The Duality Game

How to Balance The Material and The Spiritual

INTRODUCTION

If we are to play the game of our lives optimally, it is necessary for us to know the totality of the game that we are playing. For many people it is straightforward to recognize and contend with the material aspects of this game, but most fail to understand the spiritual aspect at great detriment to their potential success. To live our lives in a way that will manifest in both material and spiritual success, we must understand both aspects of the Duality Game.

Important to highlight early is that playing the game is not about winning per say. Just like one might play a game with a friend where the stated goal is to achieve some sort of victory condition, the true enjoyment of the game is about the experience of playing, especially when that joy is shared with others. Similarly, while we might achieve material success in life, true meaning is derived from the experience of engaging with the challenges of life in a way that reveals who we are and allows us to learn about the world around us.

Ultimately, we are co-creating our story with The Divine, and it is not about the end result of the story, but creating an interesting and engaging story that shares a deep and true part of who we are.

To understand the Duality Game, I want to start by articulating the rules and key aspects of the Game itself as this will both provide context and orientation as well as allow us to discuss the optimal strategies of play for the game. I will then articulate the strategies for approaching the game which center around the idea that we should care about our story, ask ourselves the right questions, and balance the right aspects when living our lives.

THE RULES OF THE DUALITY GAME

If you have read my article on Naturalism, you will know that the framework I present for understanding the world is defined by three ideas: there is an objective natural truth to rules of reality, that the goal of life is to flourish, and that the optimal modes of being are derived from the strategies that allow you to maximize flourishing within the immutable rules of reality. While I don’t think this argument should require much elaboration as these observations seem a priori, I want to give them a little more flushing out before we move forward.

IMMUTABLE NATURAL TRUTH

Because we live in a time where one constantly hears people talking about “their truth”, it seems begrudgingly necessary to establish the self-evident fact that at the most fundamental level, there is only one Truth. Certainly, you can have different interpretations of that Truth, and seen through different filters, different aspects of the Truth will seem more relevant to one party or another, but at the most foundational level of reality, there is one absolute, immutable Truth.

Take the law of gravity for example. While we might come up with different ways of understanding gravity and our understanding might change over time in accordance with new findings, the exploration of this physical phenomenon is built on the idea that there is some fundamental truth we are working to articulate. If you don’t believe in gravity, it will not change the fact that you are subjected to it. And while gravity is a simple example of this idea, we can apply it to modernly controversial ideas such as biology. Some people might think they can defy biology, but really they have jumped off a cliff thinking they can fly and are experiencing a short lived hangtime before plummeting to an inevitable fate with the harsh and untenable laws of nature.

What I hope you take away from this point is that we live in a world governed by immutable and fundamental rules and it is in our best interest to identify, accept, and play inside that rule set, lest we make decisions ignorant or in spite of these rules that lead to unnecessary suffering.

THE GOAL OF LIFE IS FLOURISHING

While the term flourishing seems fairly low resolution, it is an accurate and appropriate term that captures the goal of life. Anything that is continuing on is living and anything that ceases to continue is dead. Not only can we think of this in a strictly biological sense of living a long life, but also the patterns, both material and abstract, that we see in nature.

If we are flourishing, we are the creative source for positive patterns. We pass on immaterial things such as positive ideas, cultures, and perspectives. We pass on material things such as technology, tools, and resources. It also might be as simple as positive emotions such as love, support, and guidance. When we flourish, we are creating and perpetuating the patterns of reality that are life giving, nurturing, and sustaining.

Those who will be most successful in this game of life understand there is both material flourishing and spiritual flourishing and will aspire to satisfy both as a materially successful life is meaningless without spiritual flourishing and a spiritual life with no material wealth means little ability to extend one's positive life patterns. This also establishes a basis by which we judge our decisions and their results; an objective goal that all life must either acknowledge and aspire to or suffer from ignoring.

OPTIMAL STRATEGIES

While I will get into the core strategies of the duality game themselves later in this article and articulate other meta strategies in stand-alone articles, it is important to establish that based on the rules of our reality and the goal of life to flourish, it follows that there must be optimal strategies for achieving flourishing inside our ruleset. Much like the optimal strategies of Chess existed as soon as the rules and goals of Chess were defined, the optimal strategies of life already exist and can be discovered and articulated.

Similar to how in Chess our decisions for which strategies to enact and when are determined by our opponent, the meta strategies for achieving a good life are always contingent on our environment and the decisions of others around us. So while I might be able to define core meta strategies of the duality game, it is always up to you to make decisions considerate of your position in the game. That being said, if you are knowledgeable about the optimal strategies to achieve spiritual and material flourishing, you will be able to make much more effective decisions on how to act.

ASPECTS OF THE DUALITY GAME

There are three main aspects of the duality game that are important to understand so as to act effectively: Free Will, Growth Through Challenge, and Judgement of Action. Simply put, in the game of life, we have free will which gives us the agency to choose how we live our life. It is through contending with the challenges of life that you will come to grow, learning more about yourself and the world around you. FInally, it is the actions that we take which are the most honest reflections of our soul and our greatest creation is our life story, not our material achievements. The beautiful thing is that these aspects of the game are all derived from the seeming “imperfection” of life and we can understand that challenge, suffering, and limitation to be the features that facilitate a rich life experience and not bugs of an imperfect and indifferent world.

