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.