- Image by sunjaec via Flickr
One things that non-dualists says is that there is no separate self.
How does the mind get around that one? It seems so obvious that you exist. Every time that you use the word ‘I’, you are establishing that you exist as a single standalone entity.
So let’s find the I. Can you find the I without the content of the I? What I mean by this is that, when you use the word I, you are generally referring to an experience. You say:
- I am hungry
- I will get back to you on that one
- I feel sad
- I will think about that
I went to dinner with Jeff Foster and some friends this weekend. He has just come back from the USA where he was giving talks on non-duality. He also met a lot of other non-duality teachers who surprised him with the amount of ego they appeared to have.
There is a myth that spiritual teachers have gone beyond their egos.
Later that night I went to a birthday party where someone asked me about non-duality.
“How can it benefit me?” she asked.
In American, Jeff was talking to groups of 2oo plus. I suppose a lot of them were interested in non-duality in order to reap some form of benefit. There are the spiritual seekers looking for answers. There are those who are going through emotional pain because their lives are not going too well.
Often non-duality is expressed as a search for truth rather than a solution to your pain. During a question and answer session someone will ask about how the teacher’s life has changed since they became awake. Some teachers fudge this issue by pointing out that this is about truth, not a sort of self-help fix.
Still people ask:
- What’s in it for me?
- Will it make me feel better?
- Will it stop this pain?
- Will it make me happy
So, how can it make you feel?
