The Duality and Unity Between Duality and Unity (Lessons from Oak and Rose)
For two weeks, I have been consistently feeling the content and message of this blog coming through, yet when I sit down to write nothing takes form. I am realizing now that this has been a cosmic joke of sorts. What is channeling through is what I refer to as the duality and unity between duality and unity. Essentially, this blog is about everything. Hilariously, my human mind attempted to focus this in on particular aspects and examples to illustrate what I mean by this, but that escapes the very essence of the everything being conveyed. Since it wasn’t coming through as everything, it came through as nothing. Here I guess is where we begin, as Oak says, there is no beginning or ending so just start wherever you want to.
We as humans understand reality through separation, essentially through duality. Light and dark are understood in comparison to each other though truly they are aspects of the same thing. They are not even on a spectrum. They are one thing, yet in this realm of duality, our human brains cannot fathom oneness and therefore have to break it down into categories and pieces.
Lessons from Oak and Rose
One way that Oak illuminated this for me was by bringing Rose into a sit with hapeh, and the King of Duality and the Queen of Duality joined forces to bring in the experience of unity. Here is the key: Unity cannot be described, explained, or mentally understood. Many traditions have been trying to do this for eons, yet the true nature of unity has to be felt. This is the true mystery and the magic of consciousness. The best that I can do is to try and describe my own experience, so here is my story.
During my Master Plant Diet with Oak, I had felt like he was calling me to sit with my Rose hapeh. Due to dieta protocol, at first I resisted. But he was persistent, so I knew that he had an intention for asking me to do this. Almost immediately upon serving myself, Rose came in as the full divine feminine force that she is, met with Oak in his divine masculinity, and they merged in union. Since this was happening within my body and spirit being on diet, they both also merged in complete union with me, uniting my masculine and feminine aspects. Everything within me balanced, I could feel a massive healing occurring in my body, and my essence felt connected not only to them, but to everything. There came with it the experience of oneness with all of the parts of myself that I have buried, hidden, and cast away as well as those I had forgotten. All was remembered and welcomed. Every being in all of existence was recognized and felt as myself and not as separate. I have become all too familiar with this process of feeling with such a loss for words to describe the indescribable and so the mind just tries to explain and explain it more and more but gets no closer to conveying it. This must be felt.
Oak and Rose shed light on this very element of our understanding, and how duality continues to divide in our minds as we try to understand through thoughts. The feminine becomes the divine feminine and the toxic feminine as if that is not one essence, and the same for the masculine. This divide creates further conflict within ourselves as we not only cannot feel the unity of the masculine and the feminine within us, but we compound it by breaking each one of those into another duality—duality within duality, that is actually a unity within a unity. Bringing all of this back into wholeness is one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves and for all of the cosmos.
There is even a duality between duality and unity. We see them as opposites that cannot be held together. Yet duality and unity can also be unified. In one way, duality does exist. Things in this reality do feel separate and that is a true part of our experience. There is a sense of individuality to everything in life. However, absolutely everything is still spirit. Not a part of spirit, or a piece of spirit. It is spirit. Even technology and computers come from the earth. Some might say but they are made by humans, yet this negates the truth that we are nature, we are spirit embodied. Absolutely everything not only has spirit, but is it. Hence, every single thing that you see is a part of the oneness. There is no separation. Even in separation this is unity. Therefore, there is duality and unity between duality and unity. Both exist and don’t exist. It becomes quite the word game until it is your experience. In his blog here on the Plant Medicine People site (found here), fellow coach Mobius adds his own colorful description of coming to the experience of this unity.
A Lesson from Ayahuasca, The Mother Vine
In my very first night with the Mother Medicine, she was trying to show me this. At the time it was very confusing because I was still learning her language, and the barrage of digital imagery made me feel like I was inside of a colorful, psychedelic, and living + vibrant computer. Now I recognize that she was demonstrating that there is no distinction between nature and technology. I had been taught by the stories I had been told that this industrial society made me feel ripped away from nature. This was only true because my definition of nature was limited. Nature was the opposite of the urban, and since I lived in the urban world, I felt like my connection to nature was lost. Here, years later, I am understanding by experiencing that nature is never lost because it is inside of me. There is no divide. While I still do and probably always will prefer to be in the soothing energy of the forest, my garden, or otherwise deep in the wilderness, I know that the energy of those places is never lost from me. It is me. It lives in everything.
