Bina­ry think­ing only looks at part of a more com­plete pic­ture. To expand our scope of aware­ness, we must look beyond our oppos­ing views and focus on what uni­fies us through­out life.

“Our abil­i­ty to reach uni­ty in diver­si­ty will be the ­beau­ty and test of our civ­i­liza­tion.” — Mahat­ma Gandhi 

We feel that wedge issues with strict oppos­ing posi­tions con­fis­cate too much atten­tion in pop­u­lar dis­course. We can appre­ci­ate the sim­plic­i­ty of how cat­e­gories like lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive can eas­i­ly cre­ate sides for peo­ple to choose between. Yet, this divi­sive­ness fails to address the nuances and com­plex­i­ties that exist with­in each individual.

Rigid rules and bound­aries dic­tate expec­ta­tions and con­trol con­di­tions, but they also put up big bar­ri­ers. When it comes to com­plex, mul­ti-faceted prob­lems, sin­gle-use solu­tions won’t be suf­fi­cient. To work with intri­cate­ly con­nect­ed, and often invis­i­ble, issues, the best approach­es involve agili­ty and adapt­abil­i­ty (a port­man­teau of these two strengths could be called adapt-agili­ty).

“If you iden­ti­fy with the ego plane, you’ll find you’re in time, you’re in space, you’re a lit­tle body. But go to the spir­i­tu­al heart, and there will be a door­way to the next plane of con­scious­ness: soul land.” — Ram Dass

Non-dual­i­ty refers to a spir­i­tu­al aware­ness that tran­scends dichotomies such as “me” and “you”, or “us” and “them”. In non-phys­i­cal, form­less terms, a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to supreme com­plex­i­ty emerges through non-dual­i­ty. Root­ed in Vedic, Hin­du, Bud­dhist, Islam­ic, and Judeo-Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions, the notion of non-dual­i­ty speaks to an evolved, and per­haps pri­ma­ry, state of con­scious­ness that many spir­i­tu­al prac­tices have sought to describe. There are, by neces­si­ty, count­less ways to arrive at non-dual­i­ty. There is not even one uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed def­i­n­i­tion of non-dual­i­ty. This lack of defin­i­tive­ness also feels appro­pri­ate. There’s room for everything.

“I’ve walked the future, I’ve looked at a record, I’ve seen a place, I have all the data.” — Paul Atreides/ Muad’Dib, Dune, p. 32

This notion of vari­ety gives rise to a uni­fy­ing prin­ci­ple inher­ent in tran­scen­den­tal aware­ness that we can apply to our search for glob­al sys­temic trans­for­ma­tion. Vari­a­tion and rep­e­ti­tion are key ingre­di­ents to achiev­ing whole-sys­tems inte­gra­tion of diverse ele­ments arranged seam­less­ly like a knit­ted fabric.

Our incli­na­tion is to give atten­tion to the dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed space between dual­i­ties, bina­ries, and even dou­ble-enten­dres. Because these inter-zones func­tion like waves between fixed points, they can offer fer­tile ter­ri­to­ries for pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion. Of course, con­tra­dic­tions will inevitably occur. Oppo­si­tions will pop up. What can we do? Cer­tain­ly not just drop our con­vic­tions. Yet, we can also learn to see that our con­vic­tions only tell a small piece of a sto­ry. With­out com­plete con­text, there’s only so much that can be under­stood. Oh, and how much more there always is to experience…

You are at the cen­tre of every­thing.” — Adam Curtis

The notion of non-dual­i­ty sym­bol­izes the eter­nal: where every­thing exists at once. The akashic record and quan­tum holo­gram are two names for the idea that every­thing in existence—past, present, future—is inte­grat­ed with­in a whole sys­tem in which all infor­ma­tion and meta­phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na are stored.

Philoso­pher and sys­tems the­o­rist Ervin Lás­zló dis­cuss­es the “Akashic field” in his book, Sci­ence and the Akashic Field: An Inte­gral The­o­ry of Every­thing, pub­lished in 2004. László’s work pro­vides an under­stand­ing of the “Akashic field” as a “con­stant and endur­ing mem­o­ry of the uni­verse”.³ This field rep­re­sents a way of see­ing past, present, and future all bound with­in the same sto­ry. The acknowl­edge­ment that every­thing we ever encounter—whether in a cur­rent moment, after the fact, or even in the future—is avail­able in this field has the effect of open­ing our minds and vision to a pro­found field of expe­ri­ence. Imag­ine look­ing around. In each direc­tion, you see mul­ti­ple ver­sions of your­self extend out­ward in the field: younger ver­sions, old­er ver­sions, alter­nate ver­sions. Each ver­sion silent­ly acknowl­edges the lim­it­less­ness of expres­sion of who you feel you are or might wish to become. Each stage of life is irre­place­able and inte­gral to the nar­ra­tive we each cre­ate and live out.

How might we learn to access a field of expe­ri­ence that accounts for the ele­gant com­plex­i­ty of who we are or might become? Rather than live with the belief that chance encoun­ters shape the con­tours of our lives, might there be a way for us to inten­tion­al­ly expe­ri­ence non-dual­i­ty as a means for lever­ag­ing the pow­er of serendip­i­ty? Do coin­ci­dences real­ly occur by chance and con­tin­gency? Or do they reveal a larg­er, poten­tial­ly unknow­able, field of coher­ence? We believe that by pur­su­ing these ques­tions, we might dis­cov­er far-reach­ing answers that guide our jour­ney into unknown futures with grace and the wis­dom of immense experience.