Beauty as Action

III. Practice Operating in the Both/And Universe

The attempt to live according to the notion
that the fragments are really separate is, in essence,
what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent
crises that is confronting us today.

—David Bohm

 This practice is in response to the “either/or” mentality that governs so much of our thinking and reasoning these days. It is one of the major constructs in our automatic pilot reflex.

Dumping divisive duality does not mean we will all be the same. How boring would that be? Diversity, a much misused word and concept these days, is very different from duality. Noticing and enjoying differences (as in the Practice of Seeing) is very important. Pitting one difference against another, looking for better and worse values for petty reasons to divide and conquer, is what an ingrained either/or attitude may lead to,