Dear Friend,
Being IS becoming…there’s not a predicament of a dichotomy…and becoming is not an illusion, unless Being is non-existent too. Being, becomes
Becoming isn’t in the way of Being, it IS Being, so what has become has always been Being itself becoming!
That’s a problem - making a duality between being and becoming. Making a hierarchy, making one an illusion that stands guard at the gates of the other.
Being is becoming. That is non-duality…they are one. They are one become two, that’s uni-duality
The ground of being is blooming, and when we don’t know that, and divide what’s one into two warring parts, is the tragedy, we try to uproot the garden (of paradoxical beauty) ripping the flowers out with the weeds.
This is where either/or non-duality is dualistic, because it takes something that is one - the formless ground of being and the manifest world it’s become, and divides it unnecessarily into two…pitting it at odds with itself and pitting us agianst ourselvs.
The healing of that fracture, is healing that divide, and it’s within ourselves too, where we pit the shadows against the light, what we like against what we don’t like, and on the greater scale, we’re reconciling form and formlessness, healing the rupture between an “absolute” and a “relative” reality that have never been separate. Neither of them are an illusion, the false dichotomy is. When you see the ground of being is blossoming, separateness and oneness, the universal and the particular are blended, the parts and the whole are what make the
When we realize that the manifest world is a oneness of multiplicity, is formlessness enformed, we see that we’ve been trying to see the whole picture by tearing it in two!
Because this either/or perspective of non-duality is such a partial view that leads deprives us of the whole, of seeing Being in bloom, and has so many tragic pitfalls, that I want to help make the both/and view, which saved me (and made me want to give up detached serenity for the bittersweet of my full humanity) more known and accessible for those who want to avoid either/or or find themselves stuck in it, or have gotten what they can from it and want to go to the next stage.
I want to bring together everyone who is exploring the both/and of being becoming, divine immanence, uni-duality, etc. to help us experience ourselves together, as being in blooming to help us blossom together as being in bloom.
I want to share the philosophical both/and frameworks (that leave no room for separation between a relative and an absolute) that helped me unlock the garden of being in bloom, including Jason Shulman (in which the healing ego...) and Tim Freke's (unividuality and emergence of a self-realizing universe) ,complimentary perspectives that leave behind the worst and bring the best of science and spirituality together to light a path that leads to wet/fertile with the transcendent, rain of transcendence in which flowers rise up from the soil of transcendenc, transcendent soil tender-hearted view, on which everything is invited to walk beside us, open of our divinity as god's humanity profound inter-connection, and the fullest expression of ourselves as personal manifestations of the universe.
that see the beauty of the ego and personal self as expressions of what we think of as god. and all dimensions, including what's considered the surface, are worthy of wonder and delight, and matter and mind and worlds worthy of enthusiastically discover the relationship between...where the surface has depth...opens up the true depth of what seems to be a superficial surface layer
where celebrating the significance of our littleness is what makes room for the rushing river , for our simultaneous enormity of our lif our greatness to flow through
where there's no unity consciousness without relationship , and the intimacy between two who know they are also one, which doesn't always make our suffering stop, but makes it more bearable, honorable, and heals the dual pain of being only separate, or only one. transmutes the suffering into tender-hearted compassion. what makes us feel most alive is the intimacy " " that helps us hold our shared darkness in our collective light,
where feeling the interconnected relationship between the whole and it's parts
Where you can't disappear into true oneness, because that would be oneness with a hole in it, you can only disappear to experience the world without you in it, it needs you
dry, flat, impersonal non-dual spirituality is a result of dividing the indivisible and choosing one side to reject in favor of the other. getting us away from impersonal spirituality and the belief that awakening requires becoming less of a person, and the erosion of individuality.
that it's about becoming less enthusiastic about the inter-prsonal world
get us away from the notion that we have to, and the illusion that we could reach true wholeness through...
Becoming isn’t in the way of Being, it IS Being, so what has become has always been Being itself becoming!
That’s a problem - making a duality between being and becoming. Making a hierarchy, making one an illusion that stands guard at the gates of the other.
Being is becoming. That is non-duality…they are one. They are one become two, that’s uni-duality
The ground of being is blooming, and when we don’t know that, and divide what’s one into two warring parts, is the tragedy, we try to uproot the garden (of paradoxical beauty) ripping the flowers out with the weeds.
This is where either/or non-duality is dualistic, because it takes something that is one - the formless ground of being and the manifest world it’s become, and divides it unnecessarily into two…pitting it at odds with itself and pitting us agianst ourselvs.
