In the world of duality, the word “NO” and its meaning gets a bad rep. “YES”, on the other hand, is associated with positivity, opportunities and allowing.

The idea that’s being referred to with “YES” to is one of being like driftwood.

Unfortunately, this polarized understanding, especially within the nondual community, creates a lot of passivity and that feels like stuckness.

When one is like driftwood, there is a passivity that is much more oceanic. Peaceful. This can indicate that one has no real need for decisions, only to drift or float to whatever outcome will be, to allow whatever comes to come. There is no retreating, nor is there any moving forward. There is just the moment to moment acceptance of all that is appearing. The gentle and imperceptible willingness to surrender to the tide and allow it to take one where it will. Just like the myth of Odin and the tree of life:

“When Odin hung, speared, for nine days on the World Tree, he uttered the words that he had ‘sacrificed himself onto himself’. This stanza gives us a description of the unity existing between the Godhead and the Tree in the myths. To emphasize this connection, we find in old English the word treow, which means both tree and truth. Etymologically, then, truth and tree grow out of the same root.”

With the word “yes”, one has chosen a world of suspension. It is no longer of care, whether one will remain at the shore or float farther out to sea, fade or vanquish. It is of no care what one must do. A powerful choice has been set in motion…for rest. To allow the world around you to determine your fate.

This does NOT mean, that if one is getting raped, about to go into bankruptcy or even desiring to start a new business, that one does not act. Action must arise for the evolution of consciousness to take place. Nonduality illuminates “doing”, not suppresses it. Nonduality makes doing integral to being. They are one and the same.

In fact, the word “NO”, in and of itself, does not mean you failed. It means you know what is right for you.

What you are is so conscious and so intimately aware of itself that it knows exactly when to say yes and when to say no. Our thoughts know no such thing. It is our bodies that lead consciousness to liberation. For only when we feel this contraction and this physical experience of “NO”, then we can navigate the waters and truly live as one with the river of life.

By disconnecting from the body, we disconnect from the tree of life. It is in surrender to the body that the wisdom of the dualism of ‘no” and “yes” can be illuminated.

The mind is so tricky. It’s so good at protecting us from reality.

When the veil of illusion begins to disappear, we begin to see just how incredibly good our mind is at hiding the Truth.

The truth that life won’t hurt you. That you can’t be touched by the horrors of the mind. The truth that what you are is beyond this dream of the battle me vs. the other.

So often we get lost and trapped in our own lives and also other people’s lives. We look to those that seem to have it better and dream ourselves up a perfect reality based on their dream. We dream ourselves out of the moment – out of what’s actually appearing for us. We believe that more beauty, more money, more power, more attention, more fame, more people loving us and more possessions will give us what we’ve convinced ourselves we’re missing.

Why does the mind do this? Why does it come up with an ultimately beautiful life that it’s striving for, and then also the opposite version of that, this horrible nightmare with the potentiality of cancer, poverty, loss, abandonment, loneliness? Why does it do this and then oscillate between thoughts about these two extremes? What I want and what I don’t want? Why is it’s dream so powerful? Why does it have so much power that in fact, it convinces us into believing there is something wrong with this one innocent, precious moment of our life which is all we can ever know?

The mind does this as a functioning of consciousness. Consciousness is so curious what it would be like to be something it could never be, two, one and the other, that it becomes fascinated with these projections of love and fear onto others and onto life. In this it actually falls in love with itself and then it falls into disgust with itself, and it is a game of two that it’s playing.

Yes, playing! When there is not an identity that is claiming these theatrics, it is cute and innocent. But when there’s an energy claiming this exploration and this curiosity that consciousness is having, then there is extreme suffering: “Why can’t I be as beautiful and rich as her?” “How can I get the same loving, kind family that he has?”, “How do I avoid this person, whom if I see, will take my dignity and my husband.” These sound like extreme examples, but often they are so hidden in the subconscious that we don’t recognize their roots.

Consciousness, on the other hand, created these roots and the corresponding thoughts out of its curiosity and exploration. This whole time it is just trying to answer the question, “Who am I?” It uses what it loves and what it fears, as a gauge or barometer to try and pin down its identity.

