Duality Game Walkthrough
Casimiro Lurten
To help you earn this sword we've outlined how to prepare for the Duality dungeon, along with how to defeat the Nightmare of Gahlran, Ghalran and the final Duality boss fight. You will also find the all of the secret chest locations in our Duality dungeon walkthrough below.
Duality, like all of the rotating dungeons, has a recommended power level of 1600, with an optional Master difficuly at 1840 during week the dungeon is featuers. That has better drop rates, but adds harsh modifiers and champions. It's a tough gauntlet of encounters that mixes long range enemies in platforming sections with close up skirmishes near bosses. Try to bring weapons that fit both situations. Likewise, weapons with area-of-effect (AOE) like Witherhoard or Osteo Striga are hugely beneficial. Any ranged boss damage weapons are viable, such as Tapian-4fr, work great.
Strand is extremely strong right now, and is another solid choice, especially if your build let's you create Threadlings, which can seek and eliminate enemies for you. Other options are viable too, as long as you know how to use it.
Whichever bell you used, the Bellkeepers in the Nightmare Realm will spawn at the opposite end. For example, if you used the bell closer to the rally banner, the Bellkeepers will be on the side of the room with the Sun and Chalice standards.
Editor's Note: Hey! Dan here. Generally, at Every we try to stick to writing that's directly written for founders, operators, and investors in tech. We break this rule on two occasions: for pieces that are really good, or really important. This piece ticks both of those boxes for me.
Usually, the best way to respond to any meditation-related mental disturbance is just to Stop Meditating. Instead, do something grounding: take a walk and listen to music you like, talk to a friend, maybe literally touch grass. Note that mild-to-moderate disturbances, like feelings that perception has become slightly unusual in one way or another, typically resolve quite quickly.
There are a number of different non-dual contemplative traditions, like, traditions that emphasize non-duality as the goal, or the truth, or the way. They are different in many respects. But they definitely share a point of view. And what I love about their point of view is that it is a bit trollish.
Many meditative traditions are progressive, in the same way that a video game is progressive: you go through stages and gain abilities. Slowly, you develop a series of mental skills, which allow you to successively perceive your consciousness more and more finely.
Now, the mental move is not the end of the story. Cultivating and deepening the resulting state takes time. Also, what that cultivation looks like differs from tradition to tradition; it can look like just sinking deeper and deeper into the perfection of existence, or it can look like using non-duality as a jumping-off point for other meditative activities, like cultivating feelings of loving-kindness within this state of expanded consciousness. But that initial step, towards a feeling of spacious interconnectedness, can be almost instantaneous.
Can you extend that moment of noticing? Can you feel what it consists of, as you would break down the component parts of a piece of music, or a taste in your mouth? Multiple meditative traditions include some form of self-inquiry, which is evidence that many find it effective. For me in particular, self-inquiry has been really effective, though at times bracing; I would not recommend diving deeply into it if you are unprepared for a little mental weirdness.
This is optional, though. That smallness and fixity is a mental contraction, almost like a muscle contraction. After you notice this, you can learn to relax that contraction, and something else happens.
But if you do, try to slow down a bit as you read this next part. If anything you read causes a change in awareness, try to linger there for a moment. (Also, rather than taking anything I say about consciousness as a philosophical argument, try taking it as an invitation to a way of looking.)
This paper, for example, is almost too convenient and cute in the story it tells. Roughly: fMRI imaging of meditators doing non-dual practice suggests that non-dual meditation is associated with increased activity in normally anti-correlated regions of the brain.
Now, this is not inherently a bad thing! Having complicated narratives about the self can be great. And this is all inseparable from our miraculous abstract thinking abilities, which allow us to, say, master geometry and get to the moon.
When I first really started getting non-dual practice, I was fetishistic about trying to maintain a state of floaty expanded awareness all the time. During this time, I did notice some seeming drawbacks.
This might sound banal in our postmodern age, which has a background assumption of relativity and interrelatedness, and a much looser sense of stratification than many traditional societies. However, viewed in context, it can be seen as a radical philosophical move that bubbles up in moments when existing dualisms dominate.
