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https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/blog/poetry-prose/hsin-hsin-ming-poem-alternative-rendition Rupert Spira made a beautiful translation of an Ancient Buddhist Poem from China "Hsin Hsin Ming." A very elegant and lucid description of nonduality. Rupert Spira's Rendition: "To be at peace and content is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When likes and dislikes are not present, everything becomes clear and simple. Make the smallest distinction, however, and you will be exiled from the realm of eternal happiness which is your home. If you wish to be happy and at peace, then hold no opinions for or against anyone or anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is a conditioned habit of the mind. It is a recipe for unhappiness. When we allow the appearance of things to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness is disturbed to no avail. Our essential being is perfect, like boundless space, which is complete in itself with nothing lacking. It is our rejection of what is present or our seeking of what is not present that determines whether or not we feel the peace and happiness that are our very nature. Do not lose yourself in experience but do not turn away from any experience. Be free from all experience but completely open to all experience, and your innate happiness will shine forth. Do not think that the activity of the mind is a problem or that the cessation of its activity is necessary. To attempt to stop the mind’s activity is itself the mind’s activity. Neither lose yourself in the mind’s activity nor engage in the effort to still it, but simply be knowingly the witnessing presence of awareness, and your innate happiness will emerge from the background of experience. Your true nature of pure awareness transcends all experience and yet is immanent within all experience. To assert or deny either aspect is, therefore, to miss the nature of reality. It is not possible to think of reality or to express it in words. To know the nature of reality it is necessary to know the nature of one’s own being, which lies behind all thinking and talking. We invest our happiness in changing things only because we have forgotten or ignored our being. If we want lasting peace and happiness it is only necessary to return to one’s being. Do not search for happiness; only cease allowing the thought, ‘I don’t want what is present; I want what is not present’ to run your life. The slightest like and dislike with respect to experience veils our innate happiness. Do not reject appearances in favour of awareness, for it is infinite awareness itself that shines in and as all appearances. When we stand knowingly as the presence of awareness, nothing can disturb us, and when a person or thing no longer disturbs us, we no longer see them as separate from us or as a source of happiness or suffering. When we no longer divide our experience into good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, the personal self vanishes, for it is created and maintained only by resisting, holding or seeking. In the absence of a separate subject of experience, the separate object or other dissolves and their shared being is revealed as the experience of love or beauty. An object only seems such from the perspective of a separate subject of experience, and a separate subject of experience can only seem to exist in relation to an object. As such, both the subject and the object are, in reality, a single, infinite and indivisible whole. Knowing this, we make no judgements, and neither prejudice nor opinion obscures our vision. To be established in peace and happiness is neither easy nor difficult: it is simply to know and feel oneself as the presence of awareness, with which all experience is known, in which all experience appears and, ultimately, out of which all experience is made. For one whose life is determined by resistance, holding and seeking, everything they do simply compounds their unhappiness. The more effort they make, the farther they are from happiness. Ultimately, even the desire for enlightenment is the desire for something other than what is, and is, as such, the very activity of suffering itself. If, on the other hand, we simply abide knowingly as the presence of awareness, there will be neither resistance nor seeking and we will live free, undisturbed and fulfilled. When our thoughts and feelings are governed by resistance, holding and seeking, we no longer see things as they are. We make distinctions and judgements only because we overlook the unity of being that underlies all people and things, and as a result become upset and exhausted. Nothing of value comes from it. For one who is established in their true nature and, as a result, allows things to be as they are, the goal of life has already been fulfilled. Such a person seeks nothing, holds on to nothing and resists nothing and is, therefore, at peace and content. For one who is lost in their thoughts and feelings, life is a constant battle of resistance, holding and seeking, and thus they are rarely at peace. Everyone’s essential being is the same. It is only when our essential being is qualified by experience that distinctions between people arise and thus conflict begins. To seek our being with the mind is a mistake, for our being lies at the source of the mind; it can never be found as an object of the mind. Activity and inactivity, like and dislike, good and bad, right and wrong, gain and loss all come from ignoring or overlooking the underlying unity of being, from which all people and things derive their temporary name and form. If we do not allow appearances to veil their reality, our innate peace and happiness will pervade all experience. If we do not resist what is present and seek what is not present, experience will lose its capacity to veil its reality. One who remains established in and as the presence of awareness will not lose their self in the content of experience, and as a result, peace and happiness will prevail. Such a one will not separate their self from any experience, and as such, love and beauty will shine in their experience. It is our likes and dislikes which confer independent existence on people and things, and as a result our shared being is overlooked. To understand this is to be free from experience even in the midst of experience itself. In this condition, preferences simply no longer arise. The peace that is the nature of our being is equally present in both activity and inactivity, and therefore it has no preference for either. In the absence of any distinction between activity and inactivity, we cannot even call it peace. Thus, it cannot be defined by words or restrained by any law. One who is in touch with the peace of their essential being no longer negotiates experience from the vantage point of a separate self. Such a one is free. Our essential being is like empty space: nothing leaves a trace on it, nor does it hold on to anything. For one who is established in their true nature, thoughts and feelings add nothing to their self nor remove anything from it, and thus they begin to quieten down. Everything simply is as it is. In reality there is no separate subject or object of experience; there is no self and no other. This absence of otherness is love itself, from which nothing is separate and nothing excluded. The recognition of one’s true nature is independent of the content of experience. In this recognition, the relative value of things in time and space, whilst remaining, is outshone. At every moment, experience is always a single, infinite and indivisible whole, for all such definitions would refer to parts of the whole. Wherever we look it is all a manifestation of the same impersonal, infinite, intimate reality, which admits no boundaries, distinctions or differences. This reality cannot be debated by the finite mind. It assumes the names and forms of ten thousand things, without ever being, becoming or knowing anything other than itself. To understand and feel this is to live a life of peace and joy. It is the origin, the path and the goal of the non-dual understanding. It cannot be spoken of and yet all words speak of it. There is no path to it because it is that alone which is always and already present. Turn towards that and it will take you into itself." Thanks for reading ❤

