In Bali, there are a lot of spiritual teaching related to duality. Duality means two different things againts one another. You can see many symbolic in daily life of the balinese to remind them about the duality in life. For example, we can see checkered cloth which is composed by a blend of black and white in a balance size in almost every holy or sacred places in Bali. The Balinese believe in mutual dualism. They believe that there is no joy without sorrow, no night without day. They understand that there will always be good and bad in the world and in everyone. Their goal is to make efforts for the sake of balance and happiness for all of us.
[am4show have=’member’]So what is the relationship between the duality with the secret of happiness?
First, we need to discuss about what makes a person generally suffer in his or her life. The most common reason is the inability to accept the duality in life.
In daily life, there is happy condition and there is also a sense of sadness on the other side. For most of people, pleasure is so imagined and the sadness so shunned, and when the sad come, many people can not cope with and then become stress. There is success and there are failures on the other side, unfortunately most people just want to succeed but are not ready to accept failure.
In relation to human existence, we can see there are humans who are pleasant and there are humans who are annoying with all his attitudes, thoughts and behaviors. Naturally we like the people who are fun, but unfortunately we are expecting that all humans will be fun, so we can not accept the existence of humans who are not in accordance to our category.
Second, it has become a fundamental tendency as well as the system of human brain to always look for what is considered fun and avoid what is considered unpleasant. This tendency is embedded naturally in every human brain.
This tendency indeed a natural human tendency, but if we are too late on this tendency then naturally we will also form a mental mechanisms or ego defense mecanism in overcoming the discomfort we are facing. Let’s say that when we are experiencing sadness, grief, failure or when we meet an unpleasant person, we will vigorously dodge, reject and try to ignore all the unpleasant experiences. Unfortunately, the more we avoid and reject an experience the weaker we will be towards that condition.
Again, the more we try to reject and avoid an experience, the weaker we will face the experience.
Of course nobody wants to experience sadness, but sadness is a natural part of life, the other side of a coin which is the opposite from the fun that exists in a single coin. This is duality. When we resist and hate sorrow, until we do all things and pretending not feeling sad. That fake solution is actually heaps the seeds of deeper sorrow in our subconscious mind.
When we are a little bit sad, we try to escape as soon as possible by immediately going out for fun, walking around, shopping for unnecessary things. Sometimes alcohol and drugs are often become a “fake solution” for our sadness. Since we perform this pattern of “fake solution” continuously, then this “fake solution” become addictive. We are addicted to the drugs, addicted to shopping, addicted to alcohol and so on. At the same time, because we have never learned to accept and deal with the sadness, then the more we can not bear it, the sadness becomes stronger and frightening us.
If traced, which makes us weak and try to escape instead of confronting is because we are unable to accept and acknowledge duality as a natural part of life. And thus, accepting and acknowledging duality as a natural part of life is the first step in making yourself stronger to cope with the dynamic of life.[/am4show]
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