FREE WILL

The outcome of a game means nothing if the players do not have free will to act how they choose. Similarly, your life would not be your own creation if you had a predetermined destiny and were nothing but a cog in the machine. So if I am to argue for engaging in the creation of your life story, it is necessary to establish that we have the free will to do so.

The strongest evidence for this is the existence of suffering. If we have no free will, it would be sadistic to force us to go through difficult times that we could not avoid. And if God didn’t want us to have free will, it would make sense to create a world where only good things happen. So there must be a purpose to our suffering. It would make sense that free will would not only allow us to make the right decision, but also the wrong one. And from wrong decisions, there must come adverse consequences.

So we can feel confident that The Duality Game is one where we have free will, the agency to choose what decisions we make. And while this does not mean we can control everything that happens around us, we can choose how to react to it and to aspire to gain more self mastery so that we have more mastery over the world around us.

GROWTH THROUGH CHALLENGE

Another aspect of the “imperfection” of reality is that there are always problems or challenges in our lives that we must contend with. We might think of these as nuances, but the silliness of that interpretation becomes self-evident when we think about playing a game or watching a movie. Without the challenge of problems and the arc of development necessary to overcome them, stories and games would offer nothing of interest. The duality game we are playing needs to offer challenges to overcome.

On top of this, it is the challenge that forces us to focus. When you contend with a problem, you must both understand the problem, but also the tools and resources you have to solve it. This includes yourself. By engaging with challenges in the world, you are learning about yourself and the world around you. It is a beautiful way for us to come to know ourselves and our creator, the universe, The Divine.

This is why the outcome of solving the problem is never the most satisfying part. When we look back, it is the struggle itself and the aha moments we had when we came to understand ourselves or the problem better. Once this is clear to a soul, they welcome and even seek challenges as they know this is the most pure form of engagement in their life story. And so without difficulty, suffering, and limitation, we would not have such a rich opportunity for development.

JUDGMENT OF ACTION

Finally, I wish to highlight that our life story is both a collaborative, creative endeavor with The Divine and our fellow souls, but also the most pure reflection of our soul. While we might have many ideas that swirl through our heads on a daily basis, it is how we actually will ourselves to act that is the most pure reflection of who we are. To understand this requires us to take our time on this earth with absolute seriousness. We see that each moment is a choice, derived from who we are, and if we wish to honor the gift of life with the appreciation and gratitude it is due, we must contend with the challenges of life and seek to make the best use of this opportunity.

When we pass on, we will not think about the material wealth we accumulated, or even the knowledge we gained, but how earnestly we engaged with our lives and how much we took advantage of the opportunities we were given. If we understand this, we are much less likely to worry about the ephemeral risks necessary to a life well lived, and we will be rich in experience, worth more than safety or material wealth.

And when we are judged, it will be by how well we contended with these challenges and made decisions that we believed were right and honorable towards the higher ideals of flourishing. Just as we do not judge the characters of a book by how materially successful they are, but by the quality of their character that was displayed in their actions. Once you consider your life through this lens, it will become clear when you are living up to your own standards or not.

STRATEGY

Now that we understand the parameters of the game we are playing the key elements, we can discuss the optimal strategies. Make no mistake, there are optimal ways to play the game of life, but this is not to say that the same decision or path is right for everyone. We never make decisions in a void, and so must always consider our personal situation and the context provided in the world around us. But you must understand that there is a right answer, an optimal play. And while we will probably never arrive at the perfectly correct answer, life is about striving to reach that ideal. These strategies, however broad, will enable us to be as close as possible to the ideal mode of being.

YOU MUST CARE

The most fundamental element necessary to play the duality game well is that you must care to play the duality game well. This might seem obvious, but upon further reflection, it becomes clear that there are many in this world who do not care to live good lives. They may be completely blind to the spiritual aspect of reality or they might not care to aspire much past what is easy and comfortable. Either way, they will find that something is lacking in their lives, but their lack of drive to learn more and seek challenges will keep them from the treasures of a richer life.

It is important to note that by caring, I do not simply mean expressing an interest. Many people express interests with no intention of action. Truly caring means you take material action. While the thought is a necessary prerequisite to action, it is nothing more than a thought if it is never given form in action. True belief is only proven when you are willing to put your material self at risk or pay some material price.

NO SUCCESS WITHOUT CARING

You need to take deliberate action towards your goals if you are ever to get even remotely close to achieving them. No one falls into success, and the few who do typically are consumed by it in the worst way. This means we must take the time to define our goals and, when making decisions, take the time to make thoughtful decisions in pursuit of our goals.

REGRET OF LOST OPPORTUNITIES

The greatest tragedy a man can suffer is the inaction of his own hand. When you are old and your opportunities behind you, you will not be pained by what you did, but the opportunities you didn’t take. But you will only know the value of taking advantage of those opportunities and the ability to discern them if you make a concerted effort to care and take action. You will never know your limits unless you are constantly testing them.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Once you have established the care to live your life the best you can, the next question is how. Many people think that it is the answer that is important, but this is not the case. As I pointed out earlier, everyone’s answer is different and no one’s answer will be perfect. I cannot give one answer that will work for everyone. What I can do is share with you the necessary step to finding a good answer: asking the right question.

