This week I was watching an episode of the television program ‘In Treatment” in which a therapist talks to his clients and also has to deal with problems with his partner. What the program illustrated is how humans hang on to things, and how much suffering happens as a result.

How much do you cling to your:

• Possessions?
• Ideas?
• Emotional issues?
• You sense of importance?
• Beliefs?

The test of how much you are attached to these things is how much suffering you go through when any of these things go or change drastically. How do you feel when:

• Your favourite CD breaks?
• You fail that exam which you were sure that you had passed?
• You lose your faith in God?
• You lose your job?
• Your partner leaves you?

This morning I took my dog for a walk in a field. His favourite game is to chase his ball which is attached to a small rope. When he fetches it back to me I hold the rope and tug the ball. He tugs back, gripping the ball firmly in his mouth. If I just let go of the rope and allow him to have the ball, he then waits for a few seconds before dropping the ball at my feet, ready for me to throw for another round of this game. After a few minutes we leave the field and he then has no interest in the ball which a few minutes ago he held onto so tightly.

At one point during the walk I noticed that I felt a little flat or down. There seemed to be no reason, no cause for this, and neither was I bothered to explore the reason. I was aware that the feeling was like a small ripple on the surface of my mind. When I looked below the surface there was a vastness untouched by down feelings. Seeing this, the feeling left.

When you get caught up in your feelings and thoughts, it is easy to overlook just how unimportant they really are. All the people with their emotional issues displayed on the TV screen needed to do was stop and look below the surface of their mind, see the emptiness, the oneness that is there, and in so doing, just let go. But, of course, for some reason you like to cling to, hang on to it all.

In the non-duality perspective, seeing the oneness and non-separation is not the end of the story. There is still a journey to take. For me, that journey is more and more about being present to what is going on in my consciousness, and allowing things to come, and then to go. Often I catch myself clinging to the ball of my thoughts. I  then let everything just be. There is no wanting to change anything or wanting anything to go away. Just the act of witnessing my state of mind means that thoughts evaporate all by themselves with no efort by me.

I used to be dissatisfied with my life so I became a spiritual seeker. I thought that enlightenment was the missing jigsaw piece that would complete my life. Most spiritual seekers come from a point of dissatisfaction. This can take the form of low self esteem, feeling like an outsider, or somehow knowing that there is something missing from life.

If you become awakened, then the dissatisfaction goes, the spiritual seeker has gone. Now what do you do?

Most spiritual seeking is done out of self interest. You have pain and you want spirituality to take it away. An element of the awakening experience is that you see that you are not an isolated individual. You are the whole. In non-separation there is only the whole, and your ego has gone. However, in order to function again in the world a sense of a separate identity has to come back, otherwise you could not function.

You have had a sense of transcending your life, of seeing the whole rather than the individual parts, and yet here you are having to engage in the world. You still need to earn a living, deal with your family commitments, pay the bills, communicate with your neighbours.

How do you engage in the world? Having seen that you do not have a separate self and that all humanity is one, do you still operate out of self interest? Or do you engage in actions that help your fellow humans? Do you become socially or politically active?

In the traditional model, enlightenment is above moral and ethical considerations. You can do exactly what you want to do. This is correct from a absolute point of view.

A new model is emerging  in which enlightenment is seen as an evolutionary force leading mankind to a sort of new global consciousness. In this model you have an obligation to join forces with others to hasten the next evolutionary step of mankind.  This global consciousness is a movement away from the emphasis on the individual to what some have called the Higher We.

I am just asking questions here, speculating, pondering. Do I rest in the transcendent space of emptiness, where the notion of me and you does not exist and no actions are required of me? Or do I engage  fully in the world in order to help others awaken?

Andrew Cohen says:

“If a group of people can sublimate their egos enough to allow Spirit to emerge through them, a higher matrix will arise that expresses something more profound and more significant than any single Buddha could.”

Is he right?

A few years ago when I was single I decided that what I needed in my life was a girlfriend. To find one I joined an internet dating site. When I was creating my profile I ticked the box that said spiritual. I regarded myself as a spiritual seeker, so it seemed right to tick the spiritual box.

When looking for suitable women to contact I looked to see if they had ticked the spiritual box. I met several of them. It was then that I realised just how vague the word spiritual is. One woman interpreted spiritual as being to do with mediums and psychics.  To another to be spiritual meant being a christian. To another spirituality was Transcendental Meditation.

One lady asked if I had ever seen a fairy. When I answered no, she declared that I could not possibly be spiritual if I had not at least seen a fairy!

Now I do not give myself the label of spirituality.

