I had a thought when I was three
Since then I’ve been dreaming I was me.
Nonduality is a kind of revelation of the obvious. A simple resonate knowing of the substance of this that we are. By words like wholeness, realness, hereness, we attempt to give it context and understanding but immediately fail to come anywhere close to full disclosure.
Perhaps one way it can be approached is not by dissecting the conception or even the perception of it here so much as the effect it has on our daily living. That is what www.nondualityliving.com is all about. And what interests me the most now is how this realization acts in everyday living. Not so much how it turns our body/mind “self” up-side-down and back-to-front in its necessary and destructive aspects, but more about its heart renewing and constructive qualities… how all that looks, moves and feels.
That dancing of this dance!
So lets explore this subtle activity; this living of reality that’s re-born out of the realization that we are “not two” but One.
I don’t know about you, but all of this life I used to call “mine” I spent in constant craving. Wishing, hoping and even praying that things would be, could be different – other then they are. This kind of subtle resistance to reality was born of an emerging and innocent curiosity about life. “ What’s going on here? “ was the question I seemed to put to no one in particular, as I rubbed my sore eyes in noncomprehension.
And as I looked around, I recall how I turned every which way to comprehend this brave new world and to cope with the threats it seemed to present. And that marked the birth of both a fear of what might happen and a desire to avoid my fears.
So the child painfully learned what it was taught: to abandon the simple truth of Self.
I closely watched my parents, my playmates, buddies, neighbors and the world at large, saw what they liked and, above all, respected. Then I went about selecting, in my mind, the specific appearances, ideas and attitudes that would make up a most liked and likeable version of “me”.
Now let’s fast forward. Posing the question “what is nonduality?” to my Self here and now, I find this: almost all that I thought I was has fallen away. And that is what the action of nonduality is.
“Nonduality” in its lived expression, is not a spiritual thing, so much as it is a recognition of reality. Fear falls away. Desire, as it was once known, has no place anymore. They are replaced by a simple, solid hereness. There’s a vast spaciousness too, accompanied by a massive relief! A releasing into being. And, O yes, a common and vital aliveness!
An “aliveness” that is “not two”. A certain Oneness which contains all and everything. There’s a practical, breathing, living-among-the-living quality to it.
So what happened? Who could know?
One thing I can say about IT is that, after 30 or so years of wanting, of resisting, of pretending, there came a point where I no longer could bear living a fake life. I simply could not keep tricking myself. Let me put it this way: in a manner of speaking, I received an old fashioned yellow telegram which read:
Coast not clear STOP Ship on rocks STOP nothing I can do STOP must abandon all hope STOP urgent please help STOP send instructions: STOP
Well, despite the disaster, I got the last line, the instructions – “STOP!”
And that is about as much as I will say here for now, except to add that, in truth, we live and have our being only and always in this “nonduality”, this magical and mysterious here/now.
Please don’t complicate it with the mind and its egoic seeking. And if and when you do – STOP!
