The Mystery of Duality

We live in space-time, the land of stark contrasts and dualities. There are opposites everywhere to challenge us (and certainly to frustrate us). We wish it were not so, but it is. In reflecting on this and our experience of the human condition, I came across this most pointed of paragraphs from the teachings of J.G. Bennett called Intimations. I thought it was important to hear this clear voice: 


Perhaps the most important creation was the Devil. How would the universe have had a chance of returning to the Source if there hadn't been a tempter in it? Ask yourself that. Why should one ever sturrgle and try to achieve anything, if there's nothing to struggle against? Therefore our enemies are necessary for us.We have to value them very much. And that includes our own inner enemies. If we had no egoism, then we should be like Angels, who are not capable of transformation. They can't be transformed because there is no denying principle. It is the same way with suffering. Without suffering there is no possibility of transformation. But the way in which suffering serves us is not just by giving us something to overcome, to be patient with, to be good about. The real thing about suffering is that it enables an action to proceed in the depths in us, it enables us to get below the surface, to get below even the ordinary depths, to find the place where there is no suffering. In everyone there is the place that is free from suffering. This place we have to find (43).