Spiritual implies duality. There is the:

• Sacred and the secular
• Spiritual and profane
• Spiritual and not spiritual
• Devotee and non-devotee

My non-dual perspective does not make me spiritual. If I did use that word then I would say that there is nothing that is not spiritual. Equally I could say nothing is spiritual. Everything just is as it is.

This week has been very busy as I am in the middle of launching a software product onto the world. There was a time when I would have said that such focussed work at my computer was not spiritual. My spiritual times were in meditation or when being inspired by some spiritual teacher. Furthermore I valued my spiritual experiences over my work experiences.

Getting rid of the artificial barrier that separates the spiritual from the non-spiritual is freedom from judging how I spend my time.  Time is just spent. I work. I walk the dog amongst the fields and hills and feel inspired by nature. Who am I to say that one activity is more valuable than the other?

No activity, whatever the label that is put on it, is who I am. I no longer identify with the label of being a spiritual person.  I identify with no label. There is no box to tick that defines me.

Do I, do you, need an identity to define who we are? Does it mater whether I am black, white, male, female, a Christian or an atheist?

Everything is consciousness, awareness, emptiness.

Consciousness does not care who or what I am. Consciousness does not care about the labels I use to define myself.

And yet, despite this, consciousness is love.

Unconditional love.

Image via Wikipedia

I saw this interview with a lady who claimed to have had a spiritual awakening. During her awakening Princes Diana came to her as an ambassador of the dead to reveal that we survive after death.

One  inescapable truths is that everything is impermanent.

That brand new shiny car you bought a few years ago is now a wreck and needs to go to the scrap dealer to be scrapped. Your football team was top of the league this year, but now faces relegation. That thought you had a minute ago has gone.  Scientists say that this earth will end one day. You are born into this world, stay around for a while, then die.

The spiritually awakened lady was convinced that the self would not die,  but carry on after death in some sort of spirit realm where it joins lots of other spirits. That spirit realm must be very large to fit in all the humans who have ever lived – or perhaps it is the same lot of humans on an endless cycle of reincarnating, then dying, then being born again.

In all this is the idea that the self is somehow permanent. Why should this be? What makes anyone think that the only permanent thing they know is themselves?

Every night you go to sleep and the self is lost, only to return again in the morning. What would happen if you went into deep sleep and remained there, never to wake again? The world would carry on, your friends and family would carry on. The only difference would be that you were not there to witness it all.

Consciousness, awareness, is not dependant on anything for its existence. It does not need you or me. It’s fine without us.

I have no idea whether I survive death in some form or other, neither do I really care. My focus is on what is happening in the present, not at some future date.

If you can accept that the self is not permanent, can you also accept that perhaps, just maybe, it is not real?

Seeing this you just fall away. What a relief!

Looking for the light, I went out.

Image via Wikipedia

I went to a meeting with Scott Kiloby this weekend. There was a discussion about words and the difficulty of expressing non-duality in words. Words can only ever be pointers, yet there is so much importance put on words, and so much confusion arises when listening to different teachers expressing their perspective on non duality.

The spiritual teacher J Krishnamurti used to study the English dictionary at length because he wanted to express his teachings in a clear and concise way.Unfortunately there has been a tendency for those studying the large number of words he left in his books and recorded talks, to intellectually analyse his message. They forget that his central message was to observe what is going on in your life: to just see it in a non-verbal way. He often talked of seeing a flower or a tree. Can you see a flower without naming it, without reference to any other flower that you have seen in your life, as if you are seeing a flower for the first time?  This experience just is, there are no words or thoughts in that moment of clear seeing.

What all the words point to is a shift in perspective, a direct experience – or more correctly a non-experience as the experiencer is not there. And here I am again, using words to confuse. It is an experience that is not an experience because in wholeness and non-separation there can be no experience and no-experiencer. If there is both an observer and that which is observed then there is duality. How can the experience and the experiencer be one and the same thing?

The intellect can only analyse the non-dual perspective so far. It can never really get  beyond a scent of its perfume, a trace that is left. When the words, the thoughts and the feelings are let go of, there is what is present, and what is present is it.

There is no place to go, no place to search. Call off the hounds, let them follow other trails.

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This weekend I went to see the film Final Destination. It was an entertaining but gory film with lots of people meeting their death in horrible ways. When I looked at the screen the images were all blurry, but when I put on the special glasses I had been given, my brain was fooled into thinking that I was watching everything in 3D.  This meant that various object came out of the screen and appeared to be heading straight towards me so that I too would share the fate of the characters on the screen as their heads came away from their bodies.

