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?