I woke up early recently and lay in bed for a while resting in, knowing and enjoying this Reality that we call nondual awareness or unitive awareness. I was wishing there was some way to communicate this reality. At the time I seemed to know the exact words to express this. But when I tried to write down the words later that morning, it was impossible to do. Words seemed empty, flat and trite and could not express the richness of this reality. Yet in this episode I will try to express the impossible, for as the Bible says, nothing is impossible with God.
I woke up early recently and lay in bed for a while resting in, knowing and enjoying this Reality that we call nondual awareness or unitive awareness. I was wishing there was some way to communicate this reality. At the time I seemed to know the exact words to express this. But when I tried to write down the words later that morning, it was impossible to do. Words seemed empty, flat and trite and could not express the richness of this reality. Yet in this episode I will try to express the impossible, for as the Bible says, nothing is impossible with God.
Expressing Nonduality Directly
I woke up early recently and lay in bed for a while resting in, knowing and enjoying this reality that we call nondual awareness or unitive awareness. I was wishing there was some way to communicate this reality. At the time I seemed to know the exact words to express this. But when I tried to write down the words, it was impossible to do. Words seemed empty, flat and trite and could not express the richness of this reality.
Yet I will try to express the impossible, for as the Bible says, nothing is impossible with God. I describe it as resting in awareness, but it is not a mental state or consciousness, as that word is normally used. That is the misunderstanding that many people have. It is not a higher state of consciousness. It is not a spiritual experience. It is not anything different than what is always present. It is not awareness of something.
When we are aware of something or someone, even if we call that something/someone God, then that presupposes a separation and distinction between what we are and what/who we are aware of. The world awareness carries with it the idea of separation. Even if that something is someone we call God, then there is a division between us and God. That is theism, and this is not theism. Theism is fine if you are looking for a relationship with God, which is what a lot of people are looking for. What I am pointing to includes all relationships, but this is more fundamental than that.
This is a step back from that dualism or beyond that dualism. Even that language of back or beyond assumes separation and distinction. There is no separation in what I am talking about. In Reality there is no separation between us as a physical mental human beings and anything else. It is knowing that there is not anything else. There is simply this. This Reality is all there is. It is what awareness comes from and what the physical world comes from and what God comes from. The Tao te Ching says it well when it says that the Tao is older than God.
Nondual Reality is not even spiritual. When we use the world spiritual we use it to distinguish spiritual from physical or worldly. Reality is not different or separate. Just like when we use the words holy or sacred we use them to identify that which is not secular or profane. Nondual Reality does not have those distinctions. It is Holy is the sense of Wholeness that includes the profane.
It is not emotion, and yet emotion can accompany it. All emotions are included in this. All emotions are expressions of this. Yet beneath all the emotions there is a deep-seated sense of Rightness. All is right with the world. As Julian or Norwich says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” I would say that all IS well. I want to use the Buddhist term Suchness. It is a sense that this is what is and it is good as Genesis one repeatedly says of the universe. This is what I am. I am part of this wholeness and I am the whole. There is no separation between me as an individual self and Reality.
I don’t want to get too theoretical. I want this to be as direct of a communication as it can be. I want you as listeners to see this and know this directly, if you have never known this before. But I assume that if you are listening to this it is because you do know this to some degree. The truth is we all know this intuitively all the time. We just don’t pay attention to it.
It is the treasure hidden in the field that we keep walking over every day. It is the substratum, the undercurrent of all experience and the fabric of all consciousness. To know this we simply need to step back into it, into what we are before any thought or emotion or physical sensation or even awareness arises.
I am not talking about a mental state of consciousness. It is more subtle and foundational than that. It is abiding in that which awareness emerges from. I call it awareness because conscious awareness is the closest that our minds and thoughts and words can come to describing this. There is an undeniable and certain knowing that what we are is the Ground of Being that includes and incorporates everything.
Death is conquered in this. As the Bible says, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” That is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” Believing in him is not holding ideas about him; it is not even a relationship with him. It is identification with him, being one with him.
We see that we are Life, just as Jesus said he is Life, and Life cannot die. Being cannot not be. Once again I am resorting to theological and philosophical language. But this is not an intellectual exercise. This is simply being. It is what we are, whether or not we are aware of what we are. We are always this regardless of whether we are aware of this or if we think about this.
Sometimes people ask me what spiritual practice they can do to come to this Self-realization. I know it is frustrating to people, but there is no spiritual practice that can bring you to where you already are. It is like being on the top of a mountain and asking where the path to the summit is. I am sure you have seen cartoons of a guru sitting on the mountaintop and a pilgrim arriving and asking the guru the meaning of life. The meaning of life is that you are at the summit!
Some people sound very profound and inclusive by saying that all religions are different paths up the same mountain. The truth is that the path is the summit. The valley is the mountaintop. The problem comes when we think there is a destination that is other than here now. The problem is that we have created the problem, and then try to seek the solution to the problem.
There is no problem. There is nowhere to go and nothing to find. This is it! And it is glorious … and mundane at the same time. Gloriously mundane! That is what the incarnation points to. God and human as one. Spiritual and physical. God enfleshed.
I am getting theological again but the doctrine of the Incarnation is the heart of the gospel and it points to this directly. The Incarnation is not about some human who lived 2000 years ago. It is about the Eternal Logos here now in us. It is what we are, whether we notice it or not. Just be what you are and abide in that sense of beingness. That is what I call unitive awareness.