@cervid Realizing nonduality is not about an experience. Having the experience of Oneness or Self is not enlightenment/awakening. It is about the insight/revelation that shatters the illusion of "me"...and the "me" can never be believed again. However, once you have an experience, it is easier to recreate or have a similar experience...but that is not the point of awakening. Awakening is not making a passing experience permanent in some way (which is impossible).

@Someone here You're dogmatizing nonduality. It's not MORE guidelines it's the falling away of them, the freedom of them. You can still have your cake and eat it too, you can still have your Big Sky Daddy and... that doesn't sound right, never mind. (Although, for the Christians, that is what Jesus meant when he spoke about communion.) There are sources of guidance all around, but you have to receive them. I have experienced absolutely bizarre forms of guidance since understanding and feeling into this stuff. I've had things that have made me feel so seen, so watched over and so loved, I can't describe it. But when I go to attribute a single separate source of this, it falls apart.

@mandyjw let's say you are going through extremely difficult times. It's so tough that you can't just do it on your own. You need a higher power to guide you.what are you going to do? To whom are you going to pray? Nonduality doesn't accept a separate sky daddy who can hear and answer your prayers. Because god is the universe bla bla

I'm not buying that at all. That's just a convenient way to keep your wishful thinking belief alive. It's like when the alien believers say: "We don't see the best videos of aliens because the government keeps those amazing videos in a secret super vault somewhere." Or "We can't see the aliens because they have amazing invisibility technology". Etc. There's many convenient things you can believe in to keep the fantasy alive. And I'm not even mentioning the stuff which conspiracy theorists believe in.. And of course the same mechanism also works in beliefs about nonduality stuff etc.

This is well said and aligns with my experience and understanding of it. But of course, Stage Yellow people are still humans and get triggered, annoyed and have blinds spots like everyone else. Especially if one is "cognitively" at Yellow but not integrated in other aspects like morality, interpersonal skills, spirituality, etc. Another factor that SD does not encapsulate is level of consciousness as it relates to nonduality. Someone can be Stage Blue and also the most loving, peaceful, accepting person you'll ever meet (far more than the average Yellow person) if they've done a lot of mediation work and are embodying a certain level of consciousness.

I wrote this in a book I'm writing. “So the church is Baptist. Pentecostals believe in speaking in tongues, but people in my parent’s church think this is foolish at best and like opening the door and offering a plate of cheese and crackers to demons at worst. They even seem to judge Pentecostals worse than they do…” she glanced up at him momentarily, “atheists. It doesn’t matter what you do, the harder you try to make yourself like them, the more they only notice the differences.” Tears welled in her eyes. It continues to dawn on me time and time again that I am not free of religion. I see the same patterns play out with nonduality, and enlightenment, whatever labels you want to put it on the woke, open-minded. It's relative. Ah. Relative. This is why we hate our relatives. The people the most like us, somehow make the differences sharply contrasted. Relative. It's within me. That's the real realization. Nothing pisses me off worse than a teacher who teaches this stuff, who knows this stuff, but who does it not quite the way I would. It seems like the worst, most devilish sin. Just throw the door open and invite them demon relatives in. That is the entire theme of the book. The House with no Door. Yeah, I know. Are you laughing? I'm laughing. We're always laughing. Who knew demons were such fun? OH! This is why there are all those people who love animals and hate people. People are too close to home. When the whole place is your home, nothing can ever be too close to home. Someone should tell all those animal lovers that they aren't human, so they don't need to stop resisting being human by idolizing animals. "Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."" Gospel of Thomas

Who abides in what is not ultimate? Buddhism is about nonduality. But they make not fetish out of "higher levels of consciousness".

And I think he's from India, he looks like it. He prays at work, I think several times. He takes his shoes off and goes on his knees on a "carpet", and then does the classic thing with bowing down with face towards the ground and arms stretched out forward. So.. what would happen if I would tell him that I like advaita vedanta? I think advaita vedanta is a branch of hinduism, but advaita vedanta is nonduality. Would he think that believing in advaita vedanta is a sin or something? Would it make him hate me? Or the opposite? Maybe he would like it and get positively surprised that I like advaita vedanta? I like religious people. He likes me and I like him so we could maybe have something in common with this hindu stuff. It's extremely rare that a swedish guy isn't a 100% materialist so he would for sure get surprised if he would know that I'm kinda spiritual. Maybe I even could mention that I like to watch Swami Sarvapriyananda on YouTube. But I don't know. @Preety_India

Of course we are splitting hairs here. The basics of nonduality and consciousness are all the same. There's just degrees of holism to it. Which is why these kinds of nondual debates are a waste of time. The only practical point is: go for Infinite Consciousness. Nothing else matters. Don't stop until you understand EVERYTHING.

But if this nonduality stuff is true, doesn't it mean that if you read a "external" book, you are actually just reading yourself and discovering more of yourself? All happening internally, inside yourself, directly. So then it wouldn't matter whether you do it internally or "externally". The thing you first label as indirect (reading a book), could cause something which you label as direct.

Maybe check out Loch Kelly's work. He has a very down to earth style and emphasizes the practical approach of nonduality instead of endlessly theorizing it.

If you're looking for a teaching, look elsewhere. Nonduality meetings are basically just fun, not really effective for anything, except perhaps allowing some beliefs about enlightenment to fall away.

Michael Taft brilliantly summarized this whole radical neo-advaita vs effortful approach situation in this article: https://deconstructingyourself.com/nonduality-and-mindfulness.html

They advocate self inquiry. So does Rupert Spira. And they say you’re already enlightened but the good ones say it remains for you to realize that. They provide teachings. The nonduality speakers like Jim Newman merely provide the message, for no reason. They do not provide teachings. Those are the main distinctions I see. I don’t prefer one or the other really. The only Neo teachers I really don’t like (can’t think of any off the top of my head) are probably recent students of Neo who think they’re at the end of the path but really aren’t and then they preach that everyone’s already enlightened and you not only can, but should, stop meditating. “The message” points to the non-conceptual, energetic collapse of the duality between bondage and liberation.

Papaji, Mooji, and many followers of Ramana Maharshi. They generally advocate self inquiry and say there's nothing to do to be enlightened because you already are enlightened. Versus nonduality or the message which is not a teaching, and says nothing, but points out the reality that there's no one to become enlightened.

@The0Self What you call contemporary nonduality is what I consider Neo-advaita. They all basically tell you there's nothing to do. Which pretty much guarantees you will never realize God.

I see a big distinction between Neo-Advaita and this -- Jim Newman, Tony Parsons, Andreas Muller, Anna Brown, Andrea Reflects, Kenneth Madden, perhaps more... Lisa Cairns, etc -- aka contemporary nonduality (I've heard it called). Neo-Advaita says you're already enlightened and there's nothing to do, which is hopelessly taken on as a belief -- I wouldn't call it nonduality. This contemporary nonduality consists of a message being spoken that points to nothing; the absolute -- they rarely say there's nothing to do... and even if they seem like they do, whenever pressed, they always make it very clear there's no one to do that anyway, so who is giving up the search? It's made very clear that thinking or knowing you are enlightened already is just a game the individual would play to avoid liberation. In Neo-Advaita, you can supposedly know (or believe) you're enlightened. In contemporary nonduality, you can't -- because unlike Neo-Advaita, it does point to liberation, which is beyond mere belief.

The integration of light and darkness inside we have to do. When thoughts arise about shame and sin and the dark "entity" is waiting to have it's feast is also what we call (ego dissolution or ego death). If we cling to much at what we know about reality, this kind of happenings could happen and all sorts of inside realities and fears, traumas, memory etc. From a metaphorical perspective, the Ego has to be sacrificied and renewed with the internal fire we have. So, on a brink of dispair like Ego dissolve, wich is no joke, to let go is to embrace the inner drive, or call it fury if you wish. In a dream picture it will apear as Satan or Lucifer. We must first deconstruct what those entities are. Satan has to be seen in new light. Because christianity lied in the first place about Satan or Lucifer. Let's remember that "the serpent" and "saviour" is the same principle. Christ is the metaphor of the Ego, sacrificing itself for the whole and be reborn. Take this like something we have to do at a personal level. Let the old go to be sacrified for the interior self and be reborn in a new paradigm. When the big sacrifice comes, that of the Ego, is normal at first, the body and mind will freak out similar to waiting real death. Getting in touch with the reality inside of what Satan or Lucifer represents. From a standpoint of no christian dogma, they represent the truth. They represent the movement inside. Jesus Christ said: to those who will be successful in my endeavors, i will give them Lucifer, the morning star. So, Lucifer, Satan, Shiva, Christ, are only names during history of that wich is dormant in the human body, or left for dead. Is where we threw our not desired emotions or thoughts,etc. Firstly, revise your beliefs about Satan, and let religious dogma go away. In the true words Lucifer represents the light and the principle of Air. Satan represents movement and the principle of Fire. Gabriel represents freedom of speech and the principle of Space/Akasha/Sound/Knowledge Duality is making people see angels and demons. From a nonduality perspective they are Daemons or facets of the subconscious mind. In western tradition we have 72 demons and 72 angels, so 144 Daemons.or "Gods". Duality is being stuck in the perspective only that of the Ego and mind. Because of society programming. So, we have to reconsider relearning everything we think we know, and distrust any dogma, this is why we have the breath, to not drop into insanity. And the embrace of all those dark feelings inside and stop judging. Now, entities are real from another perspective. If is too much trauma doing the inner work, then calling upon Christ or Shiva or Lucifer, could help greatly.

Nonduality.

And by the way... If someone were to tell you, for instance, “stop trying to get anywhere,” then they are coming from a place of mere conceptual understanding (thus, misunderstanding) of nonduality. As there’s no you to do that either.

Nonduality & Meditations

And psychedelics put you in DP/DR or right away into the nothingness without residual separation? Isn't there spiritual practice needed to realise nonduality before going into dissociative states? I'm not sure about you, but when I had DP/DR, I didn't have separation, because thoughts were as empty as the rest of reality. The suffering was ego death, fighting the change of perception that's occurring. DP/DR also wasn't that much suffering, the suffering came months/years after not experiencing any dissociations anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zIKQCwDXsA

That's simply a lack of nuance on your part. You and Adeptus are committing the classic pre/trans fallacy and then getting outraged at me over it. I have never claimed to be a messiah in some delusional pre-rational way people like Adetpus take that to mean. Does God speak through me? Of course! All my deepest insights come from God. Do I teach people how to awaken? Of course! In that sense you could say I am guru or a messiah, but you and Adeptus have no clue what this actually means. You take it as some narcisstic fundamentalist thing, but it isn't that. Anyone can become a guru or a messiah simply by awakening and having a calling to awaken others. If you don't carefully study this work, then it may seem that way to you. Yes, precisely because people like you and Adeptus get confused. The video was not about me, it was to help clear up confusion which naturally rises in this work. No, I have always spoke out and warned against cult behavior and ideology. This has been the core of my work from day 1. Actually I take criticism and feedback all the time. But not when it comes from trolls who are way out of their element. Before you troll me, first demonstrate a solid understanding of spirituality, nonduality, epistemology, metaphysics, and my work. I teach extremely advanced things which require nuance and tons of personal contemplation and direct experience to understand. My teachings are not some dumb right wing video that you just casually troll. It will take you 10 years of deep study to render a serious criticsim of me. Not that you couldn't. But you're so far from that. This may shock you, but I am a busy guy and I have better things to do than to defend my work against ignorant people. If I was in that business it would be a full time job. If you cannot fathom my work then that's not my problem. Many people will misinterpret my work because that is simply the nature of the ego mind.

No, this is actually going to shock you. I believe that God is everything in the universe, including me and you, and I've been espousing this since my teens (over 20 years). I also believe in nonduality, and have extensive meditation and psychedelic experience... not what you was wanting to read... right?