When non-duality cancels relationship

"To go beyond duality is to resolve opposites by integration, not by the denial of one side of the polarity. We do not go beyond the dualism of the subject-object split by denying that objects (the universe) exist, or by denying that the subject (‘I’) exists. Either denial is a type of insanity." - P.T. Mistleberger

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 "You are not looking at the sky, you are the sky."
"You aren't touching the earth, you are the earth."

This is again the either/or, the "you are this or that," that hasn't embraced the paradox of both/and. If you are not touching the earth but simply are the earth, you have no experience of contact with the earth. You negate the relationship of your body to/with the earth (and anything for that matter) when you totally negate your self-existence. I say that you're both a person touching the earth, and the earth itself. This is relationship, and a most precious paradoxical one! Non-dual relationship, in which subject and object are not just one, they are also one. This allows for the experience of the One (or Beingness, the Universe, etc.) having individuated to the point of now being in relationship with itself in all the different ways it's come to express itself! 

No need for anything to dissolve, only a oneness of multiplicity to be realized. If you are not touching the earth but simply are the earth, you cannot experience intimacy with the earth, if you are not this and are only that,  intimacy is off the table. In my experience, dissolving completely into something so that you lose all sense of distinctness and individuality is not intimacy, it's an experience of dissolution, of total merging, which is an experience of a "oneness" in which more than one thing seem to lose their multiplicity and become just one thing, rather than an experience of unitive inter-connection, where two things remain two while also being one, i.e. they are the one as two. Dissolving to become something, let's say the earth, or the sky, nullifies the experience or notion of being one with them. Without any separateness, any multiplicity, there's no relationship, and there's no with  without relationship, is there?

Experiencing myself solely as an Evergreen tree is an astounding experience, and so is looking at it and being with it, knowing that it is another expression of what I also am. After self-negating non-duality eroded my personal availability for intimate inter-personal relationship, I'd sacrifice the former for the latter, but luckily I don't have to, because with both/and perception, which is uni-dual, I can experience both - I am every thing else and I am also me, primarily me because I wouldn't even be aware of any thing if I weren't one of them.  "What you're communing with, you're also one with." Paradoxically, I don't lose myself, my particularity, my individuality, my boundaries, or subject and object duality to become the sky, the earth, the woman gazing in my eyes, we are one and we are two, and thank god, because this is far more precious to me than even the most mind-blowing  samadhi.

"There is no subjective experience that is not related to some object; there is no experienced object except through some particular interpretive vantage point... reality is relationship between perceiver and perceived."  

The paradox that these seeming polarities are both individuated and utterly conjoined, is the heart of nonduality, and one that is naturally tricky for our limited human minds to embrace. While it's understandable to conclude from transcendent experiences that subject and object are simply mythical, as nondual understanding evolves, they are restored to their rightful place in a mesmerizing, life-affirming union to be reveled in.

It is a tragedy when spirituality abandons the "I-thou" by reducing us to I AM.

"For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union."