ready to admit to this, we have to admit that we are faith-based, and not truly objective.

What’s Subjective?

Okay. So what is subjective, then? We’ll soon find that if something is subjective, that means that it’s based on our own assumptions. But what are these assumptions except sensory experience (thoughts in my head)? Anything we could possibly call subjective also fits our definition of what is truly objective. In other words, if we look carefully enough, subjective and objective mean exactly the same thing! Seen in this way, they are useless terms, defining nothing but our own beliefs and delusions.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Great! Now what? Can you imagine the confusion if anyone actually thought like this?

But the funny thing is that it is our usual way of thinking which actually creates all the confusion. If we look carefully, we can play this same game with any two objects or ideas – breaking them down until in the end, we can’t really distinguish them. It’s only when we put our fingers in our ears, close our eyes, and say “I won’t listen any more!” that we can persist in our delusion that the world is actually divided up into neat little pieces called ‘things’.

We imagine that if we didn’t divide the world up, everything would fall apart! We’d walk into walls and have trouble distinguishing ourselves from our breakfast cereal. But we’re not suddenly going to lose the ability to function or have perceptions.

What we will lose is the ability to spend every ounce of life energy trying to fix all the problems caused by dividing the world up into little bits.

This idea – to hold as ‘real’ only that which we can actually verify as real – seems very foreign to us. When we imagine it, it can seem sterile, boring, or cold and robotic. But that’s because we can’t imagine what it is like. The reason? When we think about our sensory perceptions, what we’re actually thinking about are our divisions. (If you’ve realized that those divisions are just sensory perceptions, making that last sentence quite non-sensical, then you’re seeing things pretty clearly =) We’ve lost the ability to see Just As Is, and instead, we’re only able to see our symbols.

Breaking this habit requires a special sort of letting go (which this website is all about). It is that ‘letting go’, or allowing our awareness to just be aware, which opens up a new world for us. In this world, we see things with perfect clarity, and are no longer confused and anxious about the divisions we create. Think about it for a while, and you’ll see that all the worries we have in the world, such as money, life/death, relationships, illness, success/failure – all these things are created out of our imaginary divisions.

We can make a choice to play these division-games, but we should at least be informed as to how these games work. Otherwise we’ll suffer no end of misery as we take all these divisions seriously.

Since we have this marvelous capacity to think, let’s use it instead of just following along blind paths. We don’t have to have a life filled with anxiety, stress, and frustration. We can choose this if we like, but if we don’t enjoy it, why do it?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 3:38 am and is filed under Understanding Dualism. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.