Before I began writing this post, I did a quick internet search on nonduality. I came across varying degrees of “oneness” to be experienced/believed in for one to claim nonduality.
Although I came across a definition of nonduality that included a sense of connection with the divine/the universe as being nondual, I’ve always understood it to be a much broader claim of a more comprehensive ONENESS, i.e. that we are also the ONE, a single unified consciousness, and as a result, this life (of separation) is an illusion.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what is really meant by nonduality, and trying to make it too simplistic, but for me the limitations inherent in all religions is equally present in the nondual tradition.
I do believe there is something divine, something intelligent, that animates all of creation. I do have a slight grasp on quantum wave-theory, i.e. that matter is mostly empty space. However, I just don’t get a sense that because matter in all its form doesn’t endure, that this is all an illusion. Nor do I have a sense that I AM the something divine, something intelligent that created/creates this world, universe, that we exist in.
I know, I’m not AWAKENED!
But in that regard, I really have no desire to be AWAKENED!
Because my experience, sense of life, tells me two points that I’m very hard to be dissuaded from:
1. As to we are all ONE: For me it’s that we and all matter is animated by a ONE, entity, energy, what have you. We’re free to connect, disregard, identify with, ignore, worship that ONE, but I just don’t see any evidence that any human that’s ever been born is actually the ONE. So the ONE is in us, but we are not the ONE.
Again, I know, I’m not AWAKENED!
2. As to this is all an illusion: Everything we experience, effects us. Every smile, every tear, every moment, etches a blip on the matter/spirit matrix that we are. If this was all an illusion, our journey through materiality would leave us unaltered, after all, none of this real, right? That’s not what I see or experience. The being we are at the moment of conception and the being we are at the moment we take our last breath is completely different, altered by the journey we’ve taken on this planet. I just don’t believe an illusion could transform us so completely. For me, ephemerality does not negate reality.
Okay, so maybe my grasp of nonduality is way off! But I find it as limited as any other existing religion or spiritual belief system. Because what I really believe is this: If anyone had really figured out: THE TRUTH, we would be living in a different world.
Oh, so now you say, it’s because not enough people are AWAKENED to the reality that they are the ONE or to the reality that this is all just an illusion.
I’ll just have to respectfully disagree, because I think the reason more people haven’t AWAKENED in THAT WAY is because it’s not really THE TRUTH.
I do strongly believe that the ONE and the UNIVERSE and EACH of US is EVOLVING. I think there is definitely a dance between the animator of creation, the creation, and each one of us.
But I’m just not convinced that any one of us living today, or in the past, has really figured it out. More and more it seems to me that THE TRUTH is more about aligning, harmonizing, syncing ourselves with the never-ending movement of life. That all this other stuff, well, it’s just a lot of blather!
Which as always … leads me back to mysticism …
My next post will begin a discussion of Christian Mystics.