It can never do this, it never will. As long as consciousness manifests as body and mind, it will continue to try and look for itself. But it will never find itself.

This is the tragedy, but also the joke of life.

Try as it might, through the millions of ways that it can think of, to attempt to define itself and find it’s origin – it never will. It can never find itself.

It can never find itself because it is everything and nothing. It has no center. It has nowhere where it’s going. It has nowhere to return to. It just is. It’s just here, as THIS.

The only home consciousness can ever have is in reality.

The reality that is behind the thoughts.

The hands on the steering wheel, the barista handing you the hot cup of coffee, the cold wind on your skin, the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor, the sound of a glass breaking, the phone call coming in, the person at the doorstep.

This is all one thing. It’s just one empty looking, one empty experiencing, one transparent, empty stillness that holds all things and watches them coming and going.

Spirituality and the search for God is the most dangerous place consciousness goes.

This is because it uses the ultimate ideal and freedom “God” and projects itself onto that. It uses the idea of God, or enlightenment, as something that can save it from itself, protect it, give it it’s dream and take away it’s nightmare. When the idea of God is dropped, along with the entire fictional world of the mind, what is left?

What is left right here?

This is a deep and meaningful question because it points to something that is alive and free. Yet, when I say “alive” and “free” there your mind goes, creating another ideal. This points to something beyond words, beyond the ideal – just THIS. THIS. THIS.

The sound of the washer, the body lying on the floor, the feeling of brokenness, the feeling of wholeness.

Reality doesn’t need to be sought!!!!

You don’t have to look for enlightenment and try to get it.

Let me save you years of spirituality and seeking, Gurus and psychotherapy, your ideal of God, enlightenment, freedom, joy, whatever you want to call it – it’s all right here!

IT’S THIS. THIS. THIS.THIS. THIS. THIS.

I can’t make this any clearer. Until you drop the search, you’ll be like a cat chasing its tail.

Just stop. Just stop right now. Just stop right now and come home, to your home, to your room, to the computer, to your body, to the people to THIS, THIS, THIS. Just reality as it is…it’s so simple. Perhaps too simple.

True freedom and true joy can not be taken from you. If you are still blaming others and external situations for your suffering, you are living in the dream of thought.

Your mind and the mind of God are one.

God’s mind is joy and freedom. In joy and freedom is the expression of all things including your thoughts, your circumstances, beliefs, experiences, perceptions. This expression is being filtered to the extent that you are open. This means that God’s mind can only come forward and reveal itself as the creator of all things, once the “you” takes a back seat.

Often this back seat is the last resort. When we’re truly stuck. When we really get in-between a rock and a hard place. Trying to hold on to the idea of next, next, next, the next moment, the next experience, the next partner, the next bank account balance, the next travel date makes it impossible for you to take this back seat. You are lost in the dream, you are still lost in seeking.

All things rise and fall. There is nothing in the mind of God that comes, that does not also go. No matter what you attain in the dream of “next” that will be lost. You’ll experience this. We all do.

God’s mind creates everything and anything. If it can be thought, it can also be created.

This mind, this consciousness, is the substance of all things.

When one is awake, one has woken up to from dream of thought, which is only interested in NEXT, never THIS, never HERE, never NOW.

Do we realize that our entire life is a dream? Can we see that our life is no different than the dream that’s being had at night? When we awake the same mind that dreamt our dreams is dreaming our day into being, moment by moment. Where does this mind come from, where is it going?

This should stop you. The answer here is unknown.

All that can ever be known is this moment, which in an of itself is a total mystery. Where did it come from where is it going?

No one knows this. This moment is spontaneously being dreamt up moment to moment. It has no agenda, it has no formula. It may have certain apparent laws, like cause and effect, within which it responds, but in and of itself it is totally unpredictable, spontaneous and free because of its nature, which is the nature of the universe.

This is the truth that most people don’t want to accept: we don’t know who we truly are, we don’t know where we come from and we don’t know where we are going.

Can we accept this?

