Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
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You may have heard about spiritual awakening. Do you know someone who is living it? Join us as Dr. Neil Schuitevoerder describes the lived experience of an advanced stage of human consciousness and shares insight for seekers of all traditions. Dr. Neil will speak from the direct experience of Being, Brahman, Sunyata, or Pure Consciousness as he transmits Non-dual Reality to you -- non-dual space/time, non-dual thinking, non-dual love, the non-dual body, and his yogic abilities to travel the cosmos, move through the bardos and, at the same time, live as a psychologist, husband, father, and grandfather. His experience dispels many myths about awakening. He will be interviewed by his partner, Dr. Connie Zweig, author of Meeting the Shadow, Romancing the Shadow, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, and the award-winning book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul.
Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
Dr. Neil shares His Practice of Inquiry
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Demonstrating the Inquiry practice of the Diamond Approach, Dr. Neil moves into the present moment and articulates his experience as his consciousness expands from his local identity in the body outward to the solar system and the galaxy, as he perceives it, then unifies with it. His awareness moves from dualistic to non-dual realities as he inquires into the nature of the microcosm and the macrocosm and their intimate connection.
Hi, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to do something a little different. Rather than a conversation, we're going to explore the practice of inquiry from the diamond approach. AH AMAS, that's his um pseudonym. His name is Hamid Ali, actually, has been one of our teachers. And one of Neil's practices, spiritual practices, is Hamid's inquiry practice. So what we're going to do is have Neil actually do a live inquiry for you so that you can hear what this is like and um get a sense of it for yourself as you listen to his experience. The inquiry begins with connecting to the body, sensations, to the feelings, to the thoughts, and opens up and expands awareness to other realms. So that's what you're going to hear him doing in the next few minutes. Dr. Neil?
SPEAKER_01Yep, I'm ready. So this is uh inquiry practice into uh awareness of, as Connie has mentioned, the body, the thoughts, the uh heart, the emptiness, and beyond. So I'm gonna begin this and verbalize it. And if we need to explain anything, we can do it afterwards. So I'm sitting here in a chair. I'm aware that my feet are on the ground, my jaw is somewhat tense, a little bit of biting motion, sweetness in the mouth, nectar, sweetness in the heart, and the head. The mind is empty, has no thoughts in it, and um not exploring the mind and going beyond the mind is the emptiness. Emptiness means to me that the body is moving itself, the mouth is moving, and the voice is speaking, and I'm not doing it, it's being done through this being called Neil, and uh Neil is focused on emptiness, on doing nothing, and as I'm present sitting here, I'm becoming aware that the emptiness is expanding and not just present for the body, thoughts, heart, mind, but also for the soul. Soul which is immortal, eternal, and the emptiness gives me access to that, and then it continues to expand to include the spirit. So emptiness is looking now at the galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, and I'm present at as a visual perception outside the galaxy, looking at it and feeling it as part of myself. And the galaxy is me, and me is the body, and both are present in a non-dual awareness, awareness that I am looking at it, perceiving it, feeling it, and it is me looking at the being perceived, looking at the body, and experiencing the body is not just present on the ordinary physical level, but present uh as big as the galaxy. So the physical body is available because I'm out of time space in the emptiness, out of space-time, and size is unimportant. And as I move into this non-dual experience where the mouth is moving and the voice is expressing something, then I'm not voluntarily doing it, I'm just allowing it to be. So my awareness is moving into the non-dual reality. There's no I here, there's no you there, there's no object that's not part of the self, part of the oneness. Now I'm finding myself moving into exploring some non-dual states. So the love is a non-dual state, there's no doer in this state, there's no receiver, there's just the expression of love. And this is also true in terms of bliss. There's an expression of bliss with no perceiver or action or object. And it's also true as far as the knowing. Knowing means to me that I am everywhere, and so knowledge of the universe, the different levels of creation, different levels of what happens when you die, where you go, is all available from this perspective. And that's probably the most difficult thing to comprehend for ordinary consciousness because uh it doesn't operate through the mind, it operates through consciousness of non-duality. And now I'm experiencing the non-duality to include the duality that I am an I perceiving the objective universe, and that's what allows me to be in a non-dual space as well, which is no eye, no object, and these two are together in a sense of totality that this is the experience of allness, not just non-duality, not just duality. There is more, but that's probably sufficient for today. And uh, I'm gonna open this up and see if Connie has any questions or anything that she wants to uh ask me.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. I love that that was right in the moment, exploring your own state of awareness. I'm imagining some questions that listeners might have. So you're aware that your consciousness is local in the body-mind of Neil, and then your consciousness goes into the galaxy, and you have an experience. Tell me if I'm wrong, and you have an experience of subject-object with the galaxy, a dualistic observation, and then you have a union with it that you're calling non-dual, where there's no separation between you and the galaxy. Recently, you've mentioned to me that the planets are now in your body. Yes, and so there's this sense of union with the galaxy or the solar system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, solar system.
