We say things like “There are two kinds of people…” or “We can do one of two things…” The mind likes dualities because there’s always a winner and a loser. But, as God and the meditator know, dualities are only two-thirds of the story. The deeper, subatomic mind thinks in threes and so winning or losing isn’t the main point. As a teacher, using stories that were both simple and subtle, Jesus used the dualistic to get to the Trinitarian. Don’t we all have moments when we feel superior, if not to everyone else, then at least to the lowest? And don’t we all have, in the murkiest corners of our ego, an awareness that we are very screwed up and can do nothing about it except open ourselves, in that very place, to the God we only discover in humility? Except we do even that imperfectly. So what is the mind that is aware of this duality within us?
The third, which makes one. Except it is a non-numerical oneness, a unity and a union in which duality is both healed and transcended in the process of meditation. And so there’s the paradox when Jesus says, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but those who humble themselves will be exalted.” You obviously can’t stay long in either place then. So where are we? We arrive at that non-geographical place when we see that God is smiling.