The healing of that fracture, is healing that divide, and it’s within ourselves too, where we pit the shadows against the light, what we like against what we don’t like, and on the greater scale, we’re reconciling form and formlessness, healing the rupture between an “absolute” and a “relative” reality that have never been separate. Neither of them are an illusion, the false dichotomy is. When you see the ground of being is blossoming, separateness and oneness, the universal and the particular are blended, the parts and the whole are what make the
When we realize that the manifest world is a oneness of multiplicity, is formlessness enformed, we see that we’ve been trying to see the whole picture by tearing it in two!
Because this either/or perspective of non-duality is such a partial view that leads deprives us of the whole, of seeing Being in bloom, and has so many tragic pitfalls, that I want to help make the both/and view, which saved me (and made me want to give up detached serenity for the bittersweet of my full humanity) more known and accessible for those who want to avoid either/or or find themselves stuck in it, or have gotten what they can from it and want to go to the next stage.
I want to bring together everyone who is exploring the both/and of being becoming, divine immanence, uni-duality, etc. to help us experience ourselves together, as being in blooming to help us blossom together as being in bloom.
I want to share the philosophical both/and frameworks (that leave no room for separation between a relative and an absolute) that helped me unlock the garden of being in bloom, including Jason Shulman (in which the healing ego...) and Tim Freke's (unividuality and emergence of a self-realizing universe) ,complimentary perspectives that leave behind the worst and bring the best of science and spirituality together to light a path that leads to wet/fertile with the transcendent, rain of transcendence in which flowers rise up from the soil of transcendenc, transcendent soil tender-hearted view, on which everything is invited to walk beside us, open of our divinity as god's humanity profound inter-connection, and the fullest expression of ourselves as personal manifestations of the universe.
that see the beauty of the ego and personal self as expressions of what we think of as god. and all dimensions, including what's considered the surface, are worthy of wonder and delight, and matter and mind and worlds worthy of enthusiastically discover the relationship between...where the surface has depth...opens up the true depth of what seems to be a superficial surface layer
where celebrating the significance of our littleness is what makes room for the rushing river , for our simultaneous enormity of our lif our greatness to flow through
where there's no unity consciousness without relationship , and the intimacy between two who know they are also one, which doesn't always make our suffering stop, but makes it more bearable, honorable, and heals the dual pain of being only separate, or only one. transmutes the suffering into tender-hearted compassion. what makes us feel most alive is the intimacy " " that helps us hold our shared darkness in our collective light,
where feeling the interconnected relationship between the whole and it's parts
Where you can't disappear into true oneness, because that would be oneness with a hole in it, you can only disappear to experience the world without you in it, it needs you
dry, flat, impersonal non-dual spirituality is a result of dividing the indivisible and choosing one side to reject in favor of the other. getting us away from impersonal spirituality and the belief that awakening requires becoming less of a person, and the erosion of individuality.
that it's about becoming less enthusiastic about the inter-prsonal world
get us away from the notion that we have to, and the illusion that we could reach true wholeness through...
To start out short and bittersweet, I want to debunk my old motto of "no self, no suffering." my experience with self-negating non-dual spirituality that is so popular today, has been a profoundly double-edged sword. From years of seemingly ego-transcendent liberation to traumatic soul loss, its' seismic impact will accompany me throughout the res of my life, and it made me see that my old motto of "no self, suffering" is dangerously untrue. Because I know how much hangs in the balance, I want to share with all those drawn to popular self-negating non-duality as a path to liberation from suffering, why it's profoundly important to question the most fundamental assumptions of today’s popular non-dual paradigm, beginning with:
The most damage came from the fact that a path meant to destroy separateness, made me feel more separate and traumatically isolated from other humans than I ever could have imagined.
The most damage came from the fact that a path meant to destroy separateness, made me feel more separate and traumatically isolated from other humans than I ever could have imagined.
- the ego and the belief in a separate self is the cause of suffering to uproot - that seeing them as false liberates us from suffering,
- that we have a true self/true nature that doesn’t include the personal aspects of self
- the self, separateness, and the manifest world is just an illusion
- the popular Western notion of non-duality is truly non-dual, rather than a dualistic paradigm of reality
- that there is an inherent division between “an absolute” and a “relative” reality
- suffering is just a story created by a non-existent fictional character called “me”
- there is such a thing as the final end/total liberation from suffering
- that the modern non-dual path is free of concepts, narrativity and dogma
- that the purpose/meaning of suffering is to wake up to the non-existence of the one who suffers
- that the oneness and wholeness excludes you
On "Neo-Advaita" -- I'm considering a new way to describe
I've used the term Neo-Advaita, nihilistic non-duality, but to clarify, Neo is just the most extreme case of what I'm raising awareness about, which at the most general level is the phenomenon of indiscriminately encouraging a radical perceptual shift meant to *destabilize and obliterate* the foundation of one’s reality, without disclosure of known risks and screening/preparation/integration support and especially when your audience is known to be a vulnerable demographic. I don't feel this should be controversial among well-meaning humans. Unfortunately such a large percentage of modern non-dual teachers/authors/speakers who run the gamut of beliefs, and intentions, fall under this category, and I hope to convincingly explain why all of it has inherent pitfalls , to varying degrees, that must be addressed as soon as possible.