If we can, we can collapse into the freedom and joy that we are.

What is the point of trying to control our lives, other people? Control can never, ever be had. The idea of controlling life is like the idea of trying to bottle the ocean in a small glass. It’s unfathomable, impossible.

Until the dream is woken up from and comes to a full stop, there will be suffering, because there will be the illusion of living in this control.

You can not have ANY control. You never will and you never did. Because you’re not really here. Life is here. And life is unknowable. It’s a total mystery. Only this moment can be known as it is. Outside of this moment is only the dream.

You were not the one who made the money, got the job, chose your living situation and created the relationship or family. This was dreamt up by One mind. And this mind is indeed expressing as you. But you are unknowable, untouchable – like the wind. You just are. You come and go, when the weather patterns change and leaves begin to fall, it appears that you exist and one can feel your gust on their skin, but no sooner do you arrive and you are already gone. Merged with the next moment. And the next, and the next.

Come home to your unknowable nature. Rest in this unknown. Just gather all the pieces of yourself that are still out in the world seeking and put them to rest here in this moment, in the only home that you are which is here. Right here.

The entire universe is reading these words right now. Can you take that in? Of course not! This can’t be touched by something with an idea of limits or boundaries. You could never take that in, only IT, itself, could take YOU in. But you have to let go. You have to be willing to be nothing and no one first. You have to be willing to burn away.

Non-duality, not two. One.

What does this mean?

What does this TRULY mean?

If I am not separate from you, or from anything, how does that affect me? How does that affect you?

The deeper and deeper this timeless Truth unveils itself, and the less and less that we hold on to, the more sensitive we become.

So sensitive, in fact, does awareness become once reality or Truth has registered it’s identity in the body, that it begins to release deeply suppressed sates, emotions, and thoughts. This can be very extreme in some cases and very light in others, depending on the unique makeup of the body.

What’s most fascinating is the full-stop realization that each thought, each action, each feeling affects the whole.

This is a total “holy fuck!” moment. The most beautiful, liberating showcase of Truth.

This process in this particular body has resulted in a lot of crying. Sometimes just during a very simple moment like watching a dog food commercial and other times simply by watching someone cross the street. There is a significant desire to spend time with nature, children, and animals, and also drastic physical changes, there is also a lot of laughter at VERY silly and stupid things.

But what’s most striking is that life is just as awake here as it is everywhere. Everything that is looked at is just as awake as this body. Everything is listening to itself. Receiving itself. Good and bad. Life is felt so deeply, at such an extreme level that the collective pain and pleasure penetrates every human cell. Anything and everything that one human does, they are doing to the collective.

What is seen in waking up is that any thought not in alignment with this truth that has been recognized hits the whole. In one sense there’s a greater responsibility towards the truth, but in another, it’s also seen as utterly meaningless. Ultimately, what’s being said in these words is that the entire world we live in is one sentient energy picking up and collecting feelings, thoughts, emotions, states of being. It cries it laughs, it looks for respite, it looks for shelter.

This is so stunning! So beautiful. I always imagine reality or this grandiose, unfathomable truth or enlightenment that so many are seeking as a pure, innocent little kitten, with unguarded and loving kitten eyes. It’s so harmless, so free. It seems like it’s raping, lying and murdering. It appears as though it’s imprisoning innocent people, drowning bodies and giving out diseases and distributing resources unevenly, creating poverty. But, my goodness, it’s doing this and collapsing the moment it appears in total grace and love.

I don’t know how to talk about this or write about it so I don’t post as often. But when it moves, I, too, move and sing…

When the energy is contracted and feels separate, we don’t trust ourselves, our spirits, our life as a whole; we aren’t aware of a sense of power. We become afraid. We become beggars, looking to the outside for a sense of security, purpose, and leadership. We don’t know the answers, so we look to others who do; others who seem to “have it together.”

