Day 96: Merging Dualities - A Galungan Reflection on Healing, Yoga and Humanity
Pain and Empathy can Coexist
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Today is Galungan in Bali.
Galungan is one of the most important religious celebrations here. It marks the time when ancestral spirits return to visit the Earth, symbolizing the ongoing dance between dharma (truth and order) and adharma (chaos and disorder). It is celebrated every 210 days according to the Balinese Pawukon calendar. Families prepare offerings, decorate their homes, and build penjor. Penjor are tall, arched bamboo poles decorated with coconut leaves and offerings in front of their homes. It’s a time for family reunions, temple ceremonies, and honouring the spirits of ancestors. The celebration lasts ten days and ends with Kuningan, the day the spirits return to their realm.
Last year, I asked my Balinese friend about Galungan. He told me that although many simplify it as a triumph of good over evil, it’s actually about the balance of good and evil. Bali is an island of 10,000 gods - and 10,000 demons. Galungan is when these energies harmonize. All things exist in twos: light and dark, joy and pain.
This prompted a reflection on the dualities within myself.
In yoga philosophy - particularly in the Yoga Sutras, Sankhya, and Vedanta - we explore dvandvas, or pairs of opposites. These are natural parts of the human experience, and spiritual practice helps us witness them without being pulled apart by them.
Here are some of the dualities I experience:
Passion vs. Peace
The fiery drive to create, teach, and lead vs. the quiet urge to meditate, retreat, and just be. This is the dance of rajas and sattva.
Light vs. Shadow
My kind, inspiring self vs. the parts I’m still healing - self-doubt, people-pleasing, the ego.
Vulnerability vs. Protection
The open-hearted teacher and the guarded protector who fears pain.
Spiritual vs. Entrepreneurial Self
The harmonium player vs. the business owner tracking launches and sales.
These reflections brought me back to a key teaching from the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras. There are three sutras on asana. The first defines it, the second describes how to practice, and the third outlines its effect.
2.46: sthira-sukham-asanam
Yoga postures should be a balance of effort and ease. Asana should be infused with grace, not aggression - ease, not struggle. Traditionally, postures were calm and restorative. Not power yoga. Not performance. Just being.
2.47: prayatna-shaithilya-ananta-samapattibhyam
A practice becomes truly yoga when it’s devoted to something divine.
2.48: tato dvandva-anabhighatah
The effect is that dualities dissolve. The inner conflicts quiet. You become whole.
Which brings me back to Galungan. And also, unexpectedly, to a book I read this week: Sociopath by Patric Gagne.
In this memoir, Gagne explores her life being, what she identifies, as a sociopath. She describes her early awareness that she was different - unable to feel guilt, disconnected from emotion, skilled at mimicry but cut off from true feeling. Her honesty and vulnerability pull the reader into her world, dismantling stereotypes and offering a deeply human portrayal of someone living with emotional blindness.
What moved me most was her journey toward ethical living and connection - not through the traditional lens of empathy, but through curiosity and a desire to live meaningfully.
This resonated with me because I was recently drugged and raped by someone I suspect is a sociopath. Labeling him a sociopath is not about name-calling. It’s a way I’ve come to understand that what happened to me was not my fault. It was the result of his pathology. It doesn’t excuse it. But it helps me understand the choices he made.
Reading Gagne’s story let me reflect on many things, and realize the two truths that I hold:
He hurt me, and I have every right to feel that pain.
He is human, and he is suffering in his own way.
It isn’t forgiveness or forgetting. But it’s something more radical: understanding.
And that, too, is Galungan. Not the triumph of good over evil. But the merging of opposites. The softening into complexity. The sacred coexistence of grief and grace.
P.S. I didn’t work my IABF into yesterday’s essay so here’s his spot so everyone who is still invested in the romance easter eggs knows that it’s still a thing. Other names include Mr Shakshuka, Raja Haiku, Mr. Mimpi Indah, Habibi (My Love in Arabic), The Approaching-Boyfriend (Boyfriend in Waiting), Mr. Vritti, Mr. Jack Pot, Mr. Meditation, Rocket Man, Mr. Mantra, The Meow-ditator, The Rational Mystic, Burrito Boy, the-guy-i-like-that-i-feel-safe-with, him (the crush).
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