The Glorious Both/And

I step out of my apartment on a chilly fall morning, and struck by the very reality of the world, I am thrilled by a curiously profound and buoyant sense of awe. Suddenly I hear the Nisargadatta's voice echoing through time, "Refuse this dream the stamp of reality!"  ​ But I can no longer heed this call because today life is no longer just a dream, not a bubble to burst, but dramatically, mind-blowingly real, and in its precious  is ness, everything radiates significance. My soul flutters with delight watching god interact with itself everywhere I look. Everything a piece of god that contains all of god! Then, I hear Ram Das's voice whisper, "Everything is god in drag!" W hile it's a lovely statement, it doesn't fully ring true anymore because now I see that god doesn't wear any masks, and the world is not just an appearance. This world of form no longer conceals god, but reveals him/her/it everywhere, all of this is the revelation of god, it IS...

To be on a humanistic non-dual spiritual path, we must  transcend and include.  You don't climb a ladder to the sky, and sever off the lower rungs that got you there unless theres something down there you're running from. "Transpersonal," for example, can be misinterpreted as what is entirely NOT personal, or has nothing to do with the personal dimension of reality, so that it points to the notion of exclusionary transcendence  (transcending and excluding personhood in this case), but I see it now as pointing to what is more than yet includes the person/personal dimension.  Now you don't end up with disembodied, ungrounded and non-human transpersonal experience, but the down to earth embodiment of something that is personal and more than personal, an experience of personhood as an integral part of something bigger than itself- that transcends and includes it.   This is a dramatically different experience from the experience of/experience of oneself as "some...

I’ve personally experienced Neo-Advaita teachings that are so anti-relational to the point that they reject and even shame as weakness the basic human need for healthy intimacy, teaching spiritual aspirants to believe it’s unspiritual to follow this biological imperative – in teaching how to be self-sustaining (ironic, given that the teachings are based on self-dissolution) these teachings helped me to become better able to self-generate that which is unhealthy to rely  solely   on others for, but I’ve seen and experienced myself, the radical self-reliance it promotes lead to the   opposite extreme   of over-dependence on others- isolationism, alienation, avoiding intimacy. It’s an example of when non-dual teachings that aim to ease the suffering caused by one extreme, end up swinging to the other extreme, rather than finding a balanced middle way, which would be, in my view, inter-dependence in which two or more people are not solely dependent on the other to g...

In an interview with John Welwood, Buddhist practitioner who coined the term spiritual bypassing, he was asked what the value is being able to become aware of  consciously focus on the "ground of being." His response was: "We gain greater access to what's running us. And with awareness comes choice.  Choice and freedom. Freedom to choose differently if I want. " Yes, it's all too common in Neo-Advaita and also some other nondual traditions, to say that after you have an awakening to "the ground of being, there's a loss of the sense of there being a "doer," of agency, and "choiceless awareness" is a very coveted (and misinterpreted) state of perception in these circles often portrayed as a sign of and end goal of awakening. This loss of "doership" and choicelessness are positioned as  only  positive, and while it is indeed positive for us to loosen our grip on thinking we can, and trying to control everything, I've a...

I attended a satsang in San Francisco years ago in the height of my involvement with nondual teachings focused on the absence of self, and getting rid of the ego. This one was led by a man who seemed different from the ubiquitous detached, impersonal teachers. He seemed more warm-blooded, more  human , a sweetness and tender-heartedness about him. As with most satsangs, after a meditation, the "teacher" gives a talk which is not so different from a sermon, focused on different topics related to liberation from the suffering of selfhood, the illusory "false" self, that is. Most of his talk was a variation on the usual theme of the illusory "ego" as a prison that we need to escape from, by seeing it's lack of inherent reality, and resting in our true nature by collapsing it into "pure awareness," our True Self. I distinctly remember how he used the word  bondage,  poignantly evoking oppression, and I could certainly relate to feeling wrapped in...

Experiencing myself and everything I encounter as sewn, stitched together at the seams but still with distance in between, is transimmanent intimacy, one that is both profound and unconditional! It's a quality of intimacy that arises when I  feel,  not just conceptualize, co-dependent arising (in Buddhism - dependent origination) of oneness and separateness, self and other, as a palpable reality, the sense of everything being the universe in relationship with itself, ushering in tender strength and a security that doesn't over-ride my vulnerability but lets me expose it more freely, because inter-personal dynamics don't feel threatening anymore, so my entire system feels safe to finally let it's guard down again and feel at home in my body, among other bodies that are other unique expressions of what I also am. We are ourselves, and also each other. It makes me feel like a distinct part of the sweeping whole universe made of infinite other parts, and it car...

