Duality in essence

First of all I would like to point out that I don't know why the category is "religion and philosophy". This is a philosophical epiphany which is basically just a personal expounding of an earlier epiphany of Jonathan Brownell that also just so happens to be of a religious character. Usually it is either one (philosophy) or the other (religion) but now it can be both (also known as theology)...hoorah!

Secondly I would like to state that to make a blog about every epiphany I have would be both pointless and annoying to all who would read them but if I were to expound on what Jonathan had said on the note that was written on Facebook then I fear I would be called, again, a firehose and one does not like to be put down in such a way so I figure that this is a way for me to express my thoughts in an environment that if you (my dear readers) think that this is too long then you (my dear readers) can go elsewhere and suck a lemon.

Thirdly the question that was asked that started the philosophical epiphany was "What is the nature of duality as it applies to the truth and/or life?" and Jonathan's response was as follows:

"Well, if your looking for duality in truth, then there's only truth and falsity.

Life would be, life or death.

Therefore the nature of it is either one or the other. For instance, everything we know of that is alive will have the inevitable end eventually. Truth and Falsity however only exemplifies itself through the manifistation of human thought. In nature, there is only truth. There is or there isn't. Only in human minds can things be twisted in such a stance that things can be unclear."

This got me thinking that this is indeed true (most of it, at least, I agree with). To expound on it a bit more though, duality -- true duality -- exists despite humans' ideas on the matter. Humans have a way of making the picture seem black, white and gray. For instance, a "half-truth". To one who exists in either pure light or pure darkness this is an example of a lie and is bad. There is no gray area. There is no in between. There is only black and white. Humans live in the in between. We cannot be utterly pure but we refuse that we are utterly bad because we are made by one that is utterly pure so we make up an in between and live in it. We do good things but not to the glory of God and so it is never for the right reason. We believe that if our good outweighs our bad then we will go to heaven but the pure cannot live with anything but the pure which is why we need salvation. To God anything but absolute purity is completely and utterly unpure.

This brings me to my next point: It is well established that the road to heaven is a narrow one while the road to hell is wide ("Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." Matthew 7:13). I thought about this in purely philosophical terms and this makes sense. If everything in the gray area belongs to the darkness and nothing can belong to the light unless it is completely pure then of course most things will be in darkness. I thought about it again in another way (for those of you who learn by seeing). A Venn Diagram with one circle being evil, the other being good and the middle being the gray area. If both the evil and the gray area are classified by both completely evil and completely good sides as being evil then you have one entire circle devoted to darkness and part of a circle devoted to the light. There will be less people going toward the light because of our ideas nowadays too, but that's just a personal opinion. Or so many of those that are with the light and accept salvation will accept it and love the light less radically than those that loved the light before them.

These were just some of my thoughts before I went to sleep last night as I prayed because I was inspired both by the wonders of the Lord my God and by the far reaches of human intelligence but only if the Lord helps with human intelligence. If He didn't help us out we would be less than useless.