There is a way of perceiving the world in which everything is whole, complete, and perfect. This is what is sometimes called the non-dual perspective, or the enlightened perspective. This way of seeing reveals that everything is not only what it appears to be but also what it appears not to be.
Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about an apparent inner conflict that he has been struggling with. There was a knot in his stomach that he has been wanting to make go away. It reminded me of boxers in the ring. They are there to fight, yet they often seem to spend most of their time hugging each other. “That’s the defensive position,” he told me. I started laughing.
Whether it’s true or not, that is how the individual makes sense of wholeness. Two boxers are in a ring, together, at the same place and time, with an agreement that one of them will win and that the other will lose, and they are hugging each other. Even when a punch lands on its target, that forms an undeniable wholeness. The harmony of a fight is inseparable from the disharmony.
Whether or not the clenching stomach releases is irrelevant as long as it’s seen as being something that “I” have to deal with. As long as the disharmony continues, so does the harmony. The individual and the problems of the individual are in a continual dance with each other; they are wholeness in…