The truth is that the stillness of our being, the true power, has always been right where we are all along, but in the contracted state of separation, in this process of looking out, we project a sense of “power” onto the closest “authority” figure: a boss, spouse, government, parent. This seeking chips away at our sense of power bit by bit and this separateness begins to “demonize” this new authority figure. The false projection becomes a shadow. Anytime we are triggered emotionally is due to this shadow, which is the cloak of resistance. In this sense, resistance has so much potential to wake us up, to unveil the hidden truth! Every time we’re triggered we can celebrate “Another opportunity to be even freer than I already am…” Typically, when viewed through false lenses, this resistance creates a sense of loss, confusion and we begin to feel like we’re between a “rock and a hard place”.

In essence, this really isn’t a complicated problem. As we recognize what’s happening, understand why we don’t trust life and begin to surrender to our own desires and urges rather than shaming them and making them wrong, bit by bit and step by step we learn what true freedom is and how it creates personal freedom. We get a chance to re-emerge, like a baby taking its first steps after crawling for so long. As we take these first steps, we begin to learn about something that society is not set up to teach within communal structures like families, education systems, governments, and the corporate environment, which is inner authority or independence.

From the beginning of time, society (which is defined by relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture or institution and gives rise to diverse religious, social and economic viewpoints) has been set up and conditioned for survival. For years ( “…human society could [have started] as recently as 7,000 years ago when we first started to employ agriculture as a primary method of obtaining food and started building large, permanent settlements or as far back as 2,000,000 billion years ago…” ) leadership has been propagated in order to sustain the survival of the human race. Authority figures began to emerge as a result of “superior genetics”: more resources, beautiful looks, more knowledge, education, etc, in order to maintain order or rules, and most often private agendas.

The shadow side of this is the arrival of a victim/perpetrator relationship, as various and distinct viewpoints begin to vie for recognition. In extreme cases, authority figures like governments begin to control societies through the public or private lives of citizens, domestic violence emerges or individual opinions are silenced for fear of condemnation because rules are not followed. What happens here? The obvious. People begin to reject their own independent needs, for the needs of the group. This, on some level, has been necessary, especially since the human is a unique species with mirror neurons, which give rise to empathy and compassion, other very important aspects of survival.

But now, as this is recognized and we begin to take our first steps towards the unknown territory of our wild souls, through a quiet and loving listening, we learn to stand again on the wings of the universe. As we rise up and stand, we slowly learn to walk and then eventually run! We become aware of our limitless and infinite freedom, unstoppable and whole. Only through the expression of the truth of our being can we truly serve the whole and assist with the survival of the human race.

So, as you read this, I hope that your being wakes up to its dreams and illusions that it is not free and powerful and justified in its’ wants and needs, and begins to dance and sing! We must remember that in truth, we were always one movement, one expression of love. There only ever was and is freedom, masked by diversity. It is when we look upon another that we unveil the truth. It is when we are able to look through the dream of separation that this dancing stillness, this beautiful freedom can emerge.

More about society and early human behavior, here.

Although you may spend your life killing, you will not exhaust all your foes.
– Nagarjuna

The Buddha stated that to live is to suffer, but he also said that there was a way out of it. He called this ending “enlightenment” or the end of suffering.

Most often we don’t realize that we’re suffering, because awareness has inhabited, through focus, an identity. We dwell in an identity of likes and dislikes, desires and attachments. They have become who we are.

Awareness has funneled mostly all of its attention into fitting the form of a “Kate” or “Steve”. It has created the perfect illusion by adjusting to this dwelling, this costume of a Steve or Kate.

Kate or Steve are synonymous with suffering. As long as they exist, there will be suffering.

Kate and Steve will never make it. They will never, ever make it to the end of suffering.

Who are you?

This question is the origin of the path of direct inquiry or Advaita Vedanta (not two/non-duality)

It is remembered on this path that what you are is not this identity. It is registered that what you are has never suffered.

Realization is as simple as losing interest in yourself. Completely.

Awareness has become so absorbed in its separate identity that rarely is there a gap that is long enough to reveal that there is absolute peace and stillness, quiet presence, an unbroken state of aliveness that was and is doing the looking, listening, speaking, thinking, feeling, sensing. It has always been known that what was here, what was right here just IS. Life. It just is, alive. Right here.

