Two Fundamentalisms: Dualistic and Nondualistic

This past weekend, as I was hiking in the beauty of Wyoming's Snowy Range, I enjoyed immensely both the vast and imposing backdrop of the mountain peaks AND the individual expression of beauty - found in wildflowers, trees, rocks and lakes - that arise within that vastness. While walking, I found myself reflecting on the fact that the tendency toward a fundamentalistic mindset is so incredibly pervasive in human affairs. In fact, it often takes seemingly opposite forms! In the realm of spirituality, this means, for example, that for conservative traditionalists, ONLY duality is the true reality. Here, there is a Creator-creation split and a billiard-ball view of the self, both of which deny that any kind of overarching Unity has any reality. On the other hand, a kind of mystical fundamentalism holds that ONLY the Unity has any ultimate existence, and that all individuality - including the words, ideas and thoughts that correspond to discrete insights or beings - are actually illusory. This pattern reveals the fact that fundamentalism is a typically HUMAN trait and is not the possession of any one group. It always focuses on one sliver of the truth to the exclusion of all other slivers. In my experience, all of the various slivers are needed to make a more complete picture. Here, for example, BOTH duality and non-duality issue continually into and proceed from one another. Accordingly, nondual vastness continually gives birth to individual beings, AND individual beings perpetually manifest nonduality in their tendency to run toward the horizon of Unity and dissolve there. Amazingly, both duality and nonduality continually issue in - and shapeshift into - one another. And that, of course, is precisely the magic of life!  

There is, of course, a more inclusive Unity, but this consists in dwelling IN BETWEEN these two realms and in becoming the space in which they integrate into a single, dynamic yet restful Reality :)

Photos: (Top) Subalpine Arnica, A quartzite block, and Medicine Bow Peak; (Middle) Rose Crown (Queen's Crown), an unnamed pond, and Medicine Bow Peak. These two photos were taken on August 23, 2015; (Bottom) Silvery snag in an old burn, August 21, 2015. All three photos were taken in the Snowy Range, WY