David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 1.14.24 Dualism is a sneaky worldview. Worldviews themselves are sneaky. We don’t often realize we have one, that we experience life through cultural and self-imposed filters—it’s just reality as we’ve come to believe it is. Dualism divides our view of reality into opposed and contrasted aspects. The most obvious is mind and body or material and immaterial. But once you have drunk the dualist Kool-Aid, you see duality everywhere: right/wrong, male/female, now/not yet, secular/spiritual, heaven/earth. As if everything we experience is reducible to two opposing aspects. Since we are focused on contemplation as a primary tool for spiritual growth and Jesus as a Hebrew contemplative—working interiorly to step away from cognitive and emotional distractions in order to experience pure presence—another dualism presents. Contemplation and action. If we’re focused inwardly, using silence, solitude, stillness, and simplicity to quiet our minds, hearts, and the world around us, how are we of any use in our