In essence, this does matter. Don’t live an entire life only to find at the doorstep of your death that peace was here all along.

Kate and Steve will never find peace. They will never make it.

To see this, simply lose interest in Kate and Steve. They’re not running the show and they never were.

They weren’t responsible for you desiring, or getting, or losing. It seemed like it in the dream. In the illusion that they made choices and arrived in certain destinations and made it to money, or perfect health, or love. But they didn’t. They never did anything. In fact, they were never here. They were being dreamt up by life, moment to moment. They appeared when they needed to, but they also disappeared.

Are there times when you’re not playing out you? Are there times when there is just life, just stillness? Like when you’re making love, doing something you love, or having an incredible conversation. This can be said that you disappeared when you were “in the moment”. But you were never in the moment because you’re not really here. You seemed to have disappeared and all there was, was the moment.

Kate and Steve will never make it. No matter if they meet the perfect partner, find the most rewarding career, have the ideal amount of kids, heal and save the most amount of people, eat the healthiest diet, they will never ever make it.

Loose interest in who you think you are, only then will you find this infinite, indwelling ever present reservoir of stillness. It’s always been here, it’s never left you. IT is always here, right where you are. Never in anything, or anyone or any place. It’s always right here. You could be locked away in a dungeon, in prison, you could be in the middle of extreme depression, you may have been going through death or divorce or cancer. But it’s here. It’s in your cancer, in your prison cell, it’s right here. It’s in it. It is it. You are everything.

Maya means illusion. Illusion implies two. That which is real and that which is unreal.

There is only that which is real. Or that which is unreal. There is not two.

Either everything is real, or everything is unreal.

This can only be spoken about in absoluteness, for as soon as it is separated it perpetuates an understanding that there is something outside of what is. That which is the dream and that which is not.

In the context of the body, the body is all there is and it is also nothing.

The body appears and disappears and changes, just as all forms. Whether it’s the leaves on the tree, the death of the loved one or the end of a long career. Everything comes and goes. nothing is exempt from this.

The body and the thoughts appear simultaneously. One cannot arise without the other. The mind is necessary for the body and the body is necessary for the mind. Whatever it is that appears in the body has had to have appeared in the mind, whatever it is in the mind has had to have appeared in the body. This is why modern neuroscience is so fascinated by the impact that our thoughts have on our reality.

It is understood that that which is thought about most is also that which appears. Thoughts are directly related to and impact appearances. It is also understood that it is possible to choose what it is that does and does not appear.

This process of choosing and creating can be referred to as an illusion or as reality. It is interchangeable, and also not an argument of whether it is one or the other.

The body or the mind contains an infinite power. This has been acknowledged by religion, spirituality, and experience.

However, this infinite energy, which is everything, is not confined or contained within the body. IT is only looking through, listening through and speaking through the body. It is expressing itself as best it can within the confines of the body and the mind.

When the energy relaxes it’s focus on the body or mind, either through exercise, music, art or something engaging like a passion or conversation then the energy can relax into itself. It can be at peace.

However, this energy has always been at peace. This peace has been eclipsed through the focus on the body or the mind, on what the body has or has not on what the mind can or cannot get. This is a very exciting and stimulating game so the energy focuses on it. In fact, it is so much more engaging and fun for the energy to engage in the drama. Just look – everywhere you go drama, gossip and anything that is propagating or producing the dreamlike social media images of perfection, beauty, money – this is interesting Source loves it.

But source energy has gotten lost in itself, in its very own dream. It has become fully enraptured in its delusion.

This is actually very cute and innocent.

But it’s also exhausting for the body and the mind.

When the body and the mind become exhausted, they begin to lose interest in the drama and the dream. The mechanism begins to drop away and disengage with life. This may appear as sickness or as depression, as a breakup or as walking away from a long-standing dream or goal.

The energy has just given up. It is ready to let go and surrender.

This might appear as a breakdown or falling to one’s knees. Or even an extreme escape to a desert island or even suicide. In some cases, this is the return home. The body and mind may turn to spirituality for this return, or it may just go directly back into stillness.

