Hi friends, I'm so happy you're here!
My hope is that in sharing my winding path out of a self-negating version of non-duality, in which the separate self must die in exchange for "Liberation," into a cathartic new understanding and experience of non-duality that is more like uni-duality, or divine immanence, as it re-affirms humanity and the manifest world as real expressions of a ground of Being that emerged from itself and evolved into all things. It is one that takes us beyond spiritual paths that de-realize the self and therefore relationship, to a relational path on which we don't dissolve and disappear into anything but commune with, experiencing profound intimacy with the world and one another as the universe in relationship with itself! This reality is based not on the erasure of separateness and multiplicity, but the non-duality of separateness and oneness, the transcendent and the immanent, form and formlessness.
My hope is that in sharing my winding path out of a self-negating version of non-duality, in which the separate self must die in exchange for "Liberation," into a cathartic new understanding and experience of non-duality that is more like uni-duality, or divine immanence, as it re-affirms humanity and the manifest world as real expressions of a ground of Being that emerged from itself and evolved into all things. It is one that takes us beyond spiritual paths that de-realize the self and therefore relationship, to a relational path on which we don't dissolve and disappear into anything but commune with, experiencing profound intimacy with the world and one another as the universe in relationship with itself! This reality is based not on the erasure of separateness and multiplicity, but the non-duality of separateness and oneness, the transcendent and the immanent, form and formlessness.
My deepest desire is to join others and invite others to join in exploring a non-dual reality quite different from that of Eastern enlightenment traditions, in which we as individuals play a role in the universe coming to realize itself as us, and discover what human connection and relationship feels like when we experience ourselves not as a formless "Absolute" we dissolve into, but as the One in relationship with itself, getting to experience itself.
This kind of nondual spirituality is about deeply savoring moments of connection with other people who we perceive, astonishingly, as other unique expressions of what we too are an expression of! With this perception arises an outpouring of benevolence towards all others, compassion in our hearts for all beings. We feel profound delight and meaning in Being getting to commune with itself, not by compelling itself, as form, to dissolve back into formlessness, but by fully embodying its' incarnations, reveling it its' humanness consciously when we realize our nature as what Being has become. This is when we look in the mirror and see the universe looking back at itself with human eyes, in awe of what it's become over 14 billion years of evolution!
No longer needing to not retreat from the world to dissolve into a formless abyss within ourselves, we step out into oneness, a oneness of multiplicity.
In this reality, safety and freedom come not through taking refuge from vulnerability via any degree of de-realization or dissolution, but in the visceral experience of being held within the inter-connected relational field born of the primal singularity The most profound realization here is not our true nature as formless, but as formless enformed. As this, we can never not be of the world, because we are the world, so any notion of being in it but not of becomes a chosen denial and detachment of our nature as the ground of Being evolved into us and the entire manifest world! Waking up to this both/and non-dual reality was shockingly more profound than my initial awakening beyond self and form. It helped me emerge from the ashes of ego dissolution, into the divinity of personhood as an expression of the universal, and gave significance to all things, simply because they exist!
The prevailing paradigm/narrative of non-duality in the West is one that promises the end of suffering/eternal peace is in realizing that your personal self, "the ego," is actually non-existent and that the world is merely an illusion blocking your "true nature" as formless pure awareness/consciousness. Many of them nihilistically reduce our existence to nothing/ness. It's taught your belief in a separate self keeps you trapped in a prison of "me," and that Liberation and Truth is something "you" have to die for. It is actually not non-dual, because for one, it teaches a rigid duality between what it calls your "true self/nature" and "false self, form and formlessness, the spiritual and the material.
It's one that either subtly or overtly belittles the individual self, and has a negativity bias towards the human ego/psyche.
It's one that either subtly or overtly belittles the individual self, and has a negativity bias towards the human ego/psyche.
When it comes to suffering, when we experience divine immanence, we know that our suffering is simultaneously gods suffering, and we want to embrace it and heal it. Now we don’t want to reject anything in us, because that is simultaneously rejecting god.
I know that this alternate paradigm and experience of a oneness of multiplicity in which everything is included as divinely real, won't appeal to those mired, and invested, as I once was, in a liberation dependent on de-realizing form and personhood. This is apparent from the unkind and reactive responses I'm receiving from absolutists who I myself used to be among.
So my intention is to offer this alternate humanistic non-dual path to those enticed by non-dual teachings that promise the end of suffering through "ego death," as well as those who've become disillusioned by these paths after being deeply harmed by their pitfalls, and are trying to recover and move on from them without dis-engaging from spirituality altogether. These are people who like myself, have been seeking freedom from enlightenment, to emerge from the wreckage of our fixation on ego death, and to give ourselves permission to embrace and express all of our precious humanity!