Michael Taft is my favorite living meditation teacher, and this is his fantastically clear and helpful non-duality page, with links to his non-dual meditations, which are great. His teachings made a huge difference in my practice.
Dzogchen is a non-dual tradition in Tibetan Buddhism that is beautiful, intricate, and also, at times, really esoteric (sometimes on purpose). This book is a super clear introduction to the subject and has some of my favorite non-duality writing ever.
Sasha Chapin is a writer who lives, with some reluctance, in the Bay Area. His newsletter is the best way to find more of his writing, and his Twitter is a source of something or other. He is the author of a memoir about being bad at chess.
Also, as mentioned earlier, embracing non-dual awareness is a relaxing motion, which can be inhibited by thinking about it too hard, or even by reifying it with a label, like, oh, say, an explanation of what it is.
Contemplating/Meditating on these pointers triggered for me the most intense non-dual/non-self experiences. So that i even slowed down to remain my seperate sense of self. Together with the book " I am that", this quotes were the most "effective" for me personally. And also kind of playful explorative.
Sometimes, people hype it up in a way that can seem far-fetched. For example, nearly a full half of people who learned how to achieve non-dual awareness through a Sam Harris meditation course said it was the most important skill they\u2019d ever learned in their lives. Presumably, these people have learned some important skills before, like job skills that allow them to feed themselves. So that\u2019s quite an assessment. Also, non-dual teacher Loch Kelly says \u201Cit gave me a way of relieving my underlying suffering and connecting to an inner joy that I didn\u2019t even know existed.\u201D
This document will try to provide an entry-level answer to that question. I\u2019m writing it because non-dual practice can be hugely rewarding, but it\u2019s often explained in ways that are alienating to secular people who aren\u2019t open to mystical woo-woo, or even religious people who aren\u2019t open to mystical woo-woo.
This document intends to be a non-definitive intro. I am not a non-dual teacher, I am just a guy who likes this stuff; this is just one loose take on the subject. I\u2019ve played with different non-duality teachings on and off for about a decade, which is a longish time on the scale of hobbies, but nobody is about to call me Sensei or whatever, nor should they.
One thing about my take is that it is somewhat generalized\u2014I\u2019m averaging between a bunch of traditions. That makes this guide, I think, a nice first look at the subject, but there\u2019s a lot more depth here, and the depth goes in different directions depending on who you ask.
Also, quick warning. Any kind of meditation can be mentally destabilizing, especially if taken in large doses, especially if you\u2019re currently not doing well mentally. I believe that it\u2019s very unlikely that a brief interaction with meditation instructions will be destabilizing, but it is probably possible. During this guide, I will be offering some pointers on how you can achieve altered states: if you are in a state of acute mental distress currently, or were recently, please consider not poking at your consciousness, or doing so extremely carefully. (Interestingly, meditation teachers seem to find that non-dual meditation is often less mentally difficult than other forms, but disturbances still occur.)
If you intend to dive deeply into any contemplative practice, it\u2019s worth taking a look at Cheetah House\u2019s material, or at least bookmarking it\u2014it is an organization devoted to helping meditators who have adverse experiences. Also, a friend of mine reported that the book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness was helpful for him after a disruptive meditation experience, especially this passage.
The idea of \u201Cnon-duality\u201D is, on one level, incredibly simple and concrete, and, on another level, wickedly complicated and fuzzy. So I am going to give you a first approximation, and then tell you why it\u2019s incomplete and oversimplified.
Okay. So we all know that the hard boundary we place between ourselves and the world is somewhat artificial. Sure, on one level, you are a separate being, different from any other. You can move your own arm, you probably can\u2019t move my arm. On the other hand, your life is a product of an incredibly complex enmeshment of influences that can be traced back long, long before you were born. At any given moment, your consciousness is being influenced by many things that are not \u201Cyou\u201D\u2014the global political climate, the societal memes you absorbed in childhood, the words on this page.
And, though you may feel that you are an agent with free will\u2014and maybe you do have free will, I don\u2019t know\u2014the vast majority of your life\u2019s circumstances are totally out of your control. You are living in a tiny flash between a past that has been determined and a future that is unknowable.
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