This is an invitation for you to let go and return to your stillness. But not as the body or the mind. This is an invitation for you to return to pure being. It’s right here. It’s never left you. It’s never even been hidden. It just appeared that way. But it was always your eyes, your ears, your voice, your love.

When you were in the throes of passion, when you were at your lowest, when you were enraged, and hurt or broken, when you were overjoyed with the birth of your first child or when you finished your Ph.D. or got married. It was always silently watching itself. You were not responsible for your mistakes when you hurt others, lost your fortune or fell ill. You were not responsible for telling your mother you loved her before you die, nor were you responsible for choosing to leave the abusive relationship before it got too late. You are not to blame for any of this. You did nothing wrong. You were always a free, silent, open power watching yourself in each situation. When you were under the influence of drugs and alcohol you were the same when you screamed at your lover and got in a fight with your closest friend, when you lied or cheated or killed, you were always the same. You did nothing wrong. This has always been a love affair. Under the tears, the screams, the laughter, and the confusion, you were always the same. You were always untouched by these movements in time that came and went from one movement of the hour clock to the other.

Only one word beckons you home now: return.

Just return.

Right here, right now.

Rest your weary self and return.

Two of the greatest “me” dynamics are money and love. The seperate self is heavily invested in both. It exerts a significant amount of energy into the getting and maintaining both love and money. However, from the waking up from the dream or illusion, it is seen that neither money or love can do anything for us. More often than not, this shrivels the personal drive. The personal self does not know where to go and what to do, now that it has recognized that it will not find completion in either money or love. It might shut down, back into itself, and wait for an extended period of time as it integrates the magnitude of it’s own realization. Or it might just move more deeply into alignment with the expression of it’s true nature, it’s true freedom which is the boundless, limitless here and now.

Ultimately, the drying up of a personal drive means that all sense of “getting” ends. And of course without the drive to get or do things, very little money might be happening. This clearly is not the case for all bodies, but many of them will have a domino affect from their realization. Your whole world crumbles and ends. There might still be attempts at acquiring money or love, but it will always arrive at the same conclusion, that: THE SEPERATE ENTITY WILL NEVER FEEL RICH OR LOVED, IT WILL ALWAYS FEEL LIMITED AND POOR.

The seperate self always feels limited and so, it will always fear death. Non-duality is the end of this.

This is part of the awakening process. The body is ironing out years of false conditioning. It is not clear how long it takes for the body to adjust to it’s truth. However, the present experience must always be returned to, out of the movement of the mind. “What is happening right here?” “What is wanted right here?”

Non duality is the return to primal urges, primal expressions until it is reduced completely and fully to what it is, which is the spontaneous expression of love here and now.

How can something that feels full and complete commit acts of violence or feel unloved and poor?

This is a return to alignment. This is the return to one self.

From this self the energy will begin to move again towards desires and other forms of creative expression; but it can’t justifiably do this until it is truly free. And at this point of the awakening process, there’s no turning back. IT must be followed through all the way.

For the longest time I would have a recurring dream, that many people I know have also had. In this dream, I am standing by the sea shore and I am about to be wiped out by a gigantic tsunami. Instead of just accepting the inevitable, I find a boulder or some structure to wrap my body around and hold on to it, so that I won’t be taken away by the vast infinite ocean. I had this dream at least once a week! I’d like to use this metaphor here, because I think it’s a good one.

The inevitability of death continually lurks in the shadows of our consciousness. There’s no getting around it. Everyone must die and everything knows that it must die. Inescapably, death will come for you and your loved ones and for all your creations at some point. There is no real possibility of avoiding the annihilation of temporal forms. Does it not make sense then to accept the mortality of things? Of all appearances, including the body and the mind? Does it not make sense to make peace with one’s own death?

It is not you that is resisting death. This is not your doing. The urge to live is the creative urge. It is the urge for another moment, the urge for another day to create. This is so, so beautiful. The desire for another day to express love is masquerading as the fear of death. Wow!

Be yourself now, friends. Be the love that you are now.

This love does not begin or end.