There's the dangerously flawed truth paradigms to deconstruct and then there's the topic of what action CAN be taken. Not to censor bad ideas, but to call for more teacher accountability and integrity on behalf of those promoting these messages/teachings.
If it's a seasoned one, they likely do and there are understandable conflicts of interest. Having to back-track. Admit mistakes. Change their own viewpoint. Burst the bubble of infallibility.
Neo isn't a path containing landmines, it is a landmine. It's not a path, it's the end of the line. They are telling us that. It's going to be the end of our world, there's nothing for us to get...that is true to some extent, of the experience they are pointing to, but that is not oneness, it's disappearance. So you don't have "die" for spiritual awakening, you have to die for this one specific version of it that appeals to the self-loathing, and desperate needing a way out now
------
compassionate plea for accountability on behalf of those who....^^
to get sober on what is going on here and why it's happening.
I've used the term Neo-Advaita, nihilistic non-duality, but to clarify, Neo is just the most extreme case of what I'm raising awareness about, which at the most general level is the phenomenon of indiscriminately encouraging a radical perceptual shift meant to *destabilize and obliterate* the foundation of one’s reality, without disclosure of known risks and screening/preparation/integration support and especially when your audience is known to be a vulnerable demographic. I don't feel this should be controversial among well-meaning humans. Unfortunately such a large percentage of modern non-dual teachers/authors/speakers who run the gamut of beliefs, and intentions, fall under this category, and I hope to convincingly explain why all of it has inherent pitfalls , to varying degrees, that must be addressed as soon as possible.
There's the dangerously flawed truth paradigms to deconstruct and then there's the topic of what action CAN be taken. Not to censor bad ideas, but to call for more teacher accountability and integrity on behalf of those promoting these messages/teachings.
If it's a seasoned one, they likely do and there are understandable conflicts of interest. Having to back-track. Admit mistakes. Change their own viewpoint. Burst the bubble of infallibility.
Neo isn't a path containing landmines, it is a landmine. It's not a path, it's the end of the line. They are telling us that. It's going to be the end of our world, there's nothing for us to get...that is true to some extent, of the experience they are pointing to, but that is not oneness, it's disappearance. So you don't have "die" for spiritual awakening, you have to die for this one specific version of it that appeals to the self-loathing, and desperate needing a way out now
------
compassionate plea for accountability on behalf of those who....^^
to get sober on what is going on here and why it's happening.
I'm so happy you're here. One of my goals is to help others avoid and recover from Neo-Advaita and other nihilistic types of modern non-duality that belittle the precious reality of our human lives, relationships and the world we live in. I've begun to do this with others, by exploring how these teachings have helped and profoundly harmed people, including myself. Over the years I've spent years exploring this, I've realized that to thoroughly understand and address the harmful impact they can have in a meaningful way, we need to dive into these questions...What is their historical context? What are their teachings? Who is teaching them and who is their audience? What are their teaching methods? What kind of suffering have they led to, and how widespread is the harm? The more we understand, the better we'll be able to answer the most important question: What would need to change in order to reduce this suffering?
I hope I can help others by sharing the paradigm shift that I went through on my path of "return" from the limiting freedom of divisive either/or non-duality (that mistakenly denies so much of what is precious in the name of oneness) to both/and "uni-duality" that feels like deep togetherness with each other and the whole, rather than of merging and disappearing, so that we can experience a new kind of profound intimacy that we can only feel when we know ourselves as both separate and one, and find freedom not in invulnerability, but in it feeling safe to be vulnerable. It starts with oneness that includes all and rejects nothing, and in which the one and the many are a single thing, and we stop looking through or beyond form to see it's true nature as formless, because we see the true nature of the manifest world as formlessness enformed. The implications of this shift are profound and far-reaching. It's a oneness of wholeness, experienced in togetherness, in deep human connection as whole humans, that self-negating non-duality doesn't have room for. In the universe, or the divine mystery coming into a conscious relationship with itself, as us.
In sharing my return path, which is not returning to a previous state but returning to the same places with new eyes and a heart broken open to humanity's shared experience of suffering, have been able to heal and return to personhood and suffering in a new way, with a new philosophical paradigm and experience of unity consciousness. The understanding is that non-duality is all about relationship, healing and celebrating our individual selves, and breathing poignancy into the mystery of the entire manifest, inter-personal world. New notions of non-duality that require a conscious, or healing ego...a both/and paradigm...an emergent/evolutionary perspective...self-compassion...ultimately arriving at how suffering's purpose isn't to wake us up to the non-existence of the sufferer and a rejection-based notion of "liberation" from it, but to bring us closer to one another, our shared humanity, to god, and to a deeper reverence to to the bitter-sweet ecstagony of life. it starts with oneness that includes all and rejects nothing, and in which the one and the many are a single thing, and we stop looking through or beyond form to see it's true nature as formless because we see the true nature of the manifest world as formlessness enformed. The implications of this shift are profound and far-reaching. It's a oneness of wholeness, experienced in togetherness, in deep human connection as whole humans, that self-negating nonduality doesn't have room for. In the universe, or the divine mystery coming into a conscious relationship with itself, as us, one which we call play a vital role in whether we realize it or not!