The 3D technology is fascinating. One day I will be able to interact wityh the 3D images, have conversations with holographic characters in a virtual reality world, get to hold a virtual gun to shoot virtual people in the ultimate video game.

In the evening I went to sleep as normal then woke up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep. Suddenly everything changed. One moment I was lying on my back in bed awake, the next moment I found myself on a train.

“How did I get here?”, I asked in a confused way.

I then realized that I was in a lucid dream. I occasionally have such dreams. In these dreams nothing is happening. There are no strange adventures and peculiar things going on as in my normal dreams. Instead the  lucid dream is about the environment that I find myself in.

Here I was traveling in a train and knowing that I was in a world constructed by my mind. I began to explore my environment and found myself in various rooms as well as outside locations. I held ice and it was cold. I put my hands in a river and felt the cool water flowing. This lucid world felt as real as my everyday world. I marveled at how detailed the environment was and how my mind had managed, without any effort or even choice on my part, to construct this version of reality.

I woke up wondering what was real, my everyday life, or my lucid dream.

How does all this relate to non-duality? To approach an understanding of non-duality means that your assumptions about the world you live in, your physical environment as well as your thoughts and feelings, may not be true. The central assumption that most humans have is that the physical world is real and that there is a separate self that thinks and feels. Your mind tells you stories and your identity and sense of  reality is built on believing those stories.

What would happen if you told yourself a different story?

• I am not real
• My thoughts are not true
• The world is not there

It is not important if the above statements are true or not. What is important is to have the uncertainty that these statements could be true or false? This is the start of breaking down your identity. Letting go of all that you believe in and hold to be true can be scary.

Is this your final destination?

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Imagine yourself high up on Mount Everest. There is a severe storm blowing as you shelter in your tent knowing that many have died on this mountain. This could be your last day on Earth. You are cut off from your family, the local Starbucks, your big screen TV, your friends. You are stripped of all the comforts of civilisation and have little control over what the weather and the mountain will do to you. What is that like? What do you feel?

Maria Coffey in her book Explorers of The Infinite explores the experiences of extreme sports practitioners such as mountaineers, surfers and canoeists. Faced with death they often enter a space where the self appears to diappear. Maria says:

“When the Self disappears, so does doubt and with it the fears and anxieties that inhibit the human potential, both physical and mental. Letting go of the mind can open the way to the seemingly impossible.”

The way that these athletes describe  such moments is similar to how non-dualists talk. There is a letting go of the self and and sense of wholeness or non-separateness. Unlike the non-duality community there is no shared language in which to express their experiences. Many do not talk about what they have been through. In the macho culture of extreme sports, to be a mystic may be thought to be a bit odd to say the least.

People often ask whether there is anything that you can do to get non-duality. Well, you could climb Mount Everest and see what happens. However there is no guarantee that you would have a non-dual experience and you might die, so I would not recommend this course of action. You could try some less dangerous way – jumping out of a plane, surfing a big wave – anything that puts you right up against nature and danger. That certainly would be fun, but again, you may not get any insight into non-duality from this.

I once heard of someone who got it after being near death through food poisoning on an India train. You could try eating a rancid pie. In the search for answers people try lots of strange things -

• fasting
• nude snow bathing
• hallucinogenic plants
• talking to animals and spirit guides
• chakra cleansing
• unnatural breathing

Instead of spiritual practices or putting your body into extreme conditions, why not let go of the whole thing. There is nothing out there. There is nothing to find. You already have it.

Jimi Hendrix

Who owns your life? In the early seventies I ’surrendered my life’ to an Indian Guru who rode around in a Rolls Royce and taught the knowledge of how to be free and liberated.

I remember meeting a fellow devotee in Manchester one evening. “Are you going to Satsang?” he asked.

There was a satsang or spiritual discourse meeting in the centre of town that was designed to attract new converts to the Guru’s way of life.

“No,” I replied, I’m going to the cinema to see a film starring Jimi Hendrix.”

My fellow devotee looked shocked. He accused me of neglecting my spiritual duty, of going against the Guru’s wishes that we attend satsang as often as we could. Despite his pleading I went to see the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards a felt a guilty.

In order to achieve the state of freedom and liberation I gave away the authority over my life to a Guru who basically taught the opposite of freedom:

• Meditate every day using techniques that concentrate the mind away from the free flowing of thoughts.

• Don’t indulge in the normal pleasures of life like going to the cinema or having a pint in the local pub. Meditate, go to satsang and perform service instead

• Give up meat and all intoxicants

• Surrender the reins of your life to me!