This love is an infinite void. This present moment is love, which is an infinite void. In this void, nothing can ever be gained and so nothing can ever be lost.

Watch your body walk to the door, feel the hand on the doorknob, experience the feeling of combing your hair or swallowing a hot coffee. Is this life really just flesh and bones? Or is there something more unlimited expressing here?

Beyond the mind, everything dissolves and only this is left. Only this. Everything eventually will be lost. In fact, this moment at the very heart is, was and always will be absolute loss. Any illusion of anything you have, or have ever had must come to an end. Non-duality is the end of you as you know it. The limited, temporal, seperate you can not go on. But this is not a hopeless message, in fact, it’s the complete opposite. What you are right here and right now is completely and utterly infinite.

Limitations must be seen for what they are right here and right now, not in some distant time line from old age, destiny or misfortune. Once the temporal is embraced fully for what it is, the seperate self will finally be able to surrender to all of life. It will finally be able to give in to the tsunami of life.

Right here, nothing can ever come and go. Right here everything is still, everything is unmoving. The only movement right here and right now is the mind. It is only the mind that is moving towards death. And it is only the mind that is afraid of death. And because the mind can be experienced, it is not who you are, because you are the experiencer. In you everything comes and goes. When one awakes in the morning, everything arises. You arise, but life also arises. It is not just you here. You and everything arises simultaneously: the sounds, the thoughts, the phone calls, the house cat, the busy road.

Do you see that this life has only ever been one movement?

That only one thing has ever been appearing?

In complete silence.

In complete innocence.

Life is your mirror. Relationships are your mirror. What you see, what you hear and what you experience is in fact, yourself. This is the entire essence of non-duality. Not two. It appears as though what you are is limited by what you feel and what you see. Your sense of self dictates that you end where your skin ends. That you are made of blood, flesh, and bones. That one body mass is separate from another body mass. Non-duality is radically saying that this is not true. No true awakening can register without two seemingly separate entities becoming one. Life’s entire dream is this dance of a seemingly separate experience. This is the experience life wants to have. It desires the experience of something it could never be – two!

What does this mean for our relationships? What does this mean to how we live our lives?

Here, in non-duality, everything has a right to be just as it is. It no longer needs to take a particular form to continue solidifying your illusory ideas about yourself. It is no longer required for others to appear a certain way to give you a sense of peace, security or love.

Others hold the key for you to be able to unlock the parts of you that are still bound, constricted or seemingly separate. There’s only so much to explore within the confines of the mind until the energy begins to expand into its environment to re-discover its unlimited nature. When the energy no longer feels confined or separate it drops into a deep sense of peace and allowing, here there is compassion. Compassion or love. Compassion no longer wants anything from others. It is only interested in giving, in emanating its true essence. It’s been said over and over again, that no true awakening has occurred unless at a deep and intimate level we have peace with all beings and all humans. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t feel emotions like grief, anger or betrayal – but at the non-dual level, they are happening to no-one. They are arising and they are being watched. Somewhere it is known that the appearance of a situation, conversation or emotion can be trusted. That this is just a dance of life by itself, to itself and for itself. The nature of things is loss – the comings and goings of one thing and another thing. Nothing and no person can be here forever, but the loss of a relationship or another human is only lost to that which is still attached.

These cords are attachments we have to others, to their approval, and to their love come from the sense of being separate. Their origin is from the mind. The mind has utilized the person, the experience of this person to create a dream. When one human dies, it is only the death of our dream about them. This death is still experienced and pain or grief is still lived, but nothing has ever left you. Only your dream has died. In this sense, you are closer to the truth through death. You touch the heart of life here. The same could be said for a break-up or the loss of a job. It is your dream of what the career, or the person, made you that has been lost.

Here – in non-duality – one is continually waking up from the dream in every moment. Awareness is all that is ever happening, the dream continues to combust the moment it arises. That is why terms such as “nothing” or “emptiness” are so commonly used in this topic.