I hope I can help others by sharing the paradigm shift that I went through on my path of "return" from the limiting freedom of divisive either/or non-duality (that mistakenly denies so much of what is precious in the name of oneness) to both/and "uni-duality" that feels like deep togetherness with each other and the whole, rather than of merging and disappearing, so that we can experience a new kind of profound intimacy that we can only feel when we know ourselves as both separate and one, and find freedom not in invulnerability, but in it feeling safe to be vulnerable. It starts with oneness that includes all and rejects nothing, and in which the one and the many are a single thing, and we stop looking through or beyond form to see it's true nature as formless, because we see the true nature of the manifest world as formlessness enformed. The implications of this shift are profound and far-reaching. It's a oneness of wholeness, experienced in togetherness, in deep human connection as whole humans, that self-negating non-duality doesn't have room for. In the universe, or the divine mystery coming into a conscious relationship with itself, as us.
In sharing my return path, which is not returning to a previous state but returning to the same places with new eyes and a heart broken open to humanity's shared experience of suffering, have been able to heal and return to personhood and suffering in a new way, with a new philosophical paradigm and experience of unity consciousness. The understanding is that non-duality is all about relationship, healing and celebrating our individual selves, and breathing poignancy into the mystery of the entire manifest, inter-personal world. New notions of non-duality that require a conscious, or healing ego...a both/and paradigm...an emergent/evolutionary perspective...self-compassion...ultimately arriving at how suffering's purpose isn't to wake us up to the non-existence of the sufferer and a rejection-based notion of "liberation" from it, but to bring us closer to one another, our shared humanity, to god, and to a deeper reverence to to the bitter-sweet ecstagony of life. it starts with oneness that includes all and rejects nothing, and in which the one and the many are a single thing, and we stop looking through or beyond form to see it's true nature as formless because we see the true nature of the manifest world as formlessness enformed. The implications of this shift are profound and far-reaching. It's a oneness of wholeness, experienced in togetherness, in deep human connection as whole humans, that self-negating nonduality doesn't have room for. In the universe, or the divine mystery coming into a conscious relationship with itself, as us, one which we call play a vital role in whether we realize it or not!
Conversation with Tim Freke
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You don't get to oneness by erasing yourself, that would be oneness with a hole in it! -Tim Freke |
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We talk about why we need to move beyond non-dual spirituality that denigrates the individual, towards both/and uni-duality, "emergent" spirituality and the evolution of a self-realizing universe, and why the experience of unividuality is so important.
What got me here, how my either/or awakening and ego dissolution path freed me and then came to harm me, i.e. the promises and pitfalls of either/or "ego dissolution" paths, Neo-Advaita trap and what inspires me to spread awareness about the dangers of radical either/or non-dualisms...Sharing my experience of the promises and pitfalls of self-negating non-dualisms, and how spiritual emergency inspires me to spread awareness about the dangers of Neo-Advaita, and the need for balanced paths.that self-negating neo advaita, that are dry and dettached
What got me here, how my either/or awakening and ego dissolution path freed me and then came to harm me, i.e. the promises and pitfalls of either/or "ego dissolution" paths, Neo-Advaita trap and what inspires me to spread awareness about the dangers of radical either/or non-dualisms...Sharing my experience of the promises and pitfalls of self-negating non-dualisms, and how spiritual emergency inspires me to spread awareness about the dangers of Neo-Advaita, and the need for balanced paths.that self-negating neo advaita, that are dry and dettached
I am more interested in what we can do together than in what I can do alone. So please send collaboration ideas!
Send a message if you're interested in joining a peer support group for people harmed by nihilistic non-dual paths.
I'm also looking for people who would like to share their story in a recorded interview. These interviews will help many souls!
As a Spiritual Emergence Coach, I'm certified by IMHU to facilitate peer support groups for those going through a spiritual crisis of any kind
Send a message if you're interested in joining a peer support group for people harmed by nihilistic non-dual paths.
I'm also looking for people who would like to share their story in a recorded interview. These interviews will help many souls!
As a Spiritual Emergence Coach, I'm certified by IMHU to facilitate peer support groups for those going through a spiritual crisis of any kind
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I'll send links to new conversations, and other ways to explore and experience both/and non-duality :)
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