Can you notice you're on a natural flow of everything happening? Sure you might have ideas
about what's happening inside of you, or outside of you. But can you stop, right now, and recognize
non-duality. Recognize that everything keeps on moving without you getting involved. The nature of
being is harmonious. And noticing that this nature is harmonious is the same as actually experiencing
harmony. I struggled for a long time with how to realize non-duality in my meditation practice.
So I tried many different things but none of them seemed to work. I couldn't figure
out what i needed to do or how to do it. But I was going about all this in the wrong way,
and now I know of course, that what I was doing was flawed from the very beginning. I tried to be
nondual by doing a bunch of things. My practice was defined by doing. I wondered what action
or effort I needed to make in order to attain some sort of spiritual awakening. And I think that's
how most people try to approach non-duality because it's how we approach our lives.
Through duality and effort. Non-duality is the very subtle nature of conscious experience.
So it requires a more refined awareness to notice it. And if you sit down to meditate
and do many things, you're not moving closer to non-duality. In fact, you are stuck in dualistic
ideas of experience. How many things require your action? What part of your experience
are you actually in control of? If you sit down to meditate and stop doing, stop trying to listen
or stop trying to control anything, see what happens. What happens to your thoughts if you let
go of the sensation of thinking? And what if you extend this investigation to your surroundings,
to your outer world. Can you make someone else move with your thoughts?
Can you make sound stop? Can you control the wind? The answer is obviously no. And this might
be easier to notice when looking at your outer world than the inner, but the truth is, you are
no more in control of your thoughts than any of these other elements of your experience. And if
you stop doing, and just sit down, do nothing but notice, you will soon experience that the world
goes on without you. That even your thoughts will come and go without any effort or action.
Visual objects in your experience happen all on their own. The same can be noticed about sounds.
They simply appear and shift, without any effort. And the same goes for your body. It's possible to
notice that breathing happens all on its own. And even physical adjustments or movements
can happen quite automatically and effortlessly. If we stop doing anything, what we find is that
the world is still here. And as you sit in this way the line between what you control with effort
and what happens without your involvement can become really blurred and it can dissolve.
And if we can sustain this awareness it is possible to experience being without the inherent
effort of separation. This is true non-duality. So this one insight was essential in advancing
my meditation practice. It changed my approach from trying to do something, to noticing that
doing is already happening regardless of me. But it required me to stop completely to notice this.
In the Mahamudra tradition there is a quote that speaks perfectly of this: "Too close to
be recognized, too easy to believe." I think sometimes we have this belief, ingrained in us
over years of practice and our social environments that we can't just rest. That it's not possible to
stop. That something bad will happen if we do. And so we're all stuck in this state of tension,
of anxiety, of never quite letting go. Because we're worried that if we let go,
our lives, "our world." will fall apart. But the truth is, if you do stop, if you are able to let
things be without "yourself," getting in the way; everything continues on just fine. The immediate
confrontation of this realization is that you don't need effort or a sensation of self to be.
The nature of being is actually undivided and spontaneously occurring - a peaceful flow of
things - without any author and effort. Some people think that this is a confronting idea, but
it is just the reality of self-transcendence. It wouldn't be self-transcendence if your "Self," was
still there to comfortably grasp it. So the reason why recognizing the non-dual nature of being is so
imaginably wonderful is because when we have this recognition, we transcend the condition
of effortful being. We recognize a freedom and openness. "Someone, doing something," is no longer
the best description of what there is. Rather what we recognize is more like an effortless experience
of whatever happens to be happening, all on its own - without "Self," getting in the middle of it,
and without any self to judge it. Great meditation isn't something extra we put on. It's never about
attaining something more. Rather it is much more about stopping these strong habits that obscure
our spacious nature, to recognize the peace and freedom which all along has been, and always is:
intrinsically here. Please remember to like, comment and subscribe and I'll see you next week.