More importantly, the energy that is continually waking up is also continually looking at itself and viewing itself in the dream. Everything you see is you. Your poverty or riches, your love or solitude, your losses or gain…this is all you! In this, you are constantly discovering and rediscovering yourself over and over again, in an infinite amount of ways. Nothing is ever lost and nothing is ever gained. Only ever was the experience of you. All of life, your entire life was only ever you. In modern-day spiritual concepts, this is referred to as the law of attraction, but non-duality takes it a step further and says life is attracting life, to itself, by itself and for itself and for no one. This is the love affair, this is the intimacy, this is where the lines of a “you” and a “me” blur. Nothing can arise without you. No-thing can appear here without you. You are what makes your lover appear, your family, your job, your health, you coming and you going. This is happening only because of you.

The energy, this one energy, is everywhere and everything. It is looking through your eyes and the eyes of your lover or child or friend, it is speaking through your mouth and the mouth of your lover or child or friend, it is feeling through the heart of your lover or child or friend. The most b beautiful practice in non-duality is listening to life, to “your” life, to what is appearing for you. Watching, slowing down, seeing into the heart of life. Everything has the potential to wake you up, over and over again. Everything is screaming the truth to you. Clarity is in everything and everyone, it leaves nothing and no-one untouched.

What role does all this play?

The role of a continual awakeness. The role of a continual aliveness, the role of a constant state of arrival.

What you are looking at is yourself – how deeply can you love it? How deeply can you dissolve into your love, into what you are?

If you are still at war with people in your life, you are still at war with yourself.

Can you let go?

Are you ready to burn?

This collapse of a separate self refers to the entire illusion of being: that you are someone who exists in time. The mind has done such a wonderful and creative job making this illusion appear real. In the drama of the timeline, the human is responsible for its own life. It is the reason behind relationships, health, career and all of its pursuits. Life energy will indeed ultimately shift back into its place of deep rest. It will ultimately give up and return home, but first, it must completely exhaust itself. It must come to a point of surrender. Essentially, this happens at the gates of physical death. Yet, many nondual teachers refer to “dying before you die.” It must realize that its hands and legs are completely bound in the wild furnace that is life itself. Only then will it truly be able to relax. Only then will it be able to return home.

We exist in problems and because of problems, outside of them, we do not know ourselves. Our mind doesn’t want boundless freedom, because it does not want to die. Death is of no interest to it because its function is identity and attachment. It’s what it knows because that’s what it’s programmed to do. However, there is an alternative in terms of an energetic shift. This navigational energy can very easily relax and let go, however, it is completely counter-intuitive to how it’s been taught to exist for generations. It’s been taught a certain way to be in order to survive. It’s been taught a functioning. Yet, in nonduality, this function completely collapses and the energy is suddenly stuck, caught with no real place to go anymore except to turn back within. It’s so uncomfortable from the perspective of the mind: what will I do and where will I go? Nothing and nowhere. This is just a transitional phase in the awakening process for the energetic structures are exhausting themselves. The energies that have been utilized to survive are slowly and slowly dying away. Ultimately, they will stop because they will see no reasonable or even necessary means to their own existence. For years, it’s possible that the energy will still attempt to seek, but it will increasingly be seen that each time it “makes it” nothing changes. It will exhaust it’s very own self in this process. “And what next?” it will wonder. Nothing. Nothing is next.

Seeing beyond the illusion is a two-part process. Firstly, there is the realization that everything it has ever thought is not true. Secondly, there is the realization, that outside of it’s thinking there is something there. Something free and alive. It is in this exploration of its freedom and aliveness that it begins to rediscover itself completely anew. It is here, right here, that becomes of utmost interest. Outside of this very happening of life itself is only the movement back into the mind, which it has already seen as obsolete. So this is why it’s only other resting place will be to turn back within, to turn back into itself. Here, we rediscover who we are. We may have had ideas, concepts about our identities prior to this, but now, once again we must inquire what is it that’s really here?

Right here is a total mystery. Right here can only ever be that which is arising. Everything else is another movement of the mind. Right here there is only direct experience. Right here is the only place where reality, clarity and true compassion can be found. Everywhere else it will be lost. Everywhere else it will be a dream.