The First Duality: Grief and Gratitude

Duality: two seemingly opposite things that exist together. They define each other through contrast (light/dark, joy/sorrow, self/other).

My own first real encounter with duality wasn’t cosmic. It wasn’t about Shiva and Shakti or Christ and the cosmos. The first duality I learned to accept was grief and gratitude curled into the same moment, a raw, elemental dance in my nervous system. And that, I believe, is where healing actually begins.

The Spiritual Story of Duality

In many traditions, duality is seen as the perceived split between opposites - spirit vs. matter, good vs. evil, self vs. Source. In many New Age communities it's often framed as an illusion to be transcended so you can experience oneness, or non-duality. It’s whispered like a cosmic script - opposites meant to be transcended, polarity smeared away by the brush of oneness. Spiritual teachers often frame it as separation to be overcome: self and Source, light and dark, ego and essence.

But that version can often become very abstract and metaphysical. I believe a lot of people, starting their healing journey through the spiritual lens, can find themselves lost in trying to understand, accept, and transcend duality. I believe this can often lead to emotional or spiritual bypassing. I strongly believe when we start the healing process from the top-down it can take a much longer time, and risk a lot of extra detours through bypassing and shame cycles, as compared to when we start the healing journey from the bottom-up - what psychology actually calls bottom-up processing, starting in the body rather than the head.

I'm also a strong believer of the fact that everyone has their own process, one is not necessarily better than the other, only different. And it is up to each to choose their own path. The reason I'm making this distinction is to point to, and to make people aware of, the bypass trap that can occur more easily when choosing the top-dow process, that is, starting the healing journey through the spiritual lens.

I believe a lot of people, starting their healing journey through the spiritual lens, can find themselves lost in trying to understand, accept, and transcend duality.

My own healing journey, or rather self-acceptance journey as I like to call it, started from the bottom-up. I started in the body, through the nervous system lens; through grounded trauma work and grief work. And as I peeled layers of trauma, old beliefs, and wounds, the channel to higher connection started opening, on its own, without me trying, without effort. I was channeling, and having downloads long before I had the words for it. I used to call my downloads for epiphanies, which per definition of the word, is a more accurate description of what a download actually is. With time reality started bending, synchronicities started lining up (still without me having a clue that these things actually had a name) and I was, through the Divine Guides of the algorithm, introduced to the spiritual side of social media.

From Trauma-Informed to Spiritually Confused

Even though I had spent about 3 years prior to it working through the trauma informed lens, coming to the understanding that no emotion was wrong, and how to avoid emotional bypassing and toxic positivity - I still found myself confused when I learned about high and low vibrational states or emotions. I was new to all of this and in the beginning I taking in so much information not necessarily questioning what I was taking in. But still something inside me was reacting to the way some emotions were portrayed as high vibrational while others as low vibrational. Even when I was working through the nervous system lens, I always avoided using labels such as positive or negative emotions, I would rather call the painful and happy emotions. But it took some time before I was able to actually stand for my strong inner knowing: that no emotion was wrong. Before that, I almost fell for high vibes only, shame cycle. And that is why I find it so important to shed a grounding light on these matters, even when looking at things through the spiritual lens. Because even though I had done years of work accepting all parts of me, through a grounded healing module, I still struggled with shame when I entered the spiritual world of healing modules.

It took some time before I was able to actually stand for my strong inner knowing: that no emotion was wrong. Before that, I almost fell for high vibes only, shame cycle.

Beyond Duality: The Birth of the Third

That's why today, I'm feeling called to ground the concept of duality. My own first real encounter with duality wasn’t cosmic. It wasn’t about Shiva and Shakti or Christ and the cosmos. The first duality I learned to accept was, as I've mentioned, grief and gratitude.  I learned about the complexity, the duality of emotions. How two seemingly contradictory emotions - I learned and experienced - had to coexist. That was long before I knew anything about how the same concept is also used in the spiritual community. Because it was only when I had fully allowed myself my grief, my pain, that I was truly able to viscerally feel gratitude. I experienced gratitude as a felt emotion not just an intellectual practice.

What really surpised me was that when I was fully able to hold both realities as true, it gave birth to true joy; for the first time in my life, I experienced true joy. That is when I realised that I had actually never truly felt joy before. And that is also when I realised the importance of accepting, and holding two seemingly contradictive truths.

When I was fully able to hold both realities as true, it gave birth to true joy.

Looking back, I can see that what I experienced was also what many traditions describe as the trinity, the birth of a third from the meeting of two. And no matter what lens I look from, no matter what duality I accept, I have experienced that the result is always the birth of a third one - the Hieros Gamos and the holy child..

The conclusion I arrived at was that the true meaning of duality is: holding two truths at once, which leads to us being able to feel and live more fully, more embodied... not to transcend or escape this physical life.