A good illustration of this idea is a common question people often ask me: “how do I know if I am a good person?” I find this question endearingly funny because it is precisely good people who care enough to think about how to be a good person. They have already learned without realizing it, that the path to being a good person is asking yourself how to be one and applying that mindset to the decisions in your life.

As I spoke of before, it is the grappling with the questions and challenges of life that allow us to come to know ourselves and to know God. We learn what is good by exploring the question of how to be good with each new opportunity in our lives. At the core of living a good life is reflecting on the questions of how.

BALANCING THE SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL

Besides caring enough to take action and to focus on asking the right questions, we must not only consider the material elements of a decision by the spiritual as well. All that I have written has been in service to this point and it was the main impetus for writing out a breakdown of the duality game. In the modern world, we suffer greatly from a lack of meaning due to a failure to see and acknowledge the value of the spiritual aspect of our human experience. We see this in those who are by all accounts materially successful, but feel completely hollow and depressed. They may try to fill this hole with more material pleasures, but this pursuit is ultimately in vain as no amount of material success can satisfy a lack of spiritual meaningfulness.

However, this is not to say the right path is one of complete spiritual devotion. It is a little funny to me that I used to think that the highest form of enlightenment was to meditate under a large ginkgo tree, slowly turning into a rock and transcending all suffering. In truth, we have been given the gift of life. The ability to create a story filled with human emotion and experience. The highest form of spiritual enlightenment is thus being engaged with the challenges of life and seeking to live life to the fullest in service of the higher ideals. This means it is not to transcend the material, but to live in both the material and the spiritual simultaneously; to become a master of both worlds.

META GAME

As I stated earlier, while there are optimal strategies for balancing the material and spiritual aspects of our life and finding a healthy balance, these decisions are never made in a vacuum and so are also contingent on the context in which they are made. This means there is no one single morality one can outsource their decisions to and rely on. It also means that in more dire circumstances, we might transgress lines we would ideally not like to cross. But in these circumstances, these decisions can be seen as moral. What is necessary above all else in such situations is the consideration of the question “what is the moral thing to do?”

MATERIAL IN SERVICE OF SPIRITUAL

One of the common misconceptions of the spiritual enlightened man is that he must forgo all wealth as this is the source of corruption and is not what will bring him meaning. While it is true that material wealth alone will not bring meaning to your life, material success is what enables you to act more in accordance with your spiritual ideals. If I am strong, I can choose whether to fight or show mercy. If I am weak, I am at the mercy of others who may not be moral.

We can see this clearly in the modern example of one’s career. It is not uncommon today to work for a company which takes political and ideological stances we may disagree with. Instead of speaking out, it might be practical for us to stay silent so that we may keep our job and provide for ourselves and our family. This is certainly not ideal as we are compromising our spiritual values for material security. But it would not make sense to martyr ourselves for our ideals if our family was to suffer needlessly for it. Instead, we realize the best path is to become as successful as possible in our career so that we are in a strong position to demand more from our employer or build our own businesses and not have to worry about how our spiritual ideals could compromise our livelihood.

I would go so far as to say that those who say that good men should not seek power and wealth are simply creating a sentiment that would dissuade the good men we need in positions of material power from seeking that power in the first place. If everyone believed that only evil men sought power, then the good would not do so and leave all the positions of power to the evil. We can see this is a disastrous sentiment. Instead, we must realize that wealth and power are not the end, but a means to better strive towards the higher spiritual ideals that will give ourselves and others meaning and fulfillment.

There might even be times where good men must compromise their ideals to achieve power that will allow them to do more good than evil. This is a common struggle in many stories, and there are countless warnings that making this compromise too many times might lead to unwittingly moving material above spirituality. But to say that it is never ok to compromise your spiritual values for power is again limiting. The forces of Evil will exploit every weakness you have, including a fanatical devotion to good. We must be willing to do hard things for the right reasons. And, as I have explained earlier, these challenges of how to balance the material and spiritual aspects are how we come to know ourselves and our world. This is nothing harder than making decisions that may hurt innocent people but will ultimately lead to a better outcome in the end.

CONCLUSION

We live inside a beautiful and perfect reality built to introduce us to the magnificence of God while we learn and reveal to the world and to ourselves, who we really are. The rules of the game are just; they gave us the ability to act freely. When we are oriented towards the correct ideals and pursue them with care, thought, and courage, we will live a meaningful and fulfilling life. We must balance between the material and the spiritual, understanding that a life well lived does not forsake one aspect for the other, but seeks mastery of both. While there is always an objectively optimal decision, we should not measure the success of our lives by the achievement of perfection, but the pursuit of it. We must care to ask the right questions, which is the act in which the wisdom of God is revealed to us. I would then encourage you, dear reader, to engage with your life forthrightly; to cocreate your life story with God as the richness of life is not found in money or even achievements, but experience and what it reveals to us