After a while I left this repressive lifestyle but continued to search for freedom. Part of what attracted me to non-duality teachers was that there appeared to be no authority or control by them. They talk about the non-dual perspective but do not impose their views on their listeners.

However, the human mind being what it is still wants some kind on authority. I was reminded of this recently when I talked to a lady about the non-dual teacher Tony Parsons. I said that I disagreed with him over some of the things that he said. I immediately detected some hostility in her, as if to question the great man was not a good thing to do. I realised that for her, Tony Parsons was an authority on non-duality and , like a lot of authority figures, should not be questioned as he knows best. I do not blame Tony Parsons for this. People often create their own authority figures without any pressure from a teacher.

Non-duality teachers often say that there is no difference between themselves and their listeners yet they sit separated, in front of their audience – a subtle gesture that says, well actually, I am the authority on this subject, the one who has got this. You have not got this and furthermore you are paying me good money to confirm once again that you have not got this.

What would happen if you surrendered all authority over your life – including your own authority? What would happen if you realised that nobody owns your life? Is there a you that can own your life? Is there such a thing as your life?

What would happen if you stopped listening to the authority of speakers on non-duality, including myself, and just let go of the notion that there is something to seek, something to find, something to understand? Perhaps then you would have the chance to see what is right in front of you and declare:

“Gosh, it was here all the time. “

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During the last few days my fiancee has been suffering from swine flu. All over the news there are predictions of how many people in the UK will contract the disease and how many will subsequently die. It all sounds very grim.

If you get swine flu you normally spend a few uncomfortable days in bed and then you build up an immunity which means that you will not get swine flu a second time. Because of this there have been swine parties where people want to get infected so that they can stop worrying about catching swine flu. They want to take a few days off work and get the whole thing over with.

Others have decided that they want to avoid it at all costs so try not to go outside and mix with others.

Some people try to get a sense of what non-duality is by using the ‘who am I’ method. Part of this involves asking yourself the question ‘who am I’ and going through different aspects of yourself such as your body, your thoughts and your emotions.

For example you ask  yourself the questions:
•    Who am I?
•    Am I the body?
•    Am I the body when I was seven years old or am I the body now?

By going through this process you find that you are not your body. The end product of the enquiry is to come to the conclusion that you are not a separate self but the whole of consciousness.

Often this realisation is only an intellectual one, but  it can be useful in coming to an understanding of what non-duality is.

If you have intellectually come to the conclusion that you are not the body then it is probably not much use lying in bed with all the aches, pains and chesty cough of swine flu and saying ‘I am not my body.’ At this point the body feels very real and part of who you are and you feel as though you cannot escape the suffering it is causing you.

If the sense of non-separation is as a result of a real shift in your consciousness then it is possible to approach illness in a very different way.

A few months ago I had shingles for a few weeks. I was forced to lie in bed feeling very drained of energy and with painful sores on my upper body. My relationship to the illness was very interesting. The illness was not who I was, the pain was not who I was. It was allowed to arise and was not seen as suffering or something that I wanted to go away. There was acceptance that this was just what was going on and it was temporary and would pass.

I’m not sure how I would respond to a life threatening and very painful illness such as cancer. I’d rather not find out thank you very much.

The non dual perspective on life fundamentally changes your relationship to life. There is liberation in this. But you do not become super human. Your body can experience pain and illness. Your mind can feel fear and anger. Whatever is going on in your life, good or bad, the essential nature of who you are remains unaffected. Let what arises arise. Change what needs changing. Let go of what you cannot change. Relax your mind and float downstream…

This weekend I went to see Jeff Foster at a meeting arranged by Non Duality North in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. The meeting was held in the Hope Centre which is run by the Light of Hope organisation.

Jeff talked about his time as a spiritual seeker when all that he investigated, all that he did was a failure. I related to this as I was in the same position, trying this spiritual teacher and that teacher, trying this path and that path. I was hopeless because, although there were temporary insights, nothing lasted. 

In order for a breathrough to occur you need to recognise your hopelessness, the absolute futility of the seeking process. Coming to your senses is holding your hands up and saying “I haven’t got a clue’”

And yet, if it is your nature to seek, you carry on seeking – but seek to be hopeless, to give up working it all out. Rest into your true nature, the natural state that is always available, usually residing below the surface. 

Can you let go of clinging to your thoughts, ideas, assumptions, beliefs? What is there before a thought arises in your mind?

Find what the Buddhists call, original mind. This mind observes without judging, watches without taking action, witnesses without clinging.

Instead of wanting the light of hope, find the light of hopelessness, it is much more illuminating.