I am happy to engage in email or telephone conversations about non-duality. halina@nondualityinfo.com
The wave is not separate from the ocean
There is a passion to express a sense of being that arose when the notion of self-identity fell away some years ago. I no longer see myself as a separate individual living in a world of separate objects but feel more like a wave belonging to the one ocean of energy. There is a non-dualistic view of the world that has replaced the previously held, vastly smaller self-identity. Dropping the concept of being a separate self caused an energetic expansion from the limited boundaries of the body outwards into everything. A child-like joy and wonder has replaced the adult critic. Somehow it is recognised that life’s essence is a single unity.
The world without ‘me’
There is no longer a localised ‘I’ looking out and perceiving the world. There is only seeing and sensing. It is difficult to construct any communication without using the word ‘I’, or ‘this is my perspective’ or ‘it is happening to me.’ These are all incorrect statements as there is no longer a ‘me’. The world goes on as before with movement and activity but now there is a perspective that is beyond the story of ‘me’, there is an intense aliveness being in the world without ‘me’.
Dualistic language
Language and thinking are an intrinsic part of the dualistic dream of separation. A non-dualistic perspective is impossible to put into words as language is dualistic by nature. Language can suggest or describe aspects of life but like eating an orange, the description of the taste and texture can convey the experience but will never be a substitute for eating the real thing.
As I grew up learning to use language and reason from the left hemisphere of the brain there came a change from an intuited sense of being into the world of thinking, analysing and labelling. ‘I’ developed and became a spectator and organiser.
There are memories from childhood of confusion with taking up my role in the world. As the sense of selfhood developed I forgot ‘being’ and moved into doing and controlling the imagined external world of detached objects. I forgot the unity that is.
The left brain intellect cannot grasp the larger picture of life but it keeps trying to contain life as if it is information, it’s a bit like trying to squeeze Europe into an egg cup. As an adult I had come to define the world through thought, as Descartes put it: ‘I think therefore I am.’ Instead of seeing thoughts arise and fade I imagined there was an owner here of all these thoughts. I had identified with the imagined ‘newsreader’ in my head. Through favouring thinking I became cut off from the depth and breadth of the life that I am- I thought that I was a prisoner in the body, disconnected from the world outside. The one intuited awareness was denied as I became an observer of life
An intuited sense
The shift to a non-dualistic perspective has bought me back to a preverbal child-like way of being. It is reclamation of infinite identity.
Although the storyline of the character continues as before, once self-identity ceased, there has been an ever-present sense of joy and celebration. It is like perpetually being made love to as life has an inherent spontaneous quality where everything is fresh and new. There is a sense that the essence of life is unconditional love. Everything is a unity and the other side of this world of matter is the unseen energy from which it emanates. This unseen infinite boundless energy is what I am. The world of matter springs from the unseen like a hologram.
A non-dualistic perspective is intuitively sensed rather than an intellectual understanding. As our society favours an intellectual perspective this greater non-dualistic view is commonly overlooked. It is the perspective traditionally held to belong to spiritual wisdom. Especially in the west, religious tradition has separated spirit and matter, body and mind. Intellectually we have encased this natural sense of being as spirit and imagined it to belong to a higher realm somewhere unreachable and inaccessible. Sometimes individuals have claimed such spiritual knowledge as a way of wielding power over others.
Since this shift in perspective I have developed an interest in the work of scientists who feel that consciousness is neither confined to nor produced by the brain. Another word for consciousness could be awareness that is non-local and is the ground of all being.
Sir James Jeans, the physicist, astronomer and mathematician, once expressed the nature of our underlying unity in saying that: ‘The phenomena maybe individuals carrying on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body.’
An expanded awareness of identity is about ‘remembering’ or piecing together the whole.
So my work is about describing the invisible ineffable world that we are.
There seems paradox of intimacy- for the deeper inner reaches previously held as being personal have become the universal-in reality there is no inner and outer-there is only being.
Liberation
A non-dualistic view expands knowledge beyond an academic and reasoned or Newtonian perspective. There is a vast freedom beyond our current limited perception of what we are. Although there may be implications for research, for therapy and all our social structures, it is not about changing or manipulating anything from a traditional intellectual capacity but it is about understanding life by being it. This is a way of stepping into the vast infinite world beyond our stories in time. It is about being in the mystery rather than being in the know.