The difficulty I was having with this experience was not just because I was unfamiliar with the medicine. It also had to do not only with my lack of understanding that every thing everywhere is a part of nature, but it was completely outside of my experience of what nature is. Mama was blowing open my comprehension and reality in a way that has taken years to come to grips with, and it only has become clear through having these experiences of being a part of nature. These occurrences happen all throughout our lives, often via working with plant medicines, but they can happen in other ways as well—and they help guide us back to that unity within us, and allow us to see the magic of unity watching unity as pieces of itself.
Coming back Home to Unity through Relationships
When people come to plant medicine circles, whether for ceremony, dieting, or other types of communion, often one of the things that they wish to heal are their relationships. Whether it is to the relationship with themselves, loved ones, or some aspect of their work or lives, it is the way that they are connecting, or not connecting, to something or someone in their lives that is often causing them pain. The feeling of being in the separation of duality can lead to feelings of judgement, detachment, searching for worthiness, and other sources of heartache. Luckily, through understanding the duality and unity of duality and unity, we can find our way home to the feeling of this and heal the source of this pain.
Think of one relationship in your life that is currently causing you stress, tension, or pain. Take a moment to try and focus on what it is in that relationship that is triggering this reaction. While we might say, for example, my relationship with my partner is strained because I do not feel like they appreciate me, what really lies underneath that? Why do I need appreciation from them? A common response in spiritual circles is that when you appreciate yourself, you will not continue to project your desire for appreciation towards your partner.This can be massively helpful and healing. Even with this kind of self love and healing, however, it still always feels good when someone appreciates us. Our egos love it, and that’s ok. Finding this level of self love such that we do not need to reach outside of ourselves for love is still a reflection of something deeper.
During my diet with Mama Coca, she brought this home in a way that again I am still coming to comprehend with more depth as my own growth goes on. A few weeks into my communion with her, I had gotten into a small fight with my partner. It was nothing major, but being in such a sensitive state, I had to step away and examine what was being brought up to be seen. What she guided me through was to completely feel and honor my own feelings and emotions while simultaneously doing the same for what I could sense were my partners feelings and emotions. Through completely holding space for myself and also an appreciation for him and his perspective, I was able to pull the entirety of what was happening within me. It was not only self love that was required. I also needed to feel his experience as not separate from my own. It was to actually feel his feelings and needs and my feelings and needs both, in their duality and unity, within myself. While we are two people with two perspectives on what was happening, there is also no distinction. It was two viewpoints on the same happening, and holding the entirety of it within myself allowed me to foster the compassion required to love and forgive myself and my partner.
Further, until recently, I would have told you that our relationships to ourselves, people, plants, animals, and everything in our lives are quite possibly the most impactful aspect of our lives. I could still potentially sustain the argument regarding our relationship to ourselves holding water as it is all there really is. The existence that we currently reside in is governed by duality in which separation distinguishes between things, spaces, feelings, and so on. Light and dark, past and future, masculine and feminine…all of these are defined by the other. However, after some recent illumination from the great spirit that is Oak, I would have to say that there is no such thing as relationship at all. There is nothing to relate to as you are everything. Not a part of everything, but as Alan Watts once said, “You are it. The works.”
So where do we go from here? Honestly, I am still figuring that out. Day by day, as I integrate this diet, I am feeling stronger, more grounded, and more in tune with my constant connection to all that is. Yet a part of that connection is also understanding and appreciating the experience of our separation. We are blessed in this life to be able to embody both aspects of this, feeling duality and coming home to unity. Even better, we can hold space for the duality of duality and unity and feeling them unify within us. It’s a bit of a jumbled mess of words, but the experience of it is absolute magic.
What words can you give to an experience like this that you have had?
Yours in duality and unity,
Lindsay
Lindsay Calliandra Rose is a Medicine Carrier, an accomplished herbalist, Plant Medicine integration specialist, and a woman with a profoundly sacred relationship with nature. She began her Plant Medicine journey many years ago with Ayahuasca and Huachuma, and she has completed multiple Master Plant Diets with beings like Rose, Bobinsana, Juniper, Jurema, Cacao, Oak, and Blue Water Lily. Lindsay is an initiated server and carrier of Hapéh. She now works as a preparation and integration guide for those answering the call to work with sacred medicines, and she is apprenticing in the art of guiding Master Plant Diets as well. She is a passionate advocate of safe and transformative experiences with the plants, and she loves helping people navigate these mysterious spaces with grace, love, and support.