SPEAKER_00You want to talk about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the soul, um, which is immortal, which has no beginning and keeps evolving, uh, is both personal and collective. And there's a lot to be said about the soul, but one of the things about the soul is it can expand. And lately I've been exploring the expansion to include the solar system. So the planets are in the physical body which is expanded to identify with the soul. Uh, and most people think the soul is there when you die, but the soul is always there, it's there when you're born, it's there at each moment in your life, affecting and expressing itself, and includes the personal and the relational and the collective.
SPEAKER_00So I'm not sure when you say the planets are in your body, why you brought up soul? I don't get the connection.
SPEAKER_01Because the body expands to include the planets, the body's awareness of the body is not just the physical uh in the uh ordinary consciousness, but it includes the soul, which is um not part of ordinary consciousness, it's uh it has eternity to it, it has uh spaciousness to it, it includes the solar system as well as the galaxies, as well as the subtle realms of astral, mental, buddhikutmic, and other planes. So um the body is not what we think it is, which is local only. The body is uh expanded and includes everything, everything is inside the body. The macrocosm of the universe is the same as the microcosm of the body, and the reverse is also true.
SPEAKER_00And so, where does the soul fit into that? I have a different picture of the soul. I get microcosm, macrocosm, as above, so below. Where does the soul belong in that?
SPEAKER_01Uh the soul is um is in essence is your your personal mortality and immortality. It's part of what is created when the humanity was created. I'm part of a group soul called humanity and part of a group consciousness within that, which is the soul purpose. Uh, and part of the soul is to manifest itself into a physical body and express itself in this creation that we have in dualism.
SPEAKER_00Oh, now I get it. So the soul is expanding as your consciousness expands to include more.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I see. So that so so it's not only that the planets are in your body, it's that that is an experience of a new level of soul as container.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_00Okay, because we we have these close friends for a long time who were very advanced. And I remember her standing in the kitchen one day. I was at her house, and her saying, Oh my god, all the planets are in my body. So at the time, we didn't have this understanding of what you're saying that this um is not only an experience of the macrocosm in the microcosm, it's also an experience of the soul's journey as it includes and embodies more and more.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and the the soul at some point can identify with the spirit, with the divine. Uh, in other words, looking at it from a galactic point of view, the astrological signs, Aries, Virgo, Taurus, are also within my consciousness at a higher level, more subtle level, um, as part of the galaxy.
SPEAKER_00The zodiac is what you mean.
SPEAKER_01The zodiac, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Also, in your inquiry, there was this sense of the galaxy or the cosmos looking back at you. You mentioned that. So there were there's moments when you're looking at it, and that's a dualistic state, and then moments of the unity, and then moments of it looking at you.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Can you say more about that? What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01These are all just subtle levels of uh being or consciousness. Looking at the galaxy, uh, one is required to be in a non-dual state in terms of the self. Self is expanded to the limits of the galaxy. So becoming one with the galaxy is also an expression of non-duality, where there's no separation between myself and the galaxy, and then being the galaxy, looking at this neo, this body, mind, soul, is also feasible. It's also another aspect of non-duality where there's no self-separation between subject and object, they're both they're intertwined.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you're being the galaxy, being the galaxy looking at you.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So there are these interesting distinctions between these states.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's all these non-dual states uh that are part of the journey.
SPEAKER_00Okay, is there anything else you want to say about this inquiry?
SPEAKER_01Uh it's very simple. Um, most people might spend years on the body and noticing the body and expression before one gets to the emotions or the thoughts or the emptiness. But if you want to practice it, this is uh this is the method.
SPEAKER_00So in the diamond approach, the teacher has written a lot of books, and there's one book in particular about inquiry, which you can find. I think inquiry is different in different levels of consciousness. So people who don't have their upper chakras open are going to have a different experience of inquiry, which is basically for psychological work. And this is a useful practice for that as well. Um, and you can do it with a partner, you can do it alone as Dr. Neil just did, or you can do it with a partner who's a witness and just listening and do that together. It can be very intimate getting to know someone in this way, exploring your inner worlds together, and important to build trust and confidentiality if you decide to do that. Any final notes?
SPEAKER_01No, that's sufficient for the moment.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you all for listening to our podcast on inquiry from the Diamond Approach. Bye bye. Bye.