The Mythology of the Battle and the Trap of Duality Consciousness
Why we can’t (all) have nice things
The Initiation
It’s me against the world.
I don’t remember how old I was when that thought first sparked in my mind. I do recall that I was young. And that it made me feel small, scared, and alone.
I remember the loss of trust in the world and the awareness of a new understanding: I would have to prove myself worthy. To this end, I would need to gather my weapons. Learn how to strategize and battle. How to conquer at all costs. To overcome obstacles and secure victories.
Or, what is known in our culture as “growing up.”
Growing up means recognizing that life is not for playtime. While our endless questions were indulged in our youngest years, growing up is a time to choose knowledge and fortitude over uncertainty or nuance. Any cognitive dissonance in the future will need to be immediately adjusted for by fully eliminating one path, idea, or belief in full-throated favor of its opposite.
In this worldview, everything in the world is limited and finite. And war is the only way to settle the disputes over who is owed what.
My life, which had previously been an a kind of Wonderland journey became more like Arthur’s quest for Excalibur. Along the way, I would need to sort the world (or it would be sorted for me) into enemies and friends, good and evil, me vs them. My world shrank from possibility and curiosity to the harsh lights of duality consciousness.
Life became a contest where winning was everything. Fighting through the pain. Never letting them see you sweat. Fighting to stay alive in a world in which danger lurked around every corner. And quotes like the one below littered the bookstores.
“Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.”
~ Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich
We were indoctrinated into duality consciousness from our earliest years. Think about video games that leave only one victor standing. An education system that rewards based on inflexible standards. The endless talent contests that pit children against children, self-esteem against self-esteem.
Consider board games like Monopoly, in which winning requires ruthlessly throwing everyone else into bankruptcy.
C’mon, Keri, it’s just a game, right? Sure, but it’s a game that instills the values and mores of the cultures. It’s a game that teaches polarity and division as the approach to success.
And so it can be no wonder that as we grow older, this perspective defines our relationships, our work, our recreation, and, of course, our politics, where the opponent is an enemy to vanquish.
The Battleground
“The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites — day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”
~ Carl Jung
These ideas of a black-and-white, win-or-go-home approach to life are known to all of us. We learned and internalized the language of either/or, us vs. them thinking so early in life that it is hard to imagine any other kind of thinking.
In this worldview, everything in the world is limited and finite. And war is the only way to settle the disputes over who is owed what.
In duality consciousness, the complexities and intricacies of life get distilled down to a battle against the opposition, a contest of wills.
When the enemy is out there, the mindset is, “It’s them or me.”
Whe the enemy is in here, the mindset is, “Mind over body.”
Compassion, empathy, caring, sharing, egalitarianism, unity, collaboration, nuance…these are the words of a fool. It’s a live-or-die world, a dog-eat-dog arena where only the strong survive.
Our way of speaking in everyday life reflects the winner-take-all, zero-sum philosophy of duality consciousness. We:
Battle disease.
Fight to save a relationship.
Conquer the workout.
Find our killer instinct.
Destroy the opponent.
Triumph over adversity.
Even our favored spiritual and personal growth teachers and leaders invoke battle metaphors. Brene Brown invokes the idea of being “in the arena”, Eckart Tolle speaks of a “battle with the ego,” Mel Robbins talks of “beating” procrastination.
In our duality-conscious world, we hold contests and battles and clashes and struggles. We revere those who fight to win, who show no mercy, who wage a crusade, who take no prisoners.
We are supposed to take on a challenge, overcome limits, defend our positions, march on, soldier on, never surrender.
Is it just words? Only metaphors?
Maybe. But maybe we should pause and consider how powerful words actually are. Take these quotes for example.
“Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”
~ Ian Donnely, in the movie Arrival
Language is power, in ways more literal than most people think. When we speak, we exercise the power of language to transform reality.
~ Julia Penelope
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is time to stop and think of the damage that is done when we normalize warrior language in every aspect of life. What happens to us when we internalize this language and harshly separate mind from body, ego from soul, logic from intuition. Our only mode of operation in duality consciousness is separating, parsing, dividing, and judging. What an awful place to be stuck in.
Divisive Justification
It doesn’t matter if what we are competing over is something tangible like a job or money or something intangible like love or success. As long as we remain trapped in duality consciousness, there will never be enough to go around. Scarcity is the name of the game in duality consciousness. In this world, there will have to be those who lose. It is a survival of the fittest, and there is no room to pity those who can’t make it.
We treat others as less than human when we have been trained to see the world through polarized lenses. When we have been taught to think and operate through the language of division and scarcity.
The justification for cruelty, bigotry, othering, and discrimination all comes from imaginary hierarchies that only can be created in a mindset that divvies up the world into winners and losers, successes and failures, worthy and unworthy.
In a polarized world, peace isn’t a transcendent state from war; it is simply its opposite.
In this world, worthy people will get better access to jobs, health care, and educational opportunities. They will not be subject to extra police scrutiny, or imprisonment, or deportation. They will have the best views atop the shoulders of their fellow humans.
In this world, we will accept a certain level poverty, homelessness, and child starvation because it is the opposite of riches and wealth. We assume it is inevitable. We can’t all be billionaires, therefore some people must be poor. But do not despair! Their fate is in their hands! With enough fighting spirit, they too can climb their way to the top! We love a good rags-to-riches story just as much as we love to criminalize the homeless. Capitalism (and Hollywood) rides on good ol’ duality consciousness.
We all agree we live in a divisive time. But that idea really hits home when you see charts like below, showing the usage of the word “fight” and “battle” over time.
I look at these and better understand why we are in such a time of crisis. The recent rise of the word battle, the spike of the word fight…these things cannot be good indicators of what is to come.
usage of “fight” and “battle” over time
The words of a culture reflect the values of a culture. They show us where our attention resides and the way we think and believe. We are a culture that prominently believes in duality.
In a polarized world, peace isn’t a transcendent state from war; it is simply its opposite.
A New Consciousness
Save me the all-conquering heroes.
Give me a radical transformation of human consciousness. A revision of our daily language. And a reformed worldview.
I’m not talking here about reaching states of bliss and enlightenment, (though if these things happen for you, all the better)!
I am talking about a spiritual process of undoing the habits and ways of our world. I’m suggesting that we undergo individual and cultural transformation to break down the crusty mummy wrappings around us. It is the only way we can return to a place of freshness and flexibility in our minds and hearts. The only way to build a world in which the phrase “it is what it is” is never again uttered.
Let us transform out of battle language into language that reflects a world of wholeness and unity, not division and hierarchy. One in which we come together to seek better ways of distributing resources rather than fighting over them.
Too much of our current world is marked by strict boundaries and reflexive responses that give little credence to possibilities beyond the margins of acceptability and possibility.
What if instead of the world being divvied up based on worthiness or other made-up criteria we expanded from duality into unity consciousness, in which the following great truths are the only rules to play by:
We are all one.
What is here is elsewhere.
As above, so below.
Our consciousness must radically reform through a process of breakdown, reflection, and rebirth which I explore in a series of articles that begins here.
But it can begin even more simply.
Start to listen to the way you speak.
Notice how often battle language and metaphors creep into even the way you talk about yourself and others. See how it shapes your beliefs.
Start to make adjustments, moving away from the trap of duality and toward a consciousness of oneness.
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