Editor's Note: This is the ninth of a projected series of 26 articles in which Allen Aslan Heart will pass along the spiritual wisdom found in the stories behind his dream catchers. Like many others, Mr. Heart feels that the time has come when we must get our spiritual and ecological acts together if we are to survive and evolve.

The Paradox of Duality: The Seamlessness of Being

by Allen Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring

Driving from my parent's home in northern Minnesota in 1994, I was startled at the brilliant red willow saplings growing along the roadway. I collected an armload to make into dream catcher rings. A few weeks later I discovered that they had all turned black! I had a judgment about black. I didn't want to make dream catchers in black! Then I realized that here was an opportunity to use contrasting colors. I could combine black with gold, black with red, gold with red. They are very beautiful together. Why not all three together! Using a collection of rings of many colors and sizes I played with the possibilities. By two o'clock in the morning I had a very beautiful three-ring dream catcher. So what did this dream catcher teach? For the smaller, innermost ring I had chosen red, the next was gold, and the largest, outermost ring was black. I hadn’t planned it to be this way, it “just happened.” Obviously red symbolizes body, gold symbolizes mind, and black symbolizes spirit! It had told me its name and its story:

Body/Mind/Spirit – The red ring represents our body. If we see ourselves as merely body, we limit our recognition of Who We Are. Although the mind is golden, it too, is much smaller than our Spirit. The black rings, the color of the spirit world, suggests that our True Self is much larger than a body-mind might suspect. Not a body with a spirit inside, we are a spirit that is using a body and mind. We are to walk in balance on the dream path as an integrated Body-Mind-Spirit. We are the universe in full awareness of itself dancing the Spiral.

How could black represent spirit? It seems contrary to the common assumption that all holy things are white. Still, if we accept that spirit speaks to us in our dreams in the darkness of the night, it is not so strange to understand the importance of black. One night we were doing a meditation for an 11:11 stargate and I saw the paradoxical brilliance of black. Now I accept it as a metaphor for the world of spirit. With its colorful rings, feathers, and many stones, Body/Mind/Spirit became a very popular dream catcher.

Recently, someone lovingly poked me in the literary rib to question my use of events in our material world to tell a story that teaches of the Wisdom of the Seventh Fire. It seems that it is inappropriate in the minds of some to look critically at the world around us. Better to focus on love and light. I’ve heard that a lot, actually, and it seems to grow out of that same judgment about light and dark, white and black. Several years ago, playing with permutations of Body/Mind?Spirit, reducing to two rings, to four feather sets, and fewer stones, a new design and a new story was born.

Sunset/Sunrise – Between the sunset and the sunrise lies the spirit world out of sight, beyond mind.  Mistakenly feared for its unreality, seemingly disconnected from our "real" life, we have learned to fear darkness and dismiss spirit. Yet following the darkness in which we dream we can expect the dawn in which we awaken. Darkness is simply the other side of light.  Many cultures value light and demonize the dark. It's another judgment we place upon our experience.

Darkness Is.
Light Is.
Creator Is.
All That Is, Is.

Good/bad. Beautiful/ugly. Big/little. Hot/cold. Wet/dry. Up/down. In/out. Love/hate. Peace/war. Christian/Pagan. Catholic/Protestant. Him/her. Night/day  Civilization/ wilderness. Primitive/ modern. This is a very short list of the dualities that we pretend are true descriptions of our “reality.” They all require judgment that is highly relative depending on culture and circumstance. How useful is up/down on a voyage to Mars? Is it possible that what we judge to be primitive is far more advanced and complex, beyond the ability of “modern” man to even imagine?

When does night begin and day leave us exactly. We had to invent “dawn” and “twilight” to fill the imaginary gap between night and day. At what moment can we say it is day? Perhaps you will define it as sunrise. There are valleys in Austria where the sun rises at 11 AM and sets at 2 PM, yet the sky is bright. Where is the horizon when you live in the mountains? When the sun disappears behind the mountain, is it night? Catholics and Protestants are both Christians and yet they have killed each other for centuries. Catholics have killed Catholics, Protestants have killed Protestants. Both have killed women, children, babies in their quest for “peace in our time.” How civilized is civilization? How wild is wilderness? How big is big? To a flea a cat is big. To a cat the human is big. To a human a mushroom is little. Yet the rest of the mushroom organism beneath the ground is often bigger than the house in which the human lives. Is it good when the levee is breached in a flood or is it bad that the levee downstream is causing flooding upstream? In Phoenix, Arizona, twelve inches of rain in a year is wet. In Minneapolis, Minnesota twelve inches of rain in a year is dry. Some flowers are male and other flowers on the same plant are female, but most flowers are both. The earthworm mating with another earthworm is fertilizing the other while its own eggs are being fertilized – fathering one family while birthing another.

Do you suppose Creator is trying to tell us something here? Where is the reality in the illusion of categories? Is an anti-war protest really about peace? Can you be in conflict with others about war and truly serve the cause of peace? Is it possible to bring peace by waging war? Really? Manure happens. It stinks, but the plants grow so much better with it. Get the drift?

“In order to succeed in the protection and conservation of the natural environment, it is important first of all to bring about an internal balance within human beings themselves. Inner peace is the key. In that state of mind you can deal with situations with calmness and reason, while keeping your inner happiness... If we ourselves remain angry and then sing world peace, it has little meaning...first our individual self must learn peace. Then we can teach the rest of the world.” - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet 

The spirals sang old songs in a new way.

So...be light.

©Copyright 2002 Allen Aslan Heart