Beyond Non-Duality

For many long years I struggled as a spiritual seeker, seeking out:

• Gurus
• Spiritual teachers
• Mystical experiences
• Spiritual practices
• Spiritual companions

Although I developed ideas about compassion, wholeness and emanating love to heal the world; to tell the truth, I was basically seeking from the perspective of self interest. There was something I felt was missing in my life. I did not know what that was, but I felt that somehow spirituality would provide the answers and this would ease the pain in my life.

Above all, I was seeking something called enlightenment that, when found, would stop all my suffering and pain.  From then on I would be living in a state of blissful nirvana.

Then one day, out of the blue, I saw the oneness of everything, the illusion of my separate identity and I thought, great, now I am enlightened. I can rest easy.

As time went on it became clear that I was still acting from self interest. I met many others who had also come to this non-duality. When we talked we appeared to understand each other. Enlightened beings talking to other enlightened beings.

The more I mixed with these people, the more obvious it became that, despite what they said about there being no self, no experiencer, no chooser; they appeared to very much operate from self interest just like me. I met teachers who on the platform declared that there is only one human being, that we are essentially all one – yet away from the platform they displayed big egos that manifested as jealousy, disappointment, resentment,  bitching and so on. This was not inclusiveness, this was separation, duality.

What is going on here? How can you see wholeness, oneness, non-duality and yet still operate out of blatant self interest to the point of callousness?

I have now come to the conclusion that the non-dual perspective is only a stage. It is not enlightenment. It is a stage on the way to enlightenment. If so, what is the next stage?

To go beyond non-duality requires the integration of the non-dual perspective into your every breath, your every moment. Can you truly operate, not from the self, but from the whole? To have this ability moves you into a completely different realm. You no longer operate from the non-dual perspective. You are non-duality.

Of course, I am not there. I am not the enlightened being I once thought I was. I have awoken to the truth of non-duality – but now I must travel on a different road.  There is the metaphor of the mountain. Non-duality is perhaps half way up the mountain. Even the top of the mountain is not there, for there  is still the image of an individual standing on the top of a spiritual mountain. Maybe true enlightenment is when there is no you, no mountain, no way, no path.

Do I try to walk up this mountain?  Or do I just let go, release myself, merge with the whole until there is no me left. Can I let go of the survival instinct that maintains my self interest? Can I destroy myself, yet still walk on this earth, leaving no footprints?