Driving through the Arizona desert, I'm in the passenger seat staring out at the mountains slowly streaming by, trying to recall how it felt to merge with my surroundings back when becoming one with everything meant disappearing, meant swiping myself out of the picture and dissolving into thin air, becoming nothing and everything. Well, everything except for me, except for somebody. Only in hindsight can I say that most of the time when following those annihilat non-dual pointers, I was not actually becoming one with everything, I was disappearing into it and there's a world of difference between the two. and that is relationship ​But, in wanting to vividly describe it so that I can help others find a new way to experience oneness without dissolving, without losing themselves, I have to dip into my own absence again, to re-visit it experientially. Fearing that the re-entry gate might get jammed again, I hesitate before making my exit. It takes some effort, but p...

I am here, even in this anger and despair If you can find me here, you can find me everywhere How deeply can you enter this moment to be with me?  To be with me is to be with you, to be with  all of this To fully feel me is to fully feel you  If you only hear me In the spaces between sounds You'll miss me in music If you only hear me in stillness You'll miss me in thunder When you only think of me as light You'll ignore me When I'm  weeping! If you only want me radiant You'll reject me  When I show up in agony When I am ( you)   drowning  I am with you, wherever you go, whatever you do But don't you see? You don't want all of me when you don't want all of you! Know that when you hold your hand you're holding mine too When you take care of you, You're taking care of me too

  "And we all live our spiritual lives, believing that this is what we're aiming for, to be free of fear forever. To have seen it as an illusion, something we have left behind like a shadow because the sun of spirituality has gotten so bright that shadows no longer exist." - Jason Shulman "We want light and wisdom but not the life it illuminates!" - Jason Shulman In retrospect, most of the light I experienced in my Neo-Advaita days of exclusionary transcendence was a Purity light, a light of purity alone, holy yes, but not whole-making... what I want and need now is the light that shines on the impurity that purity light over-shadows, light that embraces  shadow, to help me heal and whole by integrating darkness instead of temporarily incinerating it with it's gorgeous rays, even though that felt like absolute liberation! I need this now because the wholly-ness divine immanence offers, holds the dark tarnished parts of me  with/within  its' l...

This is about the redemption of our human personhood that can come from perceiving viscerally that the world of form is formlessness really  enformed, and that human beings along with our personhood are what the  ground of Being has astonishingly  really  become. You can say it's when whatever name you give to that which is beyond form, i.e. transcendent  formlessness, is no longer perceived from the either/or perspective as  transcendent only , but as  transimmanent.  And very importantly, from the perspective that it is  that which has been  evolving  since the beginning of our universe into a relationship with itself, and right now it's  experiencing itself as human! One of the palpable realizations that comes for me when I perceive this, is that whatever I do as a human person, is what that the ground of Being, now incarnate, is doing. When I reflect on myself and the human experience,  the ground of Being is...

     Evolutionary Spirituality, as I relate to it, is about presence and progression, dipping into the absolute alone as a means to progression, rather than reductionist spirituality's regression and taking up of permanent residence in absolute-only consciousness.  It seeks  repair  and reformation through conscious, mindful action,  doing  balanced with  being,  without valuing one over the other. Spirituality that values evolution encourages us to lend our individuality and personal strengths to improvement while also seeing and accepting things as they are, so that improvement is not the only goal, but comes more naturally when we see clearly the ways in which, often unintentionally, we hurt ourselves and others. It's not an obsession with improvement, nor is it complacency. It seeks to reveal our human potential for qualities like benevolence, grace, compassion, choice, and resilience. It is a catalyst for wonder and awe, for a ...

  Realization Process® Certified Senior Practitioner https://www.realizationconsulting.com/ ​ "There are many pathways to awakening that assume a ripening and maturing process in one's experience of realization. By analogy, you grow from a child (pre-awakening) into an adult (somewhere on the awakening continuum). The problem with neo-advaita teachings (the one's I've been exposed to) is that they maintain that it is an illusion to be a child in the first place. This is because they make no effective distinction between the person who has gone through the ripening and maturing process, and the one who hasn't. They do this by taking an ontological stance that the self is unreal, and because it is unreal, it never actually existed, and thus does not exist now (even if, for the student, their self does feel real as an immediate experience of life and being). For this reason, the method of teaching is often a form of repeating or discursively arguing to students that t...

Non-duality, as the unity of opposites, doesn't point to there being no duality but that source and manifestation are ONE and the same - meaning oneness and multiplicity are non-dual - reality is UNIDUAL! they are interwoven inextricably - the one has arisen as the many and they only arise together, yup just like yin and yang. So when I experienced and thought of non-duality as no separation between  anythin g and that separateness does not exist, I was missing out on delighting in the mesmerizing, whole-making paradox that the one IS the many,  expressing  as  it, so that form is AS real as formlessness because it IS it - but it is not reduced to it, it is formlessness literally  enformed! Because I did it too, and suffered the eventual consequences (along with benefiting in other ways) it's painful to see  people struggling to destroy the  robustness  of their beautiful individualities yours is a sacred, individual personal expression of th...