• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Anna Velychko Psychotherapy LCSW, SEP

  • Bio
  • Offerings
    • Psychotherapy
    • Group Therapy
    • Somatic Therapy
    • Mindful Design
    • Thera Web
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact

The World of Dualities

duality.

artwork by H. Kopp Delaney

“The truth is that unless we have something spiritually fulfilling on which to focus the mind, the mind will not stay controlled. Determination is rarely enough. The mind wants to taste. In its mundane form it relishes the material emotion evoked by the worlds dialogues.

When we think of pleasant things – our family or friends, for example – we feel the heart, the seat of the minds emotion, expand. When we think of unpleasant things – our enemies or a trauma – the heart contracts.

This expansion and contraction is actually the mind tasting emotion. We tend to think that the mind wished to taste only the sweetness of friendship or success, but it tastes negatively with equal vigor. Each side of a duality creates an opposite but equally powerful feeling. Because the mind wants to taste both poles, it will drag us from pleasure to pain and back again.

If we think we can focus only on positive emotion we are deluding ourselves. This is the relative world. Everything that creates positive emotion has its counterpart in the negative; there’s no meaning to “friend” without “enemy”. Traveling between dualities is how the mind keeps us engaged in materialism, forcing us to remain in the cycle of repeated birth and death. Although we want to taste the pleasure of friendship without tasting the pain of enmity, to taste the pleasure of success without the misery of failure, to taste love without hate, we are unable. Still, we become bound by desire and by our attachments to emotional experience. In this world every emotion can only be defined against its opposite. The mind can literally keep us engaged forever in the struggle between dualities …”

Footer

CONNECT WITH ME

about
contact

anna.velychko.lcsw@gmail.com
862-294-4101

ANNA VELYCHKO

286 5th Ave, 10th Fl, Suite 14
New York, NY 10001

44 E 12th St,  MD-8
New York, NY 10003

WORK WITH ME

psychotherapy
mindful design
somatic therapy

COPYRIGHT © 2024 ANNA VELYCHKO | WEB DESIGN